I don’t know how to be alive & not be grieving. Everything that was & is no longer. All the things that will never be. The longing for new possibilities. How to take it all in. How to let it go. Exquisite ache. I don’t know how to be alive & not be grateful.

Grief is our default response when love is taken away, which is actually really beautiful. We are so ridiculously lucky to experience any sort of love in the first place, and grief will always remind you of that.

What am I asking of the other that I am not addressing myself? I suspect that all of us have a sneaking suspicion that we are deferring this question, this responsibility, and have done so for a long time.~James Hollis, Living an Examined Life

Real changes take time. They require us to catch ourselves not just in the conscious awareness of our patterning but in thousands (truly thousands) of moments where that patterning plays out. An incredible stamina needs to develop for awareness, self-compassion & patience.

Trust your soul, yes. But the other part of that is to let your ego to be wildly disappointed.

claire You can’t love something you can’t look at. Looking at the frightening parts of yourself is a powerful act of loving and trusting in yourself. It’s letting curiosity take the reigns from fear and self-loathing for a moment.

Be the kind of person that your kids would look up to, if you weren’t their parent.

I think it's quite threatening for the average psyche to entertain the idea that others' good intentions are not enough to protect us from being wounded (or even traumatized) when we're vulnerable. It makes the world feel chaotic and scary. Which it is. Easier to have a villain.

For many, the default is ‘If I messed up I am bad! I must prove I did not mess up because I am not (and cannot be) bad!’ This mindset makes even recognizing our mistakes, never mind working with them, nearly impossible.

Looking through my planner and laughing at how different life is as a mother... I just very sincerely wrote "take a shower" down as one of my goals for the day and there's a strong possibility I'm setting the bar too high.

I did, in fact, set the bar too high. Today's the day though. I can feel it. Heck, I can smell it.

Ego resigns, controls, and criticizes. Spirit surrenders, volunteers, and cheers.

How different would your life look if you started to really pay attention and only plant seeds in the places where things are able to grow?

Whenever I feel old I just think about how if I died tomorrow everyone would say “Oh my God, she was so young!” I’ll know I’m old when I get to “Well at least she lived a good life”.

A seeming catch-22 of life: Facing very difficult things feels completely impossible and overwhelming but reducing the feeling of overwhelm in your life only happens by turning and facing and conquering the difficult things.