Love and Not Love I recently saw a post on facebook about a study showing that spanking is harmful even if the parent has a warm and loving relationship with the child. Wow, ok, so this really set some wheels spinning for me... Inflicting physical harm or pain on other human beings is considered violence, aggression, assault or abuse. Nowhere else in our culture do we sanction inflicting physical pain/harm on another human being, not even on violent [...]
Emancipating Your Anger So, I recently spent the whole day super duper depressed. That doesn't happen to me very often anymore but when it does it can be super intense. There are those days that I experience a little wave of depression and easily find my way out of it, (Hint: Who does this belong to?) and then there are those days when nothing seems to help. This was one of those days. What I discovered at the end [...]
Lessons from Depression Lesson Number Two: There's some part of me that I'm denying Another discovery I'm having around depression is that when it is mine, it usually means that I'm cutting myself off from some part of myself- that I am engaging in some form of self-denial. This could be something I don't want to be aware of- like how angry I am- or having lots of judgment and wrongness toward myself rather than space and acceptance. How [...]
Empathic Women in Relationships: Four Questions to Ask Yourself (That can improve your mental health and happiness and move you in the direction of having better relationships) How loved do you feel? How much does he actually love you? You “Love him so much” but how much are you loving you, how much is he loving you? I have heard so many women say this phase (myself included!): “but I love him so much”. Yes, ok, you love [...]
When you think of self-care, what comes to your mind? Bubble baths? Massages? Days for yourself where you get to do whatever it is you want? Vacations from your life? Sure, that's awesome, that's all forms of doing something nice for yourself and making you feel good, but why have we relegated self-care to something separate from the rest of our life? From our everyday activities? Self-care is not something to be saved for nights and weekends, something we only get to after [...]
Well, a whole lot actually! A name becomes part of your identity and represents who you are.Even more true when it comes to business...Back in 2015 when I picked the name Divine Essence Coaching, I was still a glorious generalist, still figuring out how to describe and articulate my work in a clear and concise way. My work in a lot of ways is about helping you reconnect with your (divine) essence and remember the truth of who [...]
I used to make all sorts of relationship lists- You know the ones- The qualities he should have, what he should look like, what kind of job he holds. How he compliments me, his degrees, is personality, his family. And on and on and on… I've made lots of those lists and know people that swear by them, though I can’t say that they ever really worked for me. Then I fell in love with someone who met [...]
Create Something Different for Your Life This Year A few years ago I got really fed up with looking back at the end of each year to see that I wasn’t really much closer than I’d been the year before to where I wanted to be in my life. I knew something had to change! Wishing and hoping, even visioning and vision boarding weren’t really working. I’m pretty sure you’ve heard that “insanity is doing the same things [...]
Receiving Your Awareness We cut off our awareness for many reasons, one because we have learned not to trust it and believe that it is wrong, and two, because sometimes what we are aware of does not match the conclusions we have about how things should be. Then when things turn out differently, we are surprised. Yet, how often was there actually part of you that knew? This weekend I had the chance to connect in some beautiful [...]
This is Perfect Humble new beginnings. Bowing down. Letting go of the notions of who I think I am Letting go of everything I think I know to find new truth and new meaning, suspending my understanding for a while, to receive in emptiness, to see with new eyes, to find new beauty here and now. Letting go of resistance, of attachments, melting in to the flow of this moment, becoming undone, being, oneness in this now moment. Finding [...]
Can We Meet Again for the First Time? What would it take to receive each new being freshly? To live on that edge of expectancy and discovery of finding out who you and they are? What would it take to meet each person in your life again for the first time? Can you receive them with that much freshness? Can you let go of everything you've ever known or created about them to discover who they are and [...]
Lessons from Depression: Lesson Three: Your Body Might Need Some Support From You As much as I see depression as a symptom- often of something going on in the psyche, some place we are cutting ourselves off from ourselves and our awareness- I know for me it was also important to address the condition of my physical body. Your body also might desire and require additional support and help to balance that it hasn't been getting. I started feeling [...]
The Tiger Story – A Parable on Anger Once upon a time there lived a little girl in a jungle. Her parents were killed and she had to fend for herself. She was terribly afraid. One day she came upon a baby tiger, whose mother had left. She cared for the tiger, and he grew well and they became best friends, playing and living together every day. One day, a man with a red shirt came into the [...]
Some Thoughts on Maturity What does maturity mean to you? What makes someone mature or immature? I began to more-deeply investigate the question of maturity when I noticed I was repeatedly judging someone in my life as immature. Being a practitioner of Nonviolent Communication, which invites us to move beyond our judgement to see more clearly what is actually occurring, I wanted to really unpack what behaviors or ways of being I was labeling as immature. What I came to see [...]
Positivity and its Unintended Consequences I have noticed a trend in the world I live in toward extreme positivity and optimism. There are even many teachers and leaders and celebrity advocates in the world of positive thinking. While I do see great value on accentuating the positive, and that it can be a powerful tool to transform our experiences, I think it also has its unintended consequences. One of these consequences is to be in denial about the [...]