In yoga this morning, a student made a comment indicating she didn’t think she could enjoy the holidays this year in light of the recent elections. The week of the elections, I had a hard time processing the results. I found myself in a cycle of forgetting about them until something reminded me, sending a jolt of fear through my body as my mind conjured up images of a future reality that resembled a cross between The Handmaid's Tale, Idiocracy, and The Last of Us.

After recognizing that it's not sustainable for me to keep repeating that cycle, I decided to make it part of my meditation practice, which goes like this…

I jumped out of a moving airplane from 14,000 feet and felt nothing.

I was not scared or thrilled—I was completely indifferent. When I landed, I saw my friend who had jumped out of the plane minutes before me, hopping up and down and screaming with excitement.

I planned this skydive trip because I could tell something in me had shut down and I hoped the thrill of jumping out of a moving airplane would startle it awake, but it didn’t.

It can feel hard setting boundaries when it’s not something you’re used to. It feels like you’re being rigid and asking a lot of the other person.

This approach can leave you feeling frustrated and resentful when the other person doesn’t alter their behavior the way you want them to.

In truth, boundaries make no request of the other person, but are guidelines for how *you* engage.

I would staple this one to my forehead if I could. My defensiveness roadblocks me constantly.

Luckily, I know what to do with it when it shows up, so instead of holding me back I move through it quickly and enjoy better outcomes in my relationships.

I don’t write these posts from a high-and-mighty-I-got-it-all-figured-out place. I am an ongoing work in progress, just like you.

BUT, what I have is a treasure trove of tools that I’ve spent my life collecting to help you through areas of friction in your life.

I’m your shortcut.

When someone respects your boundaries it usually only takes one or two times of them bumping up against your boundaries before they adjust. Eventually, those boundaries feel effortless for you.

If, energetically, it feels like you’re using all of your strength to hold your line, it’s because the other person doesn't care about your boundaries. You're not being too rigid, they're not respecting your line in the sand.

Note of the difference.

This is not to say that we should stop dreaming or thinking big for ourselves—keep doing that for sure!!

This is more about how much we RESIST what-is.

Shadows develop when we run away from what-is.

Shadows haunt us and the more we resist their existence, the denser and more warped they get, the more ashamed of them we become, and the harder it gets to face them.

You are not alone in this.

Merriam Webster defines communication as "a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior."

However, our interpretation of those symbols, signs, and behavior can be very subjective.

I think about how much of my early adult life was constructed based on who I thought I was supposed to be and what I thought I was supposed to be doing.

I never took the time to consider my own wants and needs. The few times I was able to identify what they were, I labeled them impractical.

Have you ever pulled into your driveway and realized you have absolutely no recollection of how you got there? You don’t remember any turns in the road or stops you made. You can’t recall a single pedestrian, building, or even the route you took to get there. Your mind was somewhere else and your body completed the motion and took you home safely. Thank God, but how unnerving!

Do you do that in other areas of your life? How engaged are you on a daily basis?

To live “at-the-effect of our lives” means to be in a constant state of reacting to what’s in front of us without any personal sense of control. We tend to blame others for the position we find ourselves in, depend on them to validate us, and spend a lot of time trying to please them. Often times we counter this by being overly controlling which can leave us feeling even more trapped and reactive.

“Lazy” is a term I’ve used against myself my whole life. When I’m low energy I label it as lazy and chastise myself thinking a better person would have the energy to accomplish more. I have some story in my mind that I haven’t earned the right to slow down until I attain a particular level of accomplishment, which is an elusive target. 

Here's a truth that our society is set up to make you forget: You are perfection, incarnate. You are not broken, or fragmented, or separate from the Divine Energy that brought you here. You are ALL you will ever need to be, right now, as is. To know this is to honor your birthright, to live your purpose, and to transmit your gifts to others.

At 6 months old, my dog “Luna” was a stray wandering the streets of Sacramento on her own. One day, she stumbled upon a homeless guy in Oak Park who was epileptic and having a seizure and she stayed near him and licked him until the seizure ended. She followed him around for the rest of the day and although he enjoyed her company he knew he couldn’t take care of her, so he found a rope and tied her to the back of a stairwell in an apartment complex and sat across the street contemplating what to do with her. (I know this because a few months later he approached us and told me the story.) That stairwell led to my apartment door.

In my early 30’s, after ending a long and painful relationship with someone who did not deserve a morsel of my time, I met a man who was vibrant, engaging, self-aware, ambitious, and funny and the moment he expressed interest in me I ran for the hills.

How do your ideas of self-worth block you?

Here’s a call out to those of you who, like me, understood that certain emotions aren’t acceptable for you to feel or express and find yourself stuck in an in-between space that’s preventing you from experiencing life more fully. It’s OK for you to feel what you feel, they exist for a reason.

Here’s a call out to those of you who, like me, grew up too fast and who had to be so self-reliant that it prevented you from allowing yourself to be fully seen or known in your relationships. It’s time to let your people into your life. They want to know you!

I used to fear my power. I thought that if I let myself get too proud or too loud, others would roll their eyes behind my back and judge me for thinking I’m full of myself. Unconsciously, I made myself smaller, quiet, and more AGREEABLE because I feared that if I let myself get too big I’d lose the interpersonal connections that I craved.

While studying the inner-Shadow, I learned two (of many) very important distinctions that’ve liberated me from that limiting mindset:

When I was an adolescent, one of the worst things a girl could be called was conceited. Accepting a compliment, acknowledging an innate skill in a subject matter or sport, agreeing that you looked good in an outfit, overdressing for an occasion, or admitting it was reasonable for a crush to like you was all that it took to be labeled conceited, and once that term was attached to you it was hard to get away from its limitations. For those of us that weren’t rebellious enough to lean in and lay it on thicker, we played it safe by being humble which meant being complimentary when speaking of others and deprecating when speaking about ourselves.

The systems of self-protection we use when we are younger cement into belief systems as we age, which is why reclaiming the Golden Shadow is such an important part of inner growth—especially for women.

Many years ago, I was cruising in a car with my friend and updating her on my life in my typical self-disparaging way. She interrupted me and said something to the effect of, “I don’t know why you’re putting yourself down so much. Why are you taking all the blame? Can you tell me the story without putting yourself down?” I ignored her and continued talking. She pulled the car over to the side of the road and turned to me and said, “You talk this way about yourself all the time and it hurts me to hear it. This is what I love about you…” and then she rattled off a detailed list of wonderful attributes. I squirmed in my seat and tried to cut her off, “OK, I get it.” But she ignored me and kept speaking. Her list was comprehensive and powerful and I felt overwhelmed and started crying because I didn’t think I deserved the nice things she was saying.

Typically, when we talk about the inner-Shadow we are referring to negative aspects of ourselves that we reject, but the Golden Shadow