Mental Health + DEEP Self-Care

Not gonna lie- I’ve been struggling to find something “uplifting” to share.  I see ICE abductions from men in plain clothes, who refuse to identify themselves, who drive unmarked vehicles, and who are using what I consider to be unnecessary force in these abductions. Many of these human beings being abducted are in the process of becoming U.S. citizens and I cannot get the poem, “First They Came“ out of my mind.

The reality is, I’m sad and angry. So, I must focus even more intently on my well-being and self-care.

Because here’s what I know: If we want to have capacity to help others, our self-care is critical. Having capacity (and tolerance) for others requires us to take excellent care of ourselves. It’s not indulgent. It’s necessary.

Below are a few things I’ve streamed that I found helpful.  Some gave me hope; some reminded me to take better care of myself; and others reminded me to stand up for what is moral, ethical, and humane – even if I’m scared.

  1. Now through June 30th, 2025, PBS is streaming the play, Next to Normal, for free. This is a play that was done on London’s West End. It focuses on mental health, grief, and depicts the impact of grief that’s not addressed.
  2. This talk left me feeling hopeful and inspired: Barack Obama on June 17th, 2025 at The Connecticut Forum in Hartford, CT. (68 mins long and worth every second of your time!)
  3. Here’s a music video of a song I LOVE – The Line – by Twenty One Pilots. This reminds me that all of our bodies are on the line right now.
  4. This YouTube channel – The Enemies Project – by renowned Peacemaker, Larry Rosen, helps enemies find the human in each other. ♥
  5. Lastly, this music video – Take Me To Church – by Hozier is a difficult reminder that history is once again repeating itself. Reminds me of the quote that Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere (MLK).

While there’s an intense amount of fear, sadness, pain, and hate being shown across the medias, there’s also equal amounts of hope, joy, celebration, and love that is countering. I’m not giving up. And in fact, I’m anchoring more deeply to what’s important, each and every day.

Before you leave, click on one (or all) of the links above and let yourself be moved. Whatever you choose, start with you. Let your choices nourish you. Maybe you want to create your own backyard haven, or your in-home sanctuary, or simply hug your family a little tighter. Focus on what matters to you.

Take a breath. Then take the action that creates the world YOU want to live in – one heart, mind, and home at a time.

PS – Want to get in touch? Just reply here. ♥♥

In peace and love,

By |2025-06-26T01:46:31-04:00June 26th, 2025|Uncategorized|0 Comments
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Year in Review -13 Reflective Questions to set the tone for 2025

One of my family’s daily rituals is to check in by sharing our highs, lows, what we feel, what we need or want, and something we learned that day. This allows us to connect with each other, and brings awareness to what was most significant for us.

At the end of the year, we expand on that and reflect on what worked, what didn’t, what we want more of, less of, and what has to go in the coming year. This year, I added a few more prompts and I’m sharing those below.

The prompts are intended to invite deeper awareness so you can eliminate the things that drain you, and instead, focus on things you value most and what energizes you. You get to choose where you spend your precious time and energy. And only you can decide what stays and what goes.

On a call the other day, I was sharing this list of questions, and heard myself say that I wanted to think about what “gets my all” this year. Keep that in mind as you answer the questions about what gets your “all” this year.

There are 13 prompts to reflect on. I prefer handwriting my answers, but you can do whatever works for you. My daughter wrote her answers directly into her laptop when our family did this practice together on New Year’s Eve.

The practice:

  • Grab a journal and a pen. Make yourself a cup of tea, coffee, or whatever you prefer. Put on your favorite music and comfy clothes and settle in to spend some time with yourself.
  • If you want to invite others to do this with you, go for it!
  • My family and I do this silently together, (meaning we don’t talk while doing it) with music in the background. Once we’re all complete, we take one prompt at a time and share our answers aloud with each other. It’s voluntary and connecting. Often, when one of us shares, another has some kind of realization around something they haven’t thought of for themselves.
  • This practice invites deeper self-connection and reflection. It allows us to ponder where we’ve been, what we’ve accomplished, and allows us to touch on what we still long for. It also illuminates where we can be more conscious of how we’re using our precious time and energy as we move into the coming year. And within each moment.
  • Because all we really have is this moment.

