Wellness Blog
As of January 15th, my office will have a new location! I will be relocating my office to 6055 E Burnside Street (inside Colour on Burnside).
The new location has easy access of I-84 and offers much easier street parking!
I’m very excited to get the space ready in the next few weeks and to start seeing clients there very soon! I will have Saturday access and am possibly going to offer appointments 1-2 Saturdays a month.
To celebrate, I’m offering you 25% off your next BodyTalk session when you schedule by the end of February! Call me at 503-347-0258 to book today!
Today’s post is another transparent and vulnerable one for me. As my husband continues to deal with a great deal of pain after we were rear-ended last month, I have been busy driving him to a wide variety of appointments and taking care of him. And being a care giver definitely isn’t an easy task. The number of times I have found myself in tears or feeling overwhelmed during the past few weeks has been quite a large number.
This week I was planning to go to one of my regular networking groups for a holiday luncheon but when yesterday rolled around, I decided not to go. The reason was quite simple… I have been in a very emotional and overwhelmed space of late and as an introvert, it is even harder for me to go out in a group of people who are happily celebrating the holidays and pretend that I am cheerful.
So I gave myself permission to stay home and do what felt more nurturing for me. If I went, I would have felt like I had to put a smile on my face and pretend that all was ok with me when in reality, right now is a very difficult time for my husband and I. I really dislike how pretending to be happy and ok feels because it is NOT real and I feel like a fraud.
I’m sharing this in my post because I know the holidays can bring up a wide range of emotions for many of us. We have expectations from family and friends about how we are “supposed to” show up to gatherings and events and be filled with holiday cheer. But the reality is sometimes we are going through a hard time and we don’t want to go be around a bunch of cheerful, happy people and put a fake smile on our faces.
I support you in making the right choice for yourself. Whether that is choosing to not go to a gathering or activity you don’t feel up for or going and being honest and transparent that everything is not perfectly cheerful and great in our world, do what feels right to YOU. Don’t feel pressured by anyone else to meet their expectations or to pretend that just because it is Christmas that you are in a cheery holiday mood.
This, my friends, is my holiday gift to you. Be true to yourself and your needs first and foremost and give yourself permission to feel sad or down if that is how you are feeling this holiday.
November was not an easy month for me. My husband and I were in an auto accident on November 8th and he has been in a significant amount of pain as a result. I have only had a lesser degree of back pain but he has had so much pain in his feet that he hasn’t been able to walk.
Now I am not one of those practitioners who hides that I have a real life with real struggles. I personally believe it is important for my clients to understand that I also have challenges, hard times, and frustrations just like they do. So in the interest of continuing to be open, honest, and vulnerable, I am writing this post.
But I am also writing this post because even in this dark time, I see the wisdom of our bodies. Our body’s are amazingly intelligent. And that is what I would like to share more about with you today.
Shortly after the accident, I developed a dry cough. Mostly it came on at night and kept me from getting great sleep. But then it started to get worse and I went into coughing fits that made me get up out of bed and try and calm down what was going on.
I wasn’t sick (even though some might have thought that). I felt fine- no other symptoms of a cold- just this obnoxious cough. So I started to tune into the cough and try and understand what it was trying to tell me.
Well the cough would get worse when I talked about stressful topics. And it would get worse when I was holding in what I really needed to say to my husband about certain things. So I started trying to voice what was going on for me and not hold it in, and that helped to some degree.
But the cough went on and on. I did go have it checked out, my lungs were clear and I was given a cough med, which did nothing- because the cough was really my body still trying to communicate with me.
At this time, my husband had to start sleeping in the recliner in the living room because of his pain. Not sharing a bed is something that I don’t really like. As much as I never though I would get used to sleeping in the same bed as someone, with my husband next to me, I sleep better most nights than I did before. But he needed to feel comfortable and I understood that.
