Tag: Encouragement
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Journaling for Dummies
Many people say that they keep a diary to write down events that occur and how they feel about things. It’s rare to hear someone state that they keep a journal. Aren’t they one and the same – interchangeable terms? Well, not really… A diary is a book someone keeps to record events in one’s…
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From Drab to Dazzling: Making a Beautiful Life
For as long as I can remember, art has been a central part of my life. It all began with my gorgeous grey-haired grandma (or GGG, as I affectionately call her), who sang opera while dusting family furniture as a child, took a chemistry class in college during WWII to learn how to create beauty…
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Chasing Dopamine
It all started innocently enough – the crazy antics, the silly mannerisms, the hair-brained schemes – but what began as an overabundance of youthful energy became a lifestyle and here I am: a woman in her mid-*coughcough*-rties who is a crazy mishmash of organized spontaneity and anxious exuberance for life. Somewhere between paying a taxi…
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Truth Bomb
I have a birth defect that tries to kill me every so often. All last year, I dealt with serious health issues. I couldn’t eat and then I had to make a radical change to my diet that I later found out needs to be permanent. I am learning to manage a condition for as…
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The Power of Connection
There is a story that is circulating around the Internet that goes something like this: A soldier finds himself caught in a deep hole. Try as he might, he cannot climb out. He scrambles and frantically grabs at everything around him, to no avail. “HELP!” he cries. Along comes his sergeant. The sergeant asks what…
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Depression and Anxiety Lie
For the longest time after encountering trauma, I lived a reactionary life to the lies rumbling around in my head. I had been told nasty things about who I am as a person, called despicable names, degraded, humiliated, and treated sub-human. I lived in fear and I had low self-esteem due to the rampaging tornado…
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One Day After
Twenty-five years ago, on Valentine’s Day of all days, I opened the door of my barracks room to joke with my roommate, who I thought was jiggling the door handle. It wasn’t my roommate at the door. A male acquaintance forced his way into my room and made my life a living hell. The death…
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The Girl’s Got Goals
People often seem to have a love/hate relationship with New Year’s resolutions. And why shouldn’t they? Gym people who commit to frequent workouts all year are temporarily displaced for the first month or two of each new year by well-intentioned and starry-eyed folks who have resolved to focus on fitness. For weeks, family & friends…
Wisdom from the Trenches 