Healing takes time. It is going to take your own energy and attention -no one else can do this for you, but they can walk with you and help you see differently and read the map. There is a difference between having an agenda and being curious. It’s good to have the driving urge from within to transform your life. But once that driving urge has propelled you into movement, it needs to back off and stop trying to drive the bus. It can keep propelling the bus, but it’s not the b

I think people waste a whole lot of time and money mucking around trying to “fix” the outward manifestation of the thing, like the symptom, instead of looking underneath at what the body is trying to say. If I can digress for a moment… I worked with a dog trainer in Toronto after we adopted our wild, Northern Canadian dog who is a solid, 75 pounds of furry intensity. Our dog is a dog’s dog - as in, he reads dogs and responds to dogs, not necessarily to people. When we first g

What you believe about yourself and what you make your life mean is contextualized within your own life. There are certain narratives that will help you to heal now by bringing in interpretations - meanings - of your life events that are missing for you. So when you are presented with an alternative narrative to the one you have long held, ask yourself, did it help you get free from belief systems and ways of being that were holding you stuck all while being harmful to no o

Measuring your progress by other peoples’ path will almost always result in you feeling smug or shitty. Neither is helpful. Timelines in life really only work retrospectively, as in, you see where all of this got you after you’ve gotten there. Some of us walk around carrying the feeling that there is some kind of preordained goal that needs to be reached. There isn’t, in my opinion. Yes, sure, ride that feeling of “this is meant to be.” I understand that. But don’t think ther

Be wary of someone’s proposed “fix” to your struggle if it seems too easy. This stuff takes time. It takes effort. It can be interesting, as in, it doesn't always have to be an awful slog, but it's not comfortable. A fix is like a scaffolding - someone else can come and install it for you, and it can help you do a certain thing in your life, like be in less pain in your neck. But unless you get right in there and pay kind attention to learning what is going on underneath, you

Sometimes you look at someone you’ve known for a long time and notice that they look a lot happier than they used to. You wonder what it is that they did for themselves. And I’m here to say, just because someone did their journey to greater wholeness in a particular way and got deeply in touch with their own juicy life doesn’t mean that that journey will be the right one for you. There is a way forward for you. There is a journey that will be right for you. Find help. Ask que

Shame is an amazing tool for controlling others. As the recipient of this kind of control, shame is devastating to carry around and will hamstring you at every possible moment. Brene Brown’s work is a great place to start for support with this part of the journey. You are ok. You are here. You have the right to be here in the exact body that you have because that is what is. Here you are. In this body. Shame would have you believe that you are fundamentally flawed with no pos

The meaning making that I speak of in the previous section is quite conscious. What I speak of in this section is a different animal, at least to me, in that it seems to happen on a more subconscious or unconscious level: we do it without knowing we are doing it, or we do it without choosing to do it. We end up thinking that we are just that way, inherently, whatever that way is. Many people spend years going in circles with their healing. They’re looking for why they struggl

Humans are meaning makers. But before people set out on their healing journey or their spiritual journey, I’d love it if they could appreciate the genuine dangers of making everything they see in the world and everything that happens in their life mean something. I am speaking here of meaning that we make on a very conscious level: delving into tarot cards or oracles, animal or plant symbolism, looking back at our lives and seeing patterns... I feel compelled to say these thi

Committing to a healing journey, or to an alternative spiritual path can make you, at least at first, feel “better than". We might think, deep down, “I'm better than all these other people because I've chosen this spiritual path, instead of following a religion that has tons of rules and dogma, or instead of floundering around haphazard in the world of people who don't have a spiritual practice.” Often people will have a rejection reaction towards a particular other spiritual