But every night, when I went to go to bed at night (alone), I felt the tears start to creep in. I would allow myself to feel them for a few minutes and then shift to distracting myself and trying to go to bed. That was when the coughing fit would actually REALLY start. But I wasn’t quite connecting the dots yet.
This week, my massage therapist friend asked me to really feel my feelings. I had shared how hard it is at night with the current situation and that I feel sad. She suggested that night I go to bed and allow myself to cry myself to sleep.
And so I did. While the crying stuffed up my nose and made me cough while I was crying, after I had let it move through me, the coughing went away and I slept better than I had slept in a few weeks. And each night is getting better and better. The cough is almost gone now.
Our bodies are so incredibly amazing and intelligent and they try to communicate to us in the only way that they can. Mine was trying to tell me that by stuffing my sadness and grief, my lungs had to take on the burden of holding that instead of just expressing it so it could release.
So next time you are struggling and your body starts talking to you, my suggestion is to get quiet and listen. Remember, sometimes wisdom and support is needed from those around us to fully hear the message and that is just fine too.
Over the past few months I’ve been interviewing single ladies who are looking for love about their particular challenges and frustrations with the process of trying to find that special someone.
One of the common threads that I have been hearing from many of them is that it is not easy to know where to look to meet that special someone.
Some of the ladies who have shared their story with me are in their 40s and 50s and are divorced. They have shared that the world of dating has changed so much since when they were single years ago. Other ladies have been single for a long time and have shared that it isn’t easy to find the right fit through online dating or just trying to go out and be social.
I know from my own personal experience with being single for 9 years that it definitely can be challenging to find the right “place” to look for the kind of men you want.
But I also know from my own personal experience and from that of my clients that it isn’t necessarily always about showing up in the “right” place… Sometimes it is about something deeper within us.
This something deeper can include:
- what sort of energy you are giving off when you are out there dating or just being social
- whether you are walking around thinking “It is SO hard to find good men”
- having a great deal of fear around being vulnerable and having your heart broken
When those deeper things shift through doing your own inner healing work through something like my “Fizzle to Sizzle” group sessions or my “Ready for Love Program”, then it is amazing how you can do they same things as before and suddenly have more success!
When I did my own deep inner healing work last year, I simply had a free profile on OkCupid and suddenly I got a message from a guy who matched the criteria of what I was looking for. He told me when we met that he had felt totally compelled to message me after reading my profile… and I had had that same profile for many months.
From our first date that lasted 10 hours to how comfortable we felt with each other on that date and subsequent ones, something in me had changed to allow this relationship to appear in my life.
Do you have a story about your own experience of challenge and frustration with trying to find love? I’d love to hear it! Share below in the comments!
Want to receive my love and romance articles and tips on a regular basis? Sign up for my free email newsletter right now!
I have spent the past month having conversations with women about their experiences while dating and during their romantic relationships. One of the themes that I am seeing from these conversations is about how women tend to lose themselves in a relationship and how this is still, to at least some degree, expected by our society.
I’d like to share a couple of these women’s stories that highlight our ongoing challenges with expectations of our role as women, especially in the role of wife.
During my interviews, one of the ladies that I spoke with shared how in her first marriage, as soon as the ceremony was over, everyone started treating her as someone’s wife, not as her (the individual) anymore.
She described her experience this way: “The minute the ceremony happened, all these archetypes flooded into our bodies of what we were supposed to be. The tendency is to lose oneself and be the archetype.The day before the wedding I was treated as me, and the next day, literally no one talked to me that way. ”
Everyone continually was asking questions like “What are you doing to help your husband’s career?” and never asking her about her own career. She shared with me how invisible this made her feel.
The fascinating thing about her story was how, as soon as her divorce happened, everyone again treated her like HER again and seemed puzzled that she had had her own career all along.
Another woman shared with me her story of how she knew on the day of her wedding that her marriage was not going to last. On her wedding day, her new husband treated her like his property (which he had NEVER done before) and she was expected to spend the whole reception catering to the guests and not enjoying herself. When she asked him to dance with her, he replied “Today is not about you.” Her marriage only lasted 5 months.
