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Struggling With Guilt Over How You Reacted? This Might Help.

January 7, 2019 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

You want to be loving. You really, really do. Especially with that one person who reliably displaces their fear and frustrations onto others.

You affirm your patience. You ask for guidance. You seek solace in your beautiful, heart-led intentions to be a generous and loving human being.

But you miss your mark in their presence, and quickly hone in on hopin’, and wishin’, and thinkin’, that you woulda’, coulda’, shoulda’ done better.

Good news: Guilt is a sign that you need to prioritize self-kindness.

After a less than stellar interaction with someone whose very presence is an emotional trigger, you need love. Because if you can’t be around someone without pain attempting to do the thinking and speaking for you, you’re still reeling from the past.

To heal from the past you need high-frequency feelings pulsing through your body, mind, and spirit, like love.

Love is…self-compassion when you miss the kindness mark in the company of certain people.

You know the ones I’m talking about…

We don’t need to try to eradicate our guilt. Nope. Nadda. Not productive.

We just need to notice guilt’s priceless message: “Psst! We need some self-compassion in here, Stat!”

Love up on yourself when guilt makes itself known. Notice it and breathe into it. Acknowledge your humanness and the timeline of trauma that has a tendency to interfere with your intentions to be kind on every occasion.

And vow to try again next time. 🙏🏻

This one’s Instagram ready. Right click & Save to share:

It’s never up for debate: You are loved.

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger from Pexels

3 Things I Let Go Of In 2018

December 27, 2018 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

2018 has been a wild ride.

One of the craziest things that happened? I found out I have a sister through an Ancestry DNA kit. If you ever do one of those suckers and get an alert of a first cousin, beware: you could be involuntarily uncovering some skeletons in the familial closet!

Career-wise, things have been on the up and up: I started my own writing consulting business. It’s been really exciting to finally have found my niche, though more along the excitement lines of “I can’t believe I get paid to do this!” as opposed to, “Excuse me? Who did you say your father was??” 😂

There have been loads of emotional moments and super challenging situations which freaked me the fuck out this year. It hasn’t been easy and I haven’t succeeded in hitting the “Act In Alignment With Higher-Self” mark I’ve aimed for on every occasion (Shout out to my humanness for keeping me on my toes.) But I’ve done my best to be kind to myself and others as I’ve meandered emotionally volatile scenarios.

I’ve become heavily acquainted with the fact that you can’t be kind to other people in real ways if you’re not being kind to yourself.

Boom. Take a moment to absorb that hard-earned golden nugget of truth, on a cellular level.

I’ve been proud of my growth, frustrated with what felt like a total lack of it at times, and surprised when everything worked out better than expected in the end, even though I was full of self-doubt and scared as hell when everything was all, “What does this mean? What do I do now? Ahhhhhh!!!!!”

It hasn’t always been a pretty scene, but that’s another thing I did this year: let go of trying to adhere to an impossible mold.

I realized I wasn’t born to be agreeable and reserved, and that I’m full-out exhausted over attempting to be someone else’s version of appropriate or pretty.

Fuuuuuck thaaaaaaat. I was born to be so much more than the rigid societal standards set for women, and 2018 was the year I owned that truth.

I’ve tried to acknowledge how profound my transformation has been as often as possible. (Insight: we need to focus more time and energy on our accomplishments rather than our perceived failures. Like, pat ourselves on the back more than once for the same thing. Seriously.)

I’ve let go of beliefs, behaviors, and in some cases people who were holding me back, and every single time I’ve courageously said goodbye to something or someone I’ve been met with an incredible new experience.

I’m talking manifesting income, new friendships, and peace of mind. ❤️

2018 taught me that Letting Go is a powerful form of self-care and self-love. So in praise of using the past to prep for the year ahead and beginning 2019 in a state of gratitude, here are 3 things I said goodbye to this year:

Misguided Hope

Hope is a beautiful thing. It motivates us to keep trying and believing in the power of being ourselves. The world needs us to do this work.

Misguided hope is different from run of the mill hope. It’s more so like unrealistic expectations that consume you with the belief that maybe someday, someone who is hurting you might change, even though you’ve got a long list of events from the past proving otherwise.

