“My recipe for life is not being afraid of myself, afraid of what I think or of my opinions.” ~ Eartha Kitt

I just got off the phone with my sister.

She witnessed a terrible injustice today in her job as a social worker.

I look over at my daughter—so small, fragile and dependent upon protection despite her sassy, can-do attitude—and I’m struck square in the chest with the forceful realization that these types of injustices occur daily and hourly and over and over again.

And I might not be able to help (Lord knows my sister tries). I might not even be able to keep my own child safe (although not for lack of effort and perseverance), and this sickens me.

Yet, as I glance towards her curly hair and soft, peach-pink skin and large, intelligent, kind eyes, I see my success as a human being—in her tiny person, my whole life is given more meaning than every “A” that