Setting Boundaries: 4 Strategies for Finding Courage When I think about what has contributed to a great deal of my suffering and my alcoholism, I believe my inability to set and maintain healthy boundaries was at the core and it’s what led to my inability to regulate my emotions in a consistent and healthy manner. Brené…

How to Feel Your Feelings The actual act of feeling can be challenging for many of us. Experiencing our emotions, understanding them, and responding accordingly isn’t something that’s always natural, especially if we’ve been in a toxic relationship or we’re going through recovery. Often, we don’t gain a clear picture of our emotions. We interpret them…

Letting Go of Fear and Hate: It’s an Inside Job If fear and hate do not solve any problems, then why are they emotions that are so hard to let go of? I recently posted this quote on social media by Maya Angelou. This is so true, yet so many of us hold on to it…

Four Things You Need to Know about Shame If you’ve followed my blogs and podcasts, you know that I talk a lot about shame — the belief that we are disappointing ourselves or others and not living up to expectations. Shame is a universal feeling, and it’s something that can lead to unhealthy behaviors — addiction, self-abuse, bad relationships — if we…

Finding the Courage to Listen with Empathy Listening with empathy is connection with others. It’s an acquired skill and it takes a lot of courage to be able to do that. I am not here to tell you that, when it comes to trauma, stress, addiction, homelessness, disease and many other forms of terrible loss and…

How to Push through Shame When We Compromise our Integrity The road to finding connection and intimacy with others can feel lonely at first — especially if you compromise your core beliefs, values, and integrity. As I’ve said before, connection is essential to my recovery. And without it, I would feel cut off. I would eventually withdraw…

My 50th Birthday and My Decision to Live in Gratitude As I sit here on January 6, 2019, and begin to write, I realize how grateful I am for so many things — people, places, relationships, memories, opportunities, success and more. This includes the pain, suffering and perceived failures in my life of which there have been…

9 Impactful Ways to Start 2019 Great A New Year is always a sign of promise — a new day, a fresh start, and brand-new opportunity to take on things that may have been a challenge in the past. I wanted to start 2019 by sharing some ways I’m learning to find strength and begin each year — and each…

A Face of Poverty We Don’t Always See The LA Times is publishing a four-part series on poverty and how it affects children. Its impact is astounding. Volunteering at the LA Mission, I’ve seen poverty up close. But typically, the people I interact with are adults. The first article in this series describes how in the…

Turning Shame into Acceptance and Peace Shame is a silent emotion we feel and carry with us. It makes us feel flawed in some way. There are all kinds of shaming in the public eye that goes on today (too heavy, too thin, too short, too tall, too slow, too lazy, too smart, too dumb, the…