This misguided hope business is distracting and unproductive. It keeps you from doing work that will help you heal and evolve, which is what the world also needs you to do, now, more than ever.

The misguided hope I let go of in 2018 was directed towards people who were unwilling to see how their own actions were causing their own suffering and the suffering of others. They weren’t without options, just comfortable in their own discomfort. Though I cared for them deeply, I realized after a steady flow of feeling shitty in their presence that their behaviors were destructive to my well-being, and it was time to step back from hoping that the next time around, things would be different.

Letting go of the hope that one day I could have a relationship with them in the absence of aggression, judgment, and resentment, was one of the greatest gifts I gave myself in 2018. It opened up space in my life for healthy new relationships to form, with others and myself, and honed my radar so I could easily spot dysfunctional behaviors moving forward, and act accordingly, ie, not enable them.

Now my hope for those who suffer is that they will one day find peace, not for me, but for themselves. The mantra I use, which I snagged from a Pema Chodron book, goes:

May they experience peace and the cause of peace.

It’s a beautiful thing to contemplate and affirm because it’s all about extending compassion for those who are suffering from a safe distance. It’s productive hope, that the road to peace will bring them a greater understanding of their own contributions to their own suffering, so they can one day heal, not for me, but for themselves.

Friendships

There are some friendships we hold onto because of the quality of the connection, and some we hold onto because of reasons that don’t make a lot of sense. You’ve known someone a long time? Cool, doesn’t mean you should be keeping up a relationship if it’s destructive to your wellbeing.

As a follow-up to releasing misguided hope from the docket, I let go of quite a few friendships this year.

Some ceremoniously and from within, ie, without having a conversation with anyone, but rather, a conversation with myself, affirming my need to cease communications. Others took a bit more energy, like the ending of a 25-year friendship, which up until this year I hadn’t been willing to acknowledge was stifling my ability to grow.

I realized I had knighted myself as eternally obligated to keep communicating with someone in the absence of what a connection requires to exist: Trust.

Sure I’d known her a long time, but when I really dug into the dysfunctional dynamic we had I realized I couldn’t rely on her to be kind to me. It was a friendship marred by the pain and resentment of the past, and trying to get it to work was just a destructive game of enabling.

I discovered the courage to speak my truth without shame during the process of this friendship coming to a close. Though it was really upsetting when my attempts to communicate were met with aggression and manipulation, I don’t regret any of it. I am immensely proud of what I accomplished by expressing myself. It was a powerful boost to my confidence, to command and stand firm on my wellness needs in the presence of aggression and my own fears over what people might say or think about me.

Fearing Fruit

In my early 20s, the low carb diet came into play and I was all over it. I axed all forms of sugar, did my best to cut out bread (Hard because I love carbs: carbs, carbs, carbs) and added no-sugar, chemically laden desserts and a bevy of meats and cheeses to my plate on the regular. Barf and ouch to my arteries and health as a whole over those choices.

While I still toyed with bread on occasion because of my aforementioned love affair with gluten, my fear of sugar was intense and kept me far away from the fruit section of the grocery store for over 15 years.

I am no stranger to eating disorders and believed the headlines when they said sugar made you fat. My fear lasted until 2018, when I realized that fruit isn’t the problem, it’s the chemicals in the foods we eat and the viruses in our bodies that are.

Letting go of the belief that I shouldn’t eat fruit has been a huge contributor to 2018 being such a great year for me health-wise.

I eat a lot of it now, every single day, and as a newly anointed size 2 who has healed from chronic pain and severe anxiety and depression, I am proof that it doesn’t get you fat or cause illness – it heals your body.

While I still experience some anxiety and depression symptoms on occasion, I’m no longer on prescription medication for it and when symptoms heighten I return to focusing on adding more plant-based foods to my diet, specifically fruit, and things start to improve.

Fruit is amazing. Please don’t be afraid of it! To learn more about how I healed myself by eating it, check out this post.

I let go of so much more in 2018…

I could keep churning out paragraphs about what I released from my life this past year, but another thing I let go of stops me: trying to accomplish too much.

I’ve learned over and over again that productivity does not equal self-worth.

