Journey to freedom, health and joy
You don’t have to hunt for joy, manufacture it, or figure out how to lead a stress-free “perfect” life. You can ALLOW joy to live alongside whatever else you’re experiencing. You can WELCOME it into the messiness of your life in every season. You can learn to expand your capacity for joy and show up brave to your messy and beautiful life in every season. Even the hardest of them.
Learning to expand our capacity for joy – to hold space for joy and allow it to live in our lives alongside whatever else we’re experiencing – isn’t only about joy specifically, though. The benefits are further reaching.
It’s really about expanding our ability to experience and not run from all emotional experiences. It’s about living resilient, present, empowered, showing up fully to life in every season (within our capacity), navigating grief or trauma or other stressful life transitions with better outcomes, and ultimately reconnecting with and befriending ourselves.
Expanding our capacity for joy or for other emotions is also not ONLY about emotional experience. Our emotions don’t live in isolation. We have embodied experiences: we experience life through the wisdom of our mind, emotions, and body. And what’s more, we have a nervous system wired to keep us safe and alive that is always at work gathering information beneath conscious awareness, deciding if we’re safe or unsafe, and impacting the ways we engage in life and relationships.
In order to live self-aware and on purpose, and walk in greater freedom, we need to reconnect with our true selves and bring awareness to what’s going on in these bodies of ours. We need to befriend ourselves and this includes befriending our nervous system so that we can show up brave, whole + with joy in every season (even the hardest of them).
Inside: We can use a one in, one out rule to establish limits on physical clutter. But we can also apply this rule in ways that support us in living emotionally unstuffed (or lighter and freer). A large focus of the first 35 years or so of my life was acquiring or dreaming of finally being …
Inside: Choosing simplicity in life will help you live on purpose in every season. Even the hardest of them. I’ve shared 10 great questions to ask yourself when life is messy! Building a right-sized life means one that is authentically aligned to your True Self, your wiring, needs, desires, life stage, values, and sense of …
Inside: Life is messy but we can show up afraid. Joy and pain coexist in a brave and beautiful life. As we stop waiting to feel ready or for life to feel neat and tidy, and learn to show up through fear, grief, or pain, our experience of life changes. Real-life is messy. A joyful, meaningful, brave …
Inside: Life is messy. Use these 3 powerful ways to help yourself when you’re overwhelmed by life. I’d been navigating years of fear, crisis, trauma, and grief. In November 2021, I started a medication that gave me my brain back after post-concussion syndrome. I finally started feeling a bit more like myself but was still …
Inside: It’s never too late – whatever your experience or season of life, you can build a new pattern and learn how to overcome fear in life. Fear is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a common human emotion designed to keep us safe. Our nervous system constantly scans our internal and external environment looking …
Inside: A full, meaningful, beautiful life will also be a messy life. Ask yourself these 7 meaningful questions and then practice imperfect action to bravely bring your vision your life. Your joy is not dependent upon perfect circumstances. Your worth is not dependent on looking, sounding, or showing up like anyone else. And a brave …
Adorn your life in color, or don’t, if that feels good. Dance in the streets, laugh loudly, heal loudly, hope loudly. Take up all the space you need, and dare to love the skin you’re in. Wear joy as resilience and resistance. But also wear joy because it feels good and pleasure is not a …
Inside: Strip away all the clutter and noise to make space for more midlife joy. Consider starting with these 30 things! Although midlife brings with it new challenges, it’s also true that at least for many, happiness rises in our 50s and beyond. There are various reasons for this but I believe a few reasons …
Inside: If you’ve come to the end of the story you’ve been living, and if you want to live whole and brave, it may be time to write a new story and trust the magic of new beginnings. Three and half years ago I heard a strong and clear inner voice tell me “This is …
Inside: Simple rhythms anchor us through the seasons of our life. These are some of the ways I’ve used rhythm and ritual to support me through a season of grief, liminal space, and learning to live fully again. Sensitive content warning: child loss, grief We’re nearing three years since my oldest child died and I’ve …
Inside: A messy and beautiful life flourishes as we learn to change our thinking. As we release binaries and all or nothing thinking and make peace with paradox. I remember a past season of life when I felt worried about the state of my marriage (more honestly I felt worried about all the things). My …
Inside: What it means to hold space, how to know if you’re the right person to hold space for another, and 5 ways to hold space without losing yourself in the process. I include details about holding space for my son as he fought for life. This post includes referral links. As I advocated for …
Inside: In the liminal space of emerging from winter into spring, it’s important to resist urgency, to give ourselves ample space and nourishment and compassionate tending as we slowly unfurl. This is the third time I’ve been sick in the past five months. I didn’t get sick once all the years I was advocating for …
Inside: Honour your wiring in a noisy and busy world by crafting strategic, honest, and values-aligned goals that help you walk out your Life Vision. This post includes a Life-Vision Flow-Chart to help you get started. Slow and steady is my favourite speed. A slow-moving body does not prevent me from being a vision-oriented person …
Inside: If you’ve ever felt stuck in fear or pain, if you’ve spent time hiding or procrastinating on what matters most to you, if you’ve felt despondent about the state of your life or the world, learning how to practice fierce self-compassion will help. This post includes referral links. Fierce self-compassion is what helped me …
Inside: Learning empowering ways of navigating stress puts us back into the driver’s seat when our life feels unmoored or shaken. We can continue building our resilience toolbox so we can show up brave, whole, and on purpose in every season (even the hardest of them). This post contains referral links. Learning empowering ways of …
Inside: When you’re stressed out remember your stress reactions are biologically the same whether it’s to literally save your life or if your stress is due to a triggering, annoying, or frustrating situation. That’s not your fault. That’s biology. This post contains a referral link. We can’t avoid all stress (not to mention that not …
Inside: What you need to know about stress: This is part one in a three-part series to help you feel more empowered as you navigate stressful life experiences. Would you agree that right now life feels more hectic and stressful than ever? That there are fewer times when you feel amazing in-the-moment clarity and confidence …
Inside: If you genuinely want to step off the hamster wheel and enjoy an unbusy life, then you will need to go nose to nose with fear. This post includes referral links. I had never felt that I fit well in this noisy, competitive, frenetic world; fear told me that I didn’t have what it …
Inside: There is freedom in a relationship with healthy boundaries. Boundaries are not a punishment but a kindness to you and those you love. The word boundaries sometimes has a negative connotation. There seems to be an idea that only stern or cold people are good at setting boundaries. Or that boundaries only need to …
Inside: Media offers us quick fixes, spiritual gurus sell us bypassing, our own fear nature beckons us to hide under the covers or jump on the next shiny bandwagon; all feel preferable to slow, soul-stretching, deep work. But sustainable growth takes time. Don’t rush who you’re becoming. In the summer each year I listen inward …
Inside: You don’t have to hunt for joy, manufacture it, or figure out how to lead a stress-free “perfect” life. You can ALLOW joy to live alongside whatever else you’re experiencing. You can WELCOME it into the messiness of your life in every season. You can learn to expand your capacity for joy. You don’t have …
Inside: This is real life – joy and pain, beauty and suffering, uncertainty and delight, messily woven together to form a beautiful whole. TW: grief, child loss, suicide loss I’ve spent this weekend in Calgary, AB, with my friend Kathy Escobar who flew in from Colorado so that we could hug and talk for hours, …
Inside: If you feel overwhelmed by life, one of the kindest and wisest things you can do is to gift yourself an abundance of rest. This post includes amazon referral links. In a culture that idolizes doing more, acquiring more, being more, and that conditions us to believe that our worth is tied to our …