The timing:

  • I like to do it until I feel complete, but if you prefer to use a timer, set it for 20-30 mins. If you want more time, just extend the timer. I enjoy flexibility so if I need more hot water and lemon, I get up to get it. Or if I must use the bathroom, I go. I also want space to explore what comes up in the moment without the pressure of time. So, for me, not using a timer allows me to stay more connected to my mind and body.

The prompts:

  1. What are your biggest celebrations this past year? What are you most excited about that you started, completed, or let go of?
  2. What’s your favorite memory from this past year? (can you connect to core values or needs it met?)
  3. What still feels unfinished, and what are you still craving?
  4. Where do you feel the weight of something you’re carrying — like anxiety, blame, the belief that you’re not good enough, obligations to others that you’ve outgrown, etc.?  Think about what keeps you up at night.
  5. Imagine you were ready to let the weight of what you’re carrying go. If you were ready, what’s the first thing you’d do?
  6. What is the biggest hurdle you overcame this year? Or put another way, What did you accomplish this year that you didn’t think you could? What parts of you did you need to access to achieve what you wanted? (tenacity, courage, intentionality, etc.).
  7. What’s the best decision you made this year?
  8. What’s the biggest lesson you learned?
  9. What happened that you didn’t expect?
  10. What was your biggest disappointment or mourning?
  11. What’s something you integrated into your daily life that has kept you sane for this past year?
  12. What’s your biggest gratitude?
  13. What’s something you’d like to “give your all” to in the coming year?

As we move into 2025, let’s take up space together. Let’s allow ourselves to dream, imagine, think bigger than we think we can achieve, and just do the things we think we can’t.

Courage is doing what I think I can’t.

When mind chatter stops you from taking action, or reminds you how you didn’t quite measure up, gently turn DOWN the voice of your inner critic. Instead, remember your answers to these prompts, and turn UP the voice of your wise inner self and follow the passions and desires that light you up.

Here’s to living our lives focused on what matters most – in 2025 and beyond.

Interested in exploring coaching or just getting connected, simply send an email here!

By |2025-02-18T13:09:06-05:00January 7th, 2025|Uncategorized|0 Comments
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Minimalism, Simplicity + Letting Go of Perfectionism

As I make my way toward minimalism, I’m still surprised how resistance shows up so big for me. For years my mantra has been, “Order, Ease, & Simplicity”, and in that order.   When I have order, it brings me ease, and when I have ease, my life is simple.

Sounds simple right?  It can be.   And yet, we complicate our lives more than we need to.

We hold on.   We resist.  We deny.  We blame someone or something else so we don’t have to look at our own stuff, our own issues.

Because here’s the deal.   Letting go isn’t about the thing, person, or situation we’re letting go of. It’s about the emotional attachment that the experience or memory has brought us –including difficult or negative memories.

Letting go is a process.

One of the most difficult things for me to let go of is books.   Especially books that my daughter and I have read together.  I can recall all our snuggles, cozying up for all our daily ritualistic reading times – wake-up reading, pre-nap reading, post-nap reading, bedtime reading, or just middle of the day reading.  I can still hear her little voice bursting out when we’d get to a specific page, and I can hear my own inflections as I read certain books.   I fantasize about reading those same books to her children when she’s older.

Maybe that will happen.  Maybe not.

Life can change in a split second.  We have little control over when we leave here or how.  I mean, we do. And we don’t.

In an attempt to keep life simple, I started a book buying ban in August, and created a Little Free Library.  I’ve wanted to create one of these libraries for years, and to keep me accountable with the lifestyle I want to live, the book ban felt necessary.

The perfectionist in me wants to tell you I have it all figured out, and I have this letting-go piece down.  That I can live as a pure minimalist with only what I need.  But that’s not true.   I, too, am in process.  I’m working my way there.  I have my own demons, resistance and challenges, just like you.

What is true is this:  I’ve learned to love and respect what I choose to keep.  I’ve learned to only keep what I love.  When adding something to my home or life, I’ve learned to ask myself if what I’m bringing in adds value, not just to my life, but to all of our lives that live in our home.  As far as resistance, I’ve learned to do one thing – just one thing – instead of letting my mind spin out of control when I feel overwhelmed with too much stuff, too much to do, or too many obligations.  I pause.  I do one thing that I CAN do, then another, then another -not 10 things at once.