My goal in life is to feel good, and I know that a less is more mentality is more likely to get me there than a maxed out to-do list kind of lifestyle will. Been there, barely functioned doing that!

Take some time to reflect over the next few days.

There is value in reviewing the highs and lows of the year that just passed. Acknowledging your accomplishments and taking note of what you let go of is a beautiful way to start and plan for 2019.

Right now, I’m taking what I’ve learned in 2018 and using it not only to write but to create goals for the year ahead via my desire map planner. (What’s a desire map planner? Think goals with soul, rather than focusing solely on to-do lists. Click here to find out more.)

I hope you have a great 2019 and want to help you start it off on a growth-centric note. Which is why I’m sending out a brand new offering to my readers to start the new year. 🎉

It’s called Therapist Recommended Books to Help You Heal, with, you guessed it, books my therapist recommended.

These books have changed my life in major ways, and I guarantee they will change your life, too. You likely have never heard of them because they aren’t lining the shelves of bookstores. But that’s not because they aren’t incredible resources.

Find out what I mean by entering your name and email here: You’ll get the list delivered to your email January 1st.

Happy New Year to you, and thanks for reading! I hope 2019 brings some amazing experiences your way and that I get the chance to connect with you!

You are loved,

Image via Rakicevic Nenad

The Downside of being a turtle (aka retreating into your shell when life gets scary)

December 5, 2018 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

My therapist says I’m like a turtle. I don’t mind her claim. I like turtles and had a few of them as pets growing up. Plus, I know she’s not referring to my overall look, she’s talking about how I retreat into my shell when the world gets a little too scary for me.

Sometimes heaven is not dealing with people. It’s airplane mode when I’m not on a plane, and noise canceling headphones all day long. It’s a strategic disengagement with the alerts and noise so I can concentrate on what’s important, which for me is keeping my head clear so I can be in an optimal state to create, help my clients help others, and make decisions in alignment with my higher self.

Getting my turtle on isn’t the same as disengaging in the name of progress. Turtling (I am hella nervous to google that in case it’s some weird sex thing and I get a ton of porn pop-ups) is a willful retraction from the world driven by fear. It’s fuelled by an aspect of my personality, established in an effort to keep me safe that says, “The world and the people in it might hurt you, so you need to retreat.”

Being a turtle can be dangerous because it keeps us from contributing beautiful bits of ourselves to the world (and the world NEEDS us to be us.)

My immediate goal is to stop being a turtle. I am majorly motivated to change right now. I’m in the midst of doing my damnedest to no longer allow my choices to be dictated by fear, particularly as the countdown to Christmas begins, which I wrote about in this post.

We can’t cut ties with fear. It will ALWAYS be there, prodding us to do or not do things, which means the most productive thing we can do is create a dialogue with it if we’ve never had one, or transform the current dialogue, so we can stop allowing it to convince us to stop participating in life.

Maybe you can relate to me and my turtle issues. If you can, you might find the following plan of non-attack useful the next time fear tells you to retreat into your shell:

 1 – Say hey. I’ve always denied fear’s existence, like it wasn’t OK to say, Whattup? What do you want? I’d get wasted instead of facing my feelings, and be inundated with fear for days.

Yeah, that wasn’t fun. I’m really grateful those days are over because they were B.R.U.T.A.L. But that doesn’t mean I currently live without fear. I still experience it, chattering away at me every day of my life, telling me to do stuff that won’t help me, and not do stuff that will.

After years of trying to outrun it, I now make a conscious effort to engage with fear in a non-aggressive way. I do my best to be patient as it shares its woes because I know from experience the more aggressive and dismissive I am, the more it’s going to pressure me to act on its super shitty advice. No thanks, fear, but I’ll hear you out, out of respect for your power.

 2 – Acknowledge its power. Speaking of power, guess what has the ability to constrict your breathing, give you explosive diarrhea, convince you to pass on incredible opportunities, and emotionally regress to your 10-year-old self? Fear.

Fear is powerful. Respect, witness, and acknowledge it. You do that by noticing when it starts coursing through your body instead of trying to outrun it by getting ragey, overspending, or chugging wine and posting regrettable Facebook pictures/updates (Yeesh, right? Been there, done that. 😳)

There is a tool we all possess that can help us. We tend to minimize it because it seems too good to be true and therefore, we assume it doesn’t work. Yet it has the power to help us process strong emotions instead of allowing them to consume us and dictate our choices.

