Whenever you hear the phrase Letting Go, or something remotely close to that, do you start singing the Frozen theme song in your head?! Gosh, that song just plays on repeat for me once I have it in my head!
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What really has me sitting in awe though is the resilience that little Maddie showed despite all the ruckus. She was so upset that she was ‘trying so hard, amidst distractions,’ but she was not giving up. No matter how loud the noise, it wasn’t deterring her from wanting to walk right back into it, simply to jump rope.
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I was on a run today and during the run I had an urge to head towards the water. I turned around at the next intersection and began running along the path headed towards the river. As I was running, I had a flashback to a few years ago because of a song that came on.
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I recently went through a painful experience, so I felt called to share how I got through this temporary ‘turbulence.’ In a nutshell, hurtful words were said to me by someone I knew who turns out had very strong projections and opinions about me.
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I started laughing at myself recently because it was just one of those days where I was feeling joyful one moment, sad the next. One moment I was super calm, then I received an email that sent my mind a racing. On this same day, I felt deeply connected to myself and clear on my life vision, and then by the afternoon I started questioning my career choices because of a text I received. All in one day!
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Last week Lisa, my co-founder at BluWave Wellbeing, and I went up to Traverse City, MI for a getaway. We had gotten into a conversation a few weeks back about how we both needed a change of scenery. We love to vacation and explore new places, so physical distancing has had us craving a getaway considering we haven’t been able to leave town for the last few months.
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I don’t know about you but some days I feel ‘Zoomed out,’ and I know I’m not the only one. On a weekly basis, I go from hour to hour on Zoom calls and I just feel exhausted.
I have also found myself more easily distracted during these video calls, or multi-tasking a little more than I should. Either my text messages are popping up right in front of me on my computer or I find myself being nosey checking out people's homes in their background. Worse yet, when I’m taking my call from home and the washer finishes, I'm turning off my camera to go put the clothes in the dryer - all while ‘trying’ to listen in on the call. Oye!
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Love Wins.
This phrase has stuck with me since I was in college. I attended a non-denominational church when I lived in Grand Rapids, MI and they handed out Love Wins stickers. It was a megachurch, so they were all over town, and this was what I would call their mantra.
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Hi lovely people! My name’s Emma and I’m so grateful to be a guest on the Something Beautiful blog in honor of Mental Health Awareness month.
Recently, I said the words that changed everything for me...”I need help.” My struggles seemed so insurmountable. I had lost sight of my values and what I was passionate about. I was NOT seeing the light at the end of the tunnel…AT ALL.
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I remember the night I fell in love with storytelling: reclined on a plush La-Z-boy, elbows deep in a box of Cheez-its, captivated by the suburban lives of Kevin Arnold and Winnie Cooper - the young lovers on the sitcom, The Wonder Years.
Long touted as a “mindless” hobby, television viewing is ridiculed for stealing time from seemingly more “productive” activities, but for me, television was the gate-way to a world of fiction. To made up lands of teenage drama and problems far greater than my own. The Wonder Years was my escape.
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When I was a kid, I remember being pretty sensitive. I was relatively popular in school, but went through phases of being incredibly shy and straddling the line that separated the “cool” kids from the others. One thing that sticks out more vividly than anything else though was the need to feel included. I wanted the validation that people liked me, and when they didn’t or made fun of me, it was truly crushing to my emotional state.
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Suffocating. Having the literal and figurative life sucked out of me. That is what I was feeling in late fall of 2017.
My husband and I had just made the difficult decision to move back "home" to Michigan from out west over the summer with our two young daughters, leaving behind his older children from his first marriage, which was a huge stressor all on it's own. We struggled with that, trying to find our new normal. My husband was much more vocal about his unhappiness than I was because I was in the mindset that it was where we needed to be "right now." We wanted our little ones to give this new life a fair shot, and how could they if all they saw were their parents being miserable? His sadness still weighed heavy on me though.
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I’ve been practicing yoga for 10 years - it’s been a huge part of my life and I’ve always been attracted to a more holistic lifestyle. Yoga has been one of the ways I’ve been able to manage depression and anxiety, from restorative to vinyasa I always find ease during and after my practice. When I go through rough transitions - yoga is there for me and has been for years. The practice gives me a safe space to heal, flow through my emotions, and release what is no longer serving me.
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This morning I was unexpectedly overcome with emotion.
How synchronistic for this to come the day before the mental health challenge starts. Coincidence, I think not. Synchronicity, yes indeed.
This emotion has been so strong, that I’m currently being overcome with a feeling that I need to be vulnerable, right here, right now, in this very instance with all of you. Hence, I write this blog post that was so not in the cards to get written today. I chose to bow in surrender to this intuitive guidance because I know it’s what creates the magic of life, and I’ve been telling myself to slow down so I can actually feel into this intuition (I couldn’t turn it away now!).
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I remember the nights when I couldn’t fall asleep because my mind was constantly racing and fretting about the long to-do list. I would finally fall asleep for a few hours, but be woken up in the middle of the night because I somehow remembered something else I needed to add to it. This was happening so often I started sleeping with paper and a pen next to my bed so I could scribble down these thoughts because I ended up getting even more anxious thinking that I wouldn’t remember to add this to my list in the morning.
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I was recently in conversation with a new friend who had come into my life and I was telling them about a recent workshop I’d attended. The workshop really resonated with me in a deep way and I felt some shifting happening in my heart around a block I’ve had, so I I was so excited to tell this new friend about my experience and some of the feelings and revelations I felt during the workshop. As we began talking, it led us down a path of discussing my lifestyle choices. What happened next caught me by surprise and left me feeling some sadness, anger, and defensiveness.
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I’ve been working on a 2018 reflection and realizing this wasn’t as easy to write as I thought it would be.
You see, this year was full of so much magic, adventure and exploration, new friendships, lessons, heartache, growth, joy, and healing. It was a year of change and new beginnings. 2018 was such a powerful year for me in so many ways, that I’m still processing the experiences that took place (I already have tears in my eyes and I’ve only written 3 sentences).
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My cousin and I spoiled ourselves silly and had a full day of spa services over the Christmas holiday! It was a Christmas gift to ourselves and it was “da bomb!”
We both left the spa saying how needed it was and how great we felt (ahhh..bliss). I may have even told the masseuse, while in my zen-like state on the massage table, I was moving into the spa so I could have a massage everyday (at the time it sounded cool).
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I’ve been in a bit of a writer’s rut recently and it hasn’t felt great. Up until the last two months, I’d been journaling religiously everyday and writing blog posts. Then poof…the creative juices disappeared out of thin air. I would sit with my hands on the keyboard, staring at the blank Word document, waiting for any letter(s) to show up on the screen. I would tap my fingers on the keyboard thinking this would help, but still nothing.
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