One of the great frustrations of my life has been that I am not immediately perfect at something when I first try it. Maybe you can relate. When I first try a new technique on my hair, like using a curling iron, and it doesn’t go well, so the curling iron goes back in the…… Continue reading To be a beginner

Some call it ruthless editing. Some call it intentionality. You might know it as minimalism. I’m not sure when or where this movement originated. I know that I first started practicing some of its tenets when I read Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I’ve always been a neat person. I like…… Continue reading Finding a minimalism practice

(17 to 20-minute read) As I write this, it is March 2017. If you had told me in early August 2016 that I would be enrolling in a life coaching certification program in November and officially starting it in March, I would have laughed you out of the room. But here I am. I’m almost done…… Continue reading Get uncomfortable and take back your life

A short Wednesday night post: picking up on a topic implicit in the previous post, I want to talk about taking pleasure. I’ve been doing pre-work for my coaching program (I’ll have to write a post about it–it’s been a wild ride), and one of the major facets of my personality I’ve been focusing on is…… Continue reading Taking pleasure

This week, I had to write a very difficult email in which I said “no” to a major commitment. It was something I had worked on in the past, and about six months ago, I said I would continue to work on it in the future. But in the interim between saying “yes” and now,…… Continue reading Creating expansiveness with boundaries

It’s going to take me some background to get to my point in this post, but bear with me, because I think the background is needed. I have had three episodes of major depression in my life: the first midway through high school, the second toward the end of college, and the third in the…… Continue reading The uses of difficult emotions

Most of my memories of profound transformation are tied to transportation. Literally. I have sharp, visceral memories of packing my car to the brim outside my college apartment, hugging my friends, and crying before I made the ten-hour drive from Georgia to Maryland. I was moving to follow my on-again-off-again boyfriend, to start a teaching…… Continue reading On transformation

I have to be honest and tell you that January has been a difficult month for me. Some days, the news weighs on me so heavily I can hardly bring myself to be productive. It feels so much easier to complain and lie around and mope when I’m suffocating in a fog of events that I cannot…… Continue reading Your locus of control

Guys. I made an infographic! My mom suggested I incorporate shorter posts occasionally, and my dear friend here in North Carolina suggested infographics when we had lunch today. I haven’t yet figured out how to make images in WordPress “pinnable,” but in the meantime, I’m manually making them pins on my Pinterest blog board. Lemonade,…… Continue reading The importance of your morning