It’s your breath! Breathing, like a gluten, soy, and corn-free cookie that tastes good, is no fucking joke. And It’s nuts not to use it because it’s free and doesn’t leave you filled with regret. So utilize your breath! (Check out this post from my resource page that offers some breathing methods I use.)

 3 – See it as separate. We blend with fear, almost as much as some people attempt to blend away their nose holes via contouring. (If you want a laugh, check out this YouTube video about contouring by Sailor J. Unless you’re easily offended.)

We don’t see fear as separate from us, but rather, as who and all that we are. We proclaim it to be our master: “Here you go, Fear: the key to my life, even though you have a shitty track record.”

Here’s the deal: Fear isn’t you, it’s an aspect of who you are.

And who you are is human, which means you are one of many other humans on the planet who are equally as skilled at letting fear blend and bully away their power. Therefore, you are not alone in your struggle.

I’m creating a new wellness offering for my readers with book recommendations my therapist gave me. I’ll be sending it out when it’s done (by January 1st! 🎉) because there’s a book in it that does an amazing job of helping you unblend with fear. It’s a life-altering practice and I rely on it heavily in my life. Enter your first name and email here and I’ll be sure to send it to you.

Update: I just gave myself the blinks googling “turtling” and looks like I’m out of the woods because there’s nothing dirty popping up in my search results. Phew.

My goal is to lay off being a turtle and stay more engaged with my feelings, even the ones I don’t enjoy, like fear.

I’m not saying I’m going to do it perfectly, but with the insights I shared with you today reminding me that I can do this, I think I’m in a good position to make some progress when it comes to redirecting my penchant for getting my turtle on.

I hope what I’ve shared might help you in some way. It’s not always easy to share my struggles, but the support I get from readers like you makes it worth the effort. ❤️

Feel free to share your thoughts with me in the comments. You are loved.

A Need Over Want Christmas

November 23, 2018 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

A Need Over Want Christmas - Must Love Crows Christmas is coming, and every year at this time for as long as I can remember, I’ve put a lot of energy into answering the question, “What do I want for Christmas?”

The same routine has played out until as recently as last year. Want a new jacket, even though you already have 4? New boots even though you already have 3 pairs you barely wear? Locate desired items via greed frenzied finger scrolling on cell phone, add to your list, and they shall soon be yours, at which point you’ll feel better for a little bit. That is until you don’t again.

Greed in all its grotesque forms is something I feel driven to separate myself from these days. I find the more I continue to heal myself and set standards and boundaries in the name of wellness, the less willing I am to continue to do things the same tired way.

Wanting all the time is exhausting work. I’m grateful to now be aware of where the greedy impulses that rise up within me, telling me to buy this or order that, come from. They are the result of one aspect of my personality, formed as a result of trauma, telling me, “Who you are isn’t acceptable. You need this stuff so you can convince other people and yourself that you’re not as shitty as you actually are.”

Heavy, yes. But our struggles don’t cease because there’s Christmas music playing on the radio.

Some dysfunctional beliefs are fueling the incessant wanting I’ve worked diligently to redirect in recent years, but never going without for the majority of my life has also been a catalyst. I recall a lot of money being given in lieu of love, and very few occasions in which I didn’t get what I wanted, save for the Cat-ra doll fiasco of Christmas ’86 (Damn it, mother! I said She-Ra!)

Jokes aside, I wasn’t prone to freaking out when I didn’t get what I wanted. Unlike the friend who threw an epic tantrum in the Vancouver Pacific Center Mall over an unmet desire for a kick-ass Esprit jacket in the mid-90s, I knew when to let things go in the “Mom, can I get this?” department. Sure, I was greedy – that’s what happens when kids are given what they want all the time – I just understood that freaking out over not getting what I wanted wouldn’t get me what I wanted.

I didn’t push the boundaries, at least not directly. I knew there were certain things I could ask for and get, and I knew when to stop asking. I also knew that a time would come when it would be safe to start asking again, at which point I’d be able to acquire something new that would make me feel good for a bit.

