We usually avoid connecting with our shadow-selves, the parts of us that have been rejected so we have learned to do the same. We keep unexpressed pain, anger, sadness somewhere unseen within us, living in darkness, numbed.

Rest is a spiritual practice. We use it to come back into ourselves, to refocus, to recharge, to ground. This time in stillness is just as sacred as the life-force energy feeding our passions. Without it, we aren’t in our wholeness, our power to create the life we dream of, to fulfill our purpose.

If the world didn’t need you, you wouldn’t be in it.

Be grateful for your triggers, they point where you are not free.

I have not slept with anyone for the better part of a year at this point. I wrote off casual sex after getting off of medication and reconnecting with myself and my emotions 2+ years ago, and stopped sleeping with potential romantic partners too soon after dating a particularly heinous one last year.

ROUTINE. It often provides the context to our lives, the underlying current carrying us through our days, the calming dependability needed to maintain sanity in a world of chaos. Because it is usually a constant for us, be it stronger in some weeks and weaker in others, we can lose sight of the deeper purpose it provides us in our lives, the emotional and physical implications it supports us with.

To me, the Catholic Church and the cathedrals erected in its honor represent tradition. The old world. A preservation of a period in time that emphasized things like morality, empathy, and a connection to a power higher than ourselves. Despite yesterday's ravaging of such a profound symbol, the Notre Dame still stands. Yes, her beautiful mosaic glass is now charred black, her spire gone. But she will rise from her ashes. She will be rebuilt. And just as Paris has preserved the same customs it has practiced for centuries, the tradition will live on, stronger still.

Abandonment wounds are perhaps the deepest and most unseen influences that lie within us. They are unseen because it is more difficult to notice what wasn't there versus what was in our early lives. Abandonment wounds penetrate into virtually all areas of our realities spanning everywhere from our relationships with others to our relationship with ourselves.

What is often misunderstood about this transit, is that it is a RECOURSE. Saturn will come into our lives and put us back on the path of our purpose, sometimes mercilessly. If we are living very out of line with this, the transit will be harder. If we resist, the transit will be harder. So what can we do during this time of potent and painful transformation?

Just as a fish doesn’t know it’s in water, often times we ourselves don’t know we inhabit dysfunctional living environments, especially when we are born into them. Up until I was 26 years old, this was the case with me.

Shadow work is the act of sitting with your self in your entirety, in the painful feelings we otherwise run from and numb out in acts of avoidance, with addictions like unhealthy relationships, food, shopping, alcohol, social media.

Check, check, aaaaand check. I've definitely used all of these things to avoid feeling, to avoid intimacy with myself, in acts of self-abandonment. Understanding that addiction can take many forms with the common thread being an avoidance of experiencing difficult emotions, using these things as essential painkillers, is one of the first steps you can take to breaking cycles of self-betrayal. Which one of these is your most-used vice?

What can you do to start feeling better today? I’m often asked about the tools I’ve found along my path that help to improve my mental health and keep it in a positive state.

I've been giving a lot of thought to honesty lately. I learned about a concept (and book) called "radical honesty" in a Duncan Trussell podcast with Chris Ryan a year or two back and realized it was exactly what I had been practicing. Radical, unwavering, sometimes incredibly painful honesty with myself and others.

I often talk about toxicity in our lives in the context of people, environments, etc. But what if the toxicity is coming from you? What if you are the toxic source in your own life? Before I started really doing my work, I was a horribly toxic person, both in my own life and in the lives of women that considered me a friend. It ended up costing me old friendships, integrity, karma, and regret I still wrestle with to this day.

What does it mean to be a part of the “mental health community”? My initial impetus for going public with my story was to help other women and men suffering in the way I have, people searching for ways to help themselves, who want, as I did, to feel better. What I have found since tapping into the “mental health community” is something far graver than what I had anticipated.

Can you live an entire life without ever knowing who you truly are? This is a question I’ve asked myself a few times this week. My life today looks absolutely nothing like my life last year, and last year’s looked nothing like my life before I got off medication in New York. I almost don’t recognize myself anymore, and living as an observer in my own life lately has been a trip to say the least. I attribute these radical positive shifts to the work I’ve done on myself, which I will explain.

and like the moon,

she died in phases,

killing parts of herself to rise anew.

“She finally surrendered to the Flow when she realized that her deepest desires and dreams were simply memories from the future.” -Loren Trlin

I learned about the concept of resistance in Steven Pressfield's The War of Art (which I'll never be able to recommend enough to anyone) and had since been on a quest to understand what it actually is, where it grows from within me, what exactly the force is that prevents me from creating what I dream about most.