What the stories I have been hearing through my interviews are showing me is that while we as women have made tremendous gains from the time in history when women had no say in who they married or whether they were expected to quit working and become housewives after marriage, there are still struggles to be treated as individuals with our own worth and value once we are in a relationship.
There are still common cultural beliefs that the man’s career takes priority, that a wife should still help her husband and focus on his needs.
The conversations that I’ve had have shown me that women still have to work to keep their own sense of who they are and their own individual needs when in a committed relationship.
It takes work and not bowing to society’s expectations of how a woman should behave when in a relationship… It takes supporting one another and getting support to stay true to your own needs, wants, and desires.
Do you have a story of how you struggle to still feel like yourself and that you matter in a relationship? Or do you have a strategy to help you not lose yourself to society’s expectations about women’s roles in a relationship? I’d love to hear it in the comments below!
Want to receive my love and romance articles and tips on a regular basis? Sign up for my free email newsletter right now!
One of the resources that I personally have found helpful in my communication with my fiance is Gary Chapman’s “The 5 Love Languages.” I want to share a personal reflection on why I find this useful in the hope it inspires you to consider checking it out.
A few months ago I found myself feeling a little frustrated with my partner when I was hoping that he would express his love for me by doing certain things for me- like helping with the dishes after I had cooked dinner. I didn’t want to have to ASK him to do this, I just wanted him to volunteer and was feeling disappointed when that didn’t just happen.
This was when my mom reminded me about this book and how useful it can be for couples to understand each other’s love languages.
In “The 5 Love Languages,” Chapman discusses how we like to give and receive love in 5 main ways. These are:
- words of affirmation
- acts of service
- receiving gifts
- quality time
- physical touch
What I realized is that I like to express and receive love through acts of service and quality time while my partner’s primary love languages are more about words of affirmation and physical touch.
While I enjoy receiving words of affirmation and physical touch, a part of me wants to receive more acts of service from my partner. However, by understand his primary love languages, I can realize that he is not neglecting to show his love, he just doesn’t necessarily think of acts of service first. We can then dialogue about how we express our love and what we are needing from each other.
If you are in a relationship, it can be helpful to read this book or at least take the online profile quiz because doing so can help you to understand each other’s primary love languages and can open a dialogue about how you might meet the other’s needs if you don’t have a direct match.
Knowledge, in this case, is definitely power and going through the process of understanding each other’s love languages can really facilitate better understanding and communication.
Have you taken the online quiz? Share your thoughts about your love languages and the usefulness of this approach in the comments!
Want to receive my love and romance articles and tips on a regular basis? Sign up for my free email newsletter right now!
The end of a relationship usually isn’t easy. Even if you know it wasn’t working and that something needs to change, there is still sadness and grief that comes with the process. You entered into something in the hopes it would make your life better… and maybe it did for a period of time but now it has come to an end.
There is lots of advice out there from dating coaches saying that the best way to move on is to find someone else, even when you are still hung up on the person you just broke up with. Today I’d like to share with you a different perspective.
While I don’t believe that you need to stay single for forever and that you shouldn’t move on, I do believe that if you are feeling sad and heartbroken, simply moving on to another relationship is NOT the best thing for you. There is healing that needs to occur before you are truly ready to open yourself up to another relationship.
When you quickly move on to someone new, hoping to erase that certain someone from your heart and your mind, you haven’t allowed yourself to process your thoughts and emotions over what just happened. It is through that processing and reflection that both growth and healing occur.
When you are still in the hurt of the breakup, you are not emotionally ready to open yourself up in a healthy way to someone new. You will likely either attract someone similar to the person who just broke your heart or it is even possible you will find someone who will sense that you are in an emotionally fragile state and take advantage of you.