Though this cycle of consumerism felt comforting at the time, it was anything but.

I had zero understanding of how damaging the process of self-soothing through stuff could be, or that it would manifest into something so destructive in my 20s and 30s. But at the time it was a huge contributor to me being able to experience the blips of faux-happiness I craved, so I was all in on keeping it going.

As gag-reflex inducing as it is to admit, the same cycle has played out in recent years. Want something, get it; want more, get it. And I’m officially over it.

This Christmas, I’m pulling the plug on wanting and focusing on what I need.

Right off the bat, I think of my shoulders. They could use a break from straps being dug into them after 10 minutes of wearing a bra which, if it could speak would say, “Your boobs are shaped wrong. Let me try to fix them while simultaneously constricting your breathing, Mmmm K?”

That said, a new bra would be really nice. But “Would be nice” sounds like a want, not a need. Hmmm.

But if I consider that me being well, both mentally and physically, isn’t a want, it’s a need, then the acquirement of something that doesn’t attempt to shove my boobs up to my chin and make me feel like I’m in the midst of cardiac arrest when I wear it definitely errs on the side of need.

All that said, my Christmas list is going to be minimal this year. I’m not going to get frenzied trying to populate a list of unrequired items, and I won’t drain myself by allowing the part of me that’s a work in progress to manipulate me into thinking or doing otherwise.

Incessantly wanting things is exhausting. Life is much more pleasant when we let go of trying to constantly acquire stuff we don’t need.

Maybe you can relate. Maybe you’re prone to spending a lot of time scrolling on your phone this time of year, wondering what to tell your partner to get you, and you can’t help but acknowledge how frantic, overwhelmed, and uncomfortable you feel when you do.

Maybe you notice your kids doing the same thing. Maybe their cell-phone-stoned faces from excessive website scrolling disturb you. And maybe you realize that whatever overpriced item they’re jacked up about getting is going to end up in a landfill or thrift store in 1–6 months, which makes you want to throw up your grande peppermint mocha.

Maybe you’re feeling what I now feel about the process of wanting during the Christmas season: “This is gross. Time to get serious about stopping the cycle of greed I’m contributing to.”

If that’s the case, let’s both commit to adding the following item to the top of our lists. It doesn’t cost a thing or require shipping, which if you’re in Canada is a really good thing because we are dealing with the aftermath of one hell of a postal strike:

“Be grateful for what you have.”

Less wanting = lighter. Lighter is good.

Why You Need To Stop Pressing The Like Button

November 9, 2018 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

Many times I’ve chatted with friends who have disclosed how uncomfortable a comment someone left on their social media post made them feel, only to see them turn around and show approval for the comment by liking it.

I have immense love and respect for every single one of my friends, and also for you, the beautiful human reading this post, which is why I feel the need to let you know how important it is to acknowledge the detrimental habit of offering immediate approval of shitty comments left on your social feeds.

You might be thinking, whatever, who cares, it’s social media, turn it off or ignore it. To that I say social media is the prime source of connection and collaboration these days. It’s a place where we come together and create new empowering views – where we learn and evolve as human beings, together as a community. Which is why it’s a powerful place to set boundaries and standards for how we wish to be treated.

Forgoing the need to please people who leave passive aggressive or inappropriate comments on your personal posts is hella important.

Even more so is not letting your desire to be liked by everyone come before calling out people when they belittle, minimize, or generally just act like ego maniacs on social media.

I’m not asking you to get busy figuring out a way to school a person who left a shitty comment. I mean ideally, a conversation would be great, so that you could set a boundary and let them know you’re not OK with what they’re up to. But that often leads to us putting a lot of effort into trying to communicate with people who just want to argue all the ways in which you’re irrational when you assert yourself. That’s exhausting and unproductive work. Who needs that?

Suffice it to say, some folks aren’t up for turning a conversation into a chance to grow, which is why I say, sometimes it’s best to not communicate with them and just stick to not pressing the like button.

The best way to get people to question their unnecessary and unsupportive comments on your posts is to stop liking their comments.

You don’t need to put out the effort to ensure everyone who contributes their opinion to your social media feed is comfortable having done so. You don’t need to try to make something denigrating acceptable. As Clarissa Pinkola Estes speaks of in her book, Women Who Run with the Wolves,

“This early training to “be nice” causes women to override their intuitions.”

