The Journey to Emotional Health and Healing is not for the faint of heart. But it is the most worthwhile journey we can take. It’s worth all the blood sweat and tears along the way when every moment of discomfort is on purpose - in service -  of our personal growth and deep healing. It is an honour.

One of the biggest lessons to learn is understanding that healing is a process of learning, re-learning, and un-learning. It does not just HAPPEN.

It’s learning to develop a whole new set of skills that lead to emotional intelligence requires commitment. And that commitment provides us with a better quality of life in all areas.

Emotional Health and Healing takes:

Willingness
The openness, and readiness for change. Willingness is a step beyond desire. Many of us DESIRE better emotional health. But not all of us are willing to do what it takes to get there. Are you willing to actively and intentionally pursue your healing?

Commitment 
Making a commitment to yourself -...

I've been diving into the work of receiving in my own life ( you can listen to my podcast episode about receiving here ). 

Receiving is HEART WORK. It is an absolutely opening of the heart. And what i've discovered is that often before we can receive on a deeper level - we often must experience release on a deeper level. 

Releasing thought patterns and identity blocks that don't serve us. Releasing unworthiness and shame. Releasing fear around stepping up and into the power of who you are. Releasing fear of even just being seen as who you are. 

And I find it fascinating that what we are afraid of releasing is often what we say we WANT to release. Like who would say they don't want to receive deeper intimacy, clarity, healing, money, joy and FLOW? We ALL want that. But desire is much different from willingness. 

We all have desires. But we don't all RECEIVE what we desire. Because while we may want things SOOOOO bad (which in and of itself can be painful - the...

This week's episode is all about receiving - receiving is an energetic dynamic that comes from the heart

In this episode, I’m talking about the difference between knowledge and awareness.

If you wonder why you “KNOW” what to do, but don’t do it, then I’ll share with you the missing link to making powerful change in your life using the beautiful work of awareness.

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SHOW TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Knowledge vs. Awareness Podcast 

I want to talk today about the beauty of awareness and how awareness, true awareness differs from knowledge, intellectual knowing. I believe that when you get into awareness, the realm of deep awareness, you are actually entering the realm of consciousness, of seeing, and of realization. And I believe that whenever you are looking to make lasting change in your life, when you are transforming in any way, you must start with awareness.

Most people start with action.  And so they may intellectually know something - they may know what to do, what action to take and they can write it on a piece of...

When I reflect on the years I have spent at war with myself, at war with what is, my heart swells. I look at myself from a higher plane and send compassion down to those pits of hell. I would be lying if I said I don’t experience that war anymore.  It’s just that now, after making healing my life’s work, I can see it sooner. I can see that it is a choice. And, I can see that it’s not the choice I want to make for my life. And I can let go - again.

It felt like I carried the wounds of 10,000 women as a child. Generations of abuse. My mother’s harsh words, her gaze, her experiences carried within her, were transferred to me. Because she didn’t want them. And so my heart broke every single day as a child, and as an adolescent, and then as a young adult - because I believed her. I believed that I was nothing. That I was lazy. That I wasn’t good enough. That I was too sensitive. Projections, fears. The off-loading of shame.

When I speak to...

Well I suppose now is as good a time as any to have a conversation about high-functioning depression. 

High-Functioning depression, is basically pushing a boulder uphill while doing all the life things. Life feels exhausting and hard and draining. And there is a major internal pressure to put on a happy face. 

People who experience high-functioning depression have learned to slap a smile on and grind through life. But not the good kind of "boss-babe" business grind that feels empowering and satisfying. More like grinding right through you until you're raw and there's nothing left but bone (figuratively speaking).  Lots of self-loathing. Lots of self-shaming. Usually there's some serious people-pleasing thrown into the mix and working REALLY hard to make sure NO ONE knows that there's an empty black void which you fear will never truly be filled within you. 

The alarm clock rings... you push past the heavy frozen feeling, slap your make-up on and go FORWARD....

Been doing lots of work on ALLOWING in my own personal life these days.
Stripping back all the chaotic conditioning - deeper and deeper. The work never ends. And I don’t mean that in a complaining, low-energy way. I mean it in an expansive and beautiful way. 

The work never ends - I don’t know why we think there’s a destination where we suddenly know and are everything we “want” to be or THINK we want to be. No no my love. It doesn’t work that way. We’re in this for the long-haul. Always stepping up and meeting our true self at the gate. Over and over. And that’s a GOOD thing. But that’s a different topic for a different day.

Back to allowing.
So I’ve been seeing - or it’s being shown to me - That allowing and receiving in this life has nothing to do with laziness or sitting on your ass and expecting things to come to you.
Allowing is about open-handed trust. 

When you step into ALLOWING your...

That gnawing feeling that you just can't. 
You just can't. 

I remember sitting across from my therapist years ago and saying to her: 
"I just can't... I can't... I can't do this"

I was referring to everything. weight loss. life itself. It felt so real. The paradox of feeling like you'll die if you keep going but also feeling dead because you can't move forward. And then still pushing yourself anyway. 

Horrible. 

In that raw moment together - where I revealed to her my truest sense. My truest emotion - or the emotion that FELT truest, I felt like I was in a pool of liquid and the liquid was me. 

She didn't say much, all she said was "but you can". 

Not sure if it was because no one ever said that to me before, or if it was because I finally let my super-ego guard down and admitted to her, myself, and God how I REALLY felt. Honestly. And truly felt. 

But those three words changed me. They changed my life. The realization came over me like a wave and a...

A Major component of my recovery/healing from Complex PTSD was the experience of grief.

Grieving was an experience that I kept away from myself for many, many years. It felt safer to berate and judge and shame myself:
“I should be over this by now”
“What’s wrong with me?”
“I just need to get over it and move on”
“I don’t have time to cry about my childhood”

I didn’t know a thing about compassion.
About witnessing and holding myself.
About the sacred practice of pouring out the pain.
I didn’t know that what I truly needed was a space to grieve. I didn’t know that the grief experience which I so feared, would actually help my integrate and heal.

I had internalized the shaming messages from years of abandonment, parental betrayal, neglect, and abuse. Shaming myself kept all that pain of deep despair at bay. I preferred the more familiar pain of criticizing myself and pushing myself to keep going. I feared being...

When our bodies are balanced and we feel safe and happy, we are in a state of “regulation”.  In this place, we are not too stressed, nor are we too excited or exhausted. We are calm. We are clear. We have focus. We are creative. We are able to communicate rationally and clearly and openly.

BUT, when we experience trauma this sense of safety and balance is completely ripped away from us. It’s almost as though our soul is taken from us and what is left is only a shell.

This trauma is deeper when you’ve lived your whole life being abused and neglected by your primary caregivers. You may feel completely devoid of a sense of self – your brain has developed under chronic stress which causes your body to look out only for your survival.

Our bodies have two distinct reactions to traumatic experiences.   We can be be maxed out – unglued emotionally and physically – this looks like panic, toxic stress, anxiety and physical...