As an example from my own love history, 10 years ago, when I broke up with my last boyfriend, there was a tremendous amount of hurt because he had rejected me for being “too much” emotionally. That was a very hard thing for me to be told by someone who I had trusted my heart with. That was just one area that I needed to heal before I could move on to someone new. In addition, I needed to spend time reflecting on what I had learned about what I did and did not want from that relationship. If I had not done that, it would have been much more likely that I would have attracted another partner to repeat the same patterns with me. The clarity I gained about what qualities are ideal for me in a partner were invaluable.
On the flip side, however, completely closing down to the world and to new possibilities after a breakup is also not healthy. Yes, you may be sad and feel like you will never find someone who will truly be the amazing romantic partner that you long for but if you completely close down and lock into those thoughts, you also are not working through your healing process.
My suggestion for those of you who are going through a breakup are to take some time to just be with your feelings. Allow yourself to be sad, angry, hurt, or whatever else you are currently feeling. Emotions need to be felt, in order to be released. Get support from a professional like a therapist or a healer if you feel like you are having a hard time working through those emotions.
In addition, take time to reflect on what lessons you learned from this relationship. What worked for you about this particular partner (qualities, behaviors, attributes) and what did not? Did you learn any new insights about what you most need from a romantic partner and what you absolutely cannot tolerate? When you are more healed and ready, those insights will help you move forward on the path to finding the right partner for you.
Do you have any other ways that help you work through a breakup or heartbreak? Share them below.
Want to receive my love and romance articles and tips on a regular basis? Sign up for my free email newsletter right now!
Do you find it difficult to trust your romantic partner? Are you always second guessing whether he is really telling you the truth about things (big and small)? Do you find it difficult to open yourself up and be vulnerable? If so, this post is for you!
In the very beginning of a relationship, I would say proceeding with caution is wise. A new love interest needs to earn your trust and, when you don’t really know him yet, he hasn’t had a chance to prove himself to you.
However, once you have moved to a stage where you are exclusive and committed to each other, trust should be building and developing and you should not constantly be worrying that he is lying to you or that you are not safe to start opening up in deeper ways.
If you do find that you struggle with trust issues, working through them and getting support is an important part of being able to develop a deeper relationship. Continually acting like you do not trust the man you are with will likely eventually drive him away.
Here are 3 strategies for beginning to work through trust issues:
1) Spend some time reflecting on the roots of your mistrust. Journaling about this can be helpful.
Consider the following: Are you mistrustful of this particular man or have you been mistrustful in all of your past relationships? Are there particular things that trigger your feelings of distrusting him? If so, how likely is it the things you are worried about true? Has he really given you grounds to believe he is not being truthful? What would a good and trustworthy friend say about your concerns?
If you notice this that trust issues are a theme for you, getting support to work through the deeper issues that are causing you to not trust anyone might be necessary. If you haven’t noticed mistrust in past relationships, perhaps your intuition is trying to tell you something about this particular situation. In that case, proceeding with caution might be wise.
2) If you noticed a theme of mistrust in many past relationships, seek professional support. This can come in the form of talk therapy or something like an energy medicine like BodyTalk.
I have supported many clients by using BodyTalk to work through underlying trust issues that come from past relationship hurts (whether in family relationships or romantic ones) so that they can release those fears that come around trust and being hurt and be more ready to open to love. The awesome thing about working with an energetic approach is it gets to the roots of the issue and removes the charged energy from your body, mind, and spirit.
3) Talk to your partner openly about your concerns. If you have reflected on the roots of your mistrust and find this is a big pattern for you, telling your partner about this and that you are planning on seeking support to work through the issue can be important. He likely is noticing your distrust of him and if you don’t discuss this topic openly, there is likely an elephant in the room between you which can drive you further apart.
Talking about your concerns is also a great initial step of being vulnerable on your part.
Still feeling like you could use more support around this issue? Check out my new FREE 30 minute strategy session call and see how I can help you move forward!
