How to Deal with Daily Irritations
You're running late to work. Again. Some jerk yells at you. Some other jerk swoops in and takes your seat on the subway. Your coworker continues to gossip about everybody. Everybody. And shows no signs of stopping, no matter how many times you politely suggest they do. You have the worst date of all worst dates. You get a surprise bill. That pricey restaurant ends up serving terrible food. Your friend cancels after you arrive...
Understanding Ourselves Through Images
In a recent piece, I wrote, "Writing is how we learn about ourselves. It is how we come to understand ourselves." Another powerful way we can explore the complexities within is through images. Photography. Drawing. Painting.
The Magic of Memoir
Writing is how we learn about ourselves. It is how we come to understand ourselves. To understand the intricacies and complexities, the nooks and crannies of our minds, our hearts, our spleens. As Joan Didion famously wrote, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
On Memoir and Making Sense of My Eating Disorder: Q&A with Shani Raviv
"I wrote this book because I have experienced personally what an emotionally, physically and psychologically debilitating disorder anorexia is. Anorexics all too often suffer absolute denial in silence, their bodies and minds screaming in pain. This is my attempt to break that silence, to reach out and let people know that there is a way out of the suffering called anorexia. Whoever you are, whatever you have been through or are going through,...
Why Art is Vital for Our Self-Care
Today, I'm honored to share a guest post by Amy Maricle, an artist, art mentor, and author, who works in Foxboro, Mass., and teaches creative online classes (learn more below). I'm a huge fan of Amy's work and approach to creativity, art and self-care. Which is why I asked her to share her wonderful insights. Hope you enjoy her post, and think about how art might help you feed your soul---or if it doesn't,...
Approaching Your Inner Critic with Compassion
The inner critic feels like an enemy. What else do you call someone who says cruel, maybe even vicious, things and sounds exactly like a bully? But while the inner critic might feel like an adversary, they're really a protector. Our inner critics try to protect us from potential rejection, sadness and failure. They try to stop us from looking "stupid," from being humiliated, from being yelled at and laughed at, from being reprimanded, from...
How to Accept Yourself
Accepting ourselves, particularly the traits we’re insecure about, the traits that feel like massive weaknesses and flaws, is really hard. It’s much easier to berate ourselves. The insults, the cruel words, seem to come so naturally.
Where to Find Inspiration for Your Writing
Maybe you need inspiration for your next blog post or magazine essay. Maybe you need inspiration for your memoir or mystery novel or short story. You're trying to figure out a topic to tackle. You're trying to add a quirk to your character. You're working through a plot twist. You're trying to make sense of difficult dialogue. You're stuck on a particular scene. You want to write something that will help someone else...
4 Powerful and Creative Ways to Cope with Stress
When we talk about stress, what often gets missed in the conversation is that we can do something about it, according to Natalie Foster, a masters-level trained art psychotherapist and marriage and family therapist who loves working with individuals, kids, and families living in Phoenix, Ariz.
How to Commute Inward
In her beautiful book Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life, Dani Shapiro writes, "The deeper I immerse myself in the details---and they are mostly pleasurable---of my domestic life, the greater the distance I must travel to get back to the place from which I work."
