In the last three years, I have had HUNDREDS of impasses where I feel utterly lost.

Being a writer/creator/entrepreneur/whatever the fuck my job role is can be liberating. And, the freedom of working for myself and creating my own life from scratch doesn’t come with socially constructed boundaries—there’s no roadmap for my life and I often feel like an architect without a blueprint…

Shadow work may be a familiar concept to you. If it is, this will be a welcome challenge.

If you’re new to shadow work, I invite you to see this exercise as a meet and greet with the parts of yourself you’ve cast away. A dinner party where you’ve invited your personality traits that irritate you, body parts that feel foreign to you, thought patterns that scare you, or behaviors that bother you.

I care deeply about how my actions impact those around me, and pay attention to when the limits of my responsibility are met so that I don’t extend beyond the boundary of prioritizing my wellness or maintaining integrity of my identity. Beyond these boundaries is the realm of emotional babysitting, and that is what I am no longer participating in.

I’ve been in therapy for a LONG time. More than half my life.

I’m 33.
I’m divorced.
I’ve been to intensive outpatient therapy for an ED.
I’ve been hospitalized for attempts to end my life.

I’ve tried CBT, DBT, EMDR, Existential/humanistic therapy, ACT….

I have been learning SO many juicy nuggets of information over the last 12 days.

I’ve been in and out of therapy since 2005, spent 4 months in Eating Disorder Recovery in 2015, and attended Graduate School to study Mental Health Counseling.

To say I know a lot about mental health is an understatement.

Do you struggle with what to do for your morning routine? Take my quiz and find out what routine is right for you.

For most of my young adult life (like, idk, ages 13-28) I absolutely hated myself. Like full-blown self-disgust. I spent years in therapy for an eating disorder and depression. I spent more years in therapy for anxiety and crippling panic attacks. I eventually ended up back in therapy during my divorce, and in the following years took a deep dive into figuring out why the fuck I kept drowning when I seemed to have so many tools at my disposal to NOT drown.

This three-step process is what I follow to do my inner child work.

These affirmations came to me one morning while doing my Morning Pages, on a day when I really needed support in slowing down and honoring my healing process. I was feeling rushed, frustrated, and overwhelmed with my progress, and these affirmations reminded me its ok to slow down, that healing isn’t linear, and that there are no such thing as setbacks.

Affirmations didn’t cure my nervous system, but they regulated my distress. Saying these affirmations outloud, looking at myself in the camera, and feeling connected to others gave me a sense of safety, hope, and purpose. Which my brain needed. My brain needed to know I was safe. My brain needed to know I could trust people. And my brain needed the actual content from the affirmations to begin rewiring the communication between my thoughts and my physical body.