With so much focus from the outside world about finding love, being in relationship, and “happily ever after” type images plastered everywhere, it can feel difficult to those of us who aren’t in relationship…
As Valentine’s Day approaches, it can feel even more difficult to feel happy and complete if you are single.
As someone who was single for many, many years (last year, it was 9 years since I was in a committed relationship), I can sympathize with those of you who are feeling like society makes you feel “less than” for being alone. Luckily, I had always had a deep belief that it is better to be alone than in a bad relationship… But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t still feel lonely and long for something different.
This was a time of the year that felt particularly difficult for me… Valentine’s Day always felt like a big cultural statement about how socially valued being in a romantic relationship was. Not being in relationship as couples were going out to dinner, guys were sending their girlfriends or wives chocolate and flowers and everything love was shoved in my face often left me feeling depressed… In the week leading up to the big day, dread would grow in my heart and mind.
My experience of Valentine’s Day began to change last year, when I changed the name for myself to “Love Day” and decided to show myself the sort of love and affection that I hoped to someday receive from a partner. I also focused on spreading love to all those important people in my life- family and friends, as well as leaving notes around public places on post-it notes saying things like “You are amazing!” and “You are beautiful”. I felt love growing inside my heart and expanding outward to others.
For the first time in my life, I actually ENJOYED Valentine’s Day because I just felt love of myself and love of those around me! It felt like a powerful transformation and shift in my life and part of my own journey to be ready for love.
So if you struggle with the Valentine’s Day blues, remember these tips:
1) Take time to show yourself love and appreciation on Valentine’s Day and every day. Self-love is truly the root of all love and finding a romantic partner without having self-love is not the best approach.
2) Try experimenting with leaving special “love notes” on post-it notes (they even sell heart shaped ones at this time of year) everywhere you go on Valentine’s Day and just in general. Write positive messages for those who will come across them and leave them on bathroom mirrors, on shelves in a grocery store, wherever you can think.
3) Remember that although society tries to make you believe that being in a relationship is what gives your life meaning and value, this is not true. Your life is valuable and worthy just because of who you are… not who you are with!
I hope you’ve found some insight and comfort in this post. There is truly nothing wrong with you if you are single!
If you feel like you could still use some support in shifting your feelings around being single (and possibly preparing your heart for true love), check out my FREE “Unlock My Love Mojo Strategy Session” call!
Last week felt like an emotional one for me… It started out on Tuesday when my fiance’s decision to go out after work without clearly communicating with me left me feeling upset and triggered…
I am the kind of person who likes to know what the plan is… If he wanted to have 3 hours to himself that was fine but I just wanted to be clear that I was going to be spending the evening by myself so that I could then decide what I wanted to do on my own. The added fuel to my frustration was I told him I wasn’t feeling well, I told him that, and yet I felt he decided to stay out and have fun on his own. As I waited, I felt that his lack of clear communication about what time he planned to be home gave rise to feelings that I was unimportant.
As 1 hour turned into 2, which turned into 3, I found myself on an emotional rollercoaster ride and I kept thinking “He doesn’t care about me or how I am feeling.”
It wasn’t until a few days later after doing some journaling and healing work that I processed what this particular experience with my partner was showing me about myself.
What I came to realize is that there are times when I feel unimportant to myself… where I disregard my own thoughts, feelings, and needs to focus on someone else. My experience with my partner triggering me offered me the chance to reflect on how I do this to myself and ways that I would like to change that pattern so that I honor myself and my own needs.
For many women, it can be common to put other’s needs before our own. We say “yes” to helping others, doing things them, even when we don’t really want to or don’t have the time or energy to do so. I was able to see for myself ways that I do this and then leave myself feeling empty, frustrated, or tired.
The experience of being triggered let me see myself and my own needs more clearly (as well as teaching me more about how to communicate with my partner) so that I make sure that I am honoring myself and my needs.
What lessons have you learned through your relationships? Share them in the comments below!
Want to receive my love and romance articles and tips on a regular basis? Sign up for my free email newsletter right now!