We need to unlearn our training. If someone posts something unsupportive or rude or misogynistic, let them be responsible for it.

Let them wonder why you liked the comments that showed support, but not theirs;

Let them get confused over why you deleted their comment or sent them a message letting them know it was appropriate;

Let the commenters question their choices and live with their feelings that stem from the inquiry process.

Until you’re ready to insta-delete comments posted to serve the commenter and minimize you, or confront the instigator (’cause let’s be real, that’s what they’re doing: instigating) stop using the like button so much, ok?

I’m specifically talking to the ladies.

We do this all the time, and we are contributing to pervasive ignorance and the diminishment of our wellbeing when we do it. Therefore, we are contributing to the denigration of society. Therefore, we need to stop.

I care about you and want you to be empowered. When you stop showing support for unsupportive comments, you not only empower yourself, you empower others women, too.

So make a conscious effort to put an end to normalizing the acceptance of shitty online behavior, OK?

Let’s commit to doing better, here and now, so we can do better later and in other departments of our lives.

Because acts of empowerment enable more acts of empowerment.

Summary: If someone leaves a shitty comment, keep your fingers away from the like button. And don’t be shy about using the delete button, either. 😳

You are loved. Happy weekend. That is all.

Clarity On Why You Feel Terrible in 4 Steps

November 1, 2018 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

Yesterday I watched an excessive amount of TV. By excessive, I mean approximately 2 hours while I caught up on some housekeeping.

I usually listen to music when I’m doing long ignored dishes and folding long ignored laundry. I’ve been purposely putting TV on the back burner for a while now. I made a commitment to take it off my priority list because I know when I’m away from it, specifically certain shows that are known peace disrupters for me, I have a clearer mind to work, write, and exist with.

Despite that knowing, I gave my time and energy to the tube for a bit and it felt super weird. By weird I mean not great, as in kind of gross, which strangely enough, made me kind of happy.

I was happy that I so clearly felt, through undeniable alerts from my body and mind, that the kind of TV I was consuming was dragging me down.

It felt like I was in a time warp, and not because so many people are wearing the clothes I used to wear in high school on TV these days. What I was watching, and the way it felt to watch it felt like a major backstep on all the steps forward I’ve made in my emotional evolvement.

I am not anti-TV. I am pro-consciousness and pro being mindful of what we are inundating our psyches with entertainment wise. I love a good documentary (Have you seen RBG?) and some TV shows (The Good Doctor = 👏) but I am very aware that Being Aware of what we are consuming and Why is the key to our mental health remaining in good standing.

Otherwise, our wellness reserves get eaten up by content that leaves us overloaded with uneasiness, and we have a difficult time associating it with our viewing choices because we’re so disconnected from ourselves from watching emotionally denigrating shows.

And guess what we are prone to doing when we feel gross and don’t know why? Blame other people for why we feel shitty.

That said, here’s a from the heart suggestion, for the next time you feel unsettled and can’t pinpoint why: Take a look at the things you’ve been focusing your attention on in the very recent past, specifically the forms of entertainment/escapism you’ve been lambasting yourself with.

Here’s a 4 step process to follow:

Step 1 – If you’re feeling super disconnected from how and why you feel uneasy, give yourself a 48-hour technology break.

Step 2 – Write about how you feel after the tech break, then follow up by watching a show or scrolling a website that is known to get your adrenaline pumping.

Step 3 – Write about how you feel.

Step 4 – Compare notes. Welcome clarity.

Even though we may be in the know about what it takes to be well, sometimes we get caught up in activities that jack up our adrenaline and confuse the temporary high with happiness.

We do this not because we’re stupid, but because we’re human, which means sometimes we need to refresh our clarity on how the messages we are choosing to inundate ourselves with make us feel.

There are certain things that lift up our minds and hearts, and certain things that shut down our loving and joyful nature. This is me, reminding you to check in with yourself, and take note of what you’re choosing to put your energy into and how it’s affecting you.

There is no shame in feeling the need to hit refresh for clarity. You’re not alone: I did it yesterday. 🙂