What matters is substance, connection, relating deeply to those I love.   What I know for sure is clutter gets in the way.  Mental, emotional, and physical clutter blocks us from the very thing we say we want.  The funny thing about resistance is that it takes so much of our energy to resist, deny, not look at, or avoid something we need to do, or not do.

The truth is, if we channeled our energy into doing the very thing we’re resisting, we’d create more space, more openness, and more connection with ourselves, and those we love.

On this cold Sunday in December, after our first snowfall of the season, I’m going to honor my own resistance today and take control over what I can, which is planning my work week while my husband and daughter are enjoying some much needed daddy-daughter time.   How about you?  What’s one thing you can do today to honor yourself where you are?

Blessings to you!

xo

P.S.  If you’d like to follow my blog and receive my newsletter on simplifying, letting go and creating more ease, you can do that here .  

By |2018-01-07T01:58:56-05:00December 10th, 2017|Uncategorized|0 Comments
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Soul Space Decluttering

Soul Space…

Spaces where you find what you want when you want it.

Where you have what you need at your fingertips.

Space to think, to be, to feel, to connect.

To feel alive, to breathe deeply, have restful sleep, connect with yourself, and those you love.

To realign with what matters most…

Three of my core values are for Order, Ease and Simplicity.

When those needs are met, I’m calm, present, connected. I’m aligned.  It’s easy to  follow through on commitments, take action toward what I want, to say yes when I mean yes, and no when I mean no when my actions are internally aligned with my values and needs.

One way for us to stay aligned is to consistently reevaluate what we keep.

So yesterday I did a challenge (Link at end) to Declutter 100 items in less than an hour.   The intent of this challenge is to set your timer for 60 minutes and go room to room gathering 10 items, 20 items etc, from each space until you have 100.   You don’t stop until the timer goes off, or until you have 100.

I didn’t do it the same way as recommended, not by design totally.  My somewhat OCD self – not really, but kinda – needed to have order amidst the self-induced clutter clearing challenge.

I started in my kitchen.   And stayed there for 60 minutes.  I cleaned, wiped, and organized as I decluttered – not part of the challenge.  When the timer went off, I wasn’t done, nor did I have 100 items.  So I set it for another 30 minutes, and this time stopped cleaning, organizing and wiping, kinda.  I really am “Monica” from Friends, so it’s my own niche to clean, sort & organize as I go.   But I did make it out of my kitchen, and into my bathroom.   This time, when the timer went off, I had 160 items total and I even managed to find two missing items that had fallen underneath a drawer and were laying at the bottom of a cabinet.   So 90 minutes, 160 items, not too bad.  Still, I’ll redo the challenge and do it as designed.

There’s two lessons here: 1) it’s so easy to throw ourselves off track, and 2) it’s just as easy to bring us back when we have focus, awareness and intention.

Ease.  Order.  Simplicity.  Life isn’t always easy, orderly, and it’s certainly not always simple.   Which is why it’s critical to create soul spaces in your home, and habits.  Self-care, yoga, working out, eating well – whatever it is that nurtures you and keeps you feeling connected and alive – that’s what needs to be in your daily rituals.

So where do you need to create more space?  Is there a certain room?  A certain spot within a room?  Maybe a specific relationship needs a clear boundary in place?  Maybe your mind wishes for quiet so you can actually hear your own thoughts and inner desires?  What’s on your wish list?  Your #50Desires?

Does this sound fun to you?   The idea is to create incentive to let go, and to have fun in the process.  Hop on over to https://bemorewithless.com/decluttering-burst/ for Courtney Carver’s Declutter 100 Items in Less than an Hour Challenge.  Let me know what happened for you.  🙂 #bemorewithless, #100DeclutterChallenge.

Enjoy the process.  Life’s too short to stress over our stuff.  Learn to let it go!

Sending love,

 

Chris

xo

By |2017-08-20T17:37:09-04:00August 20th, 2017|Uncategorized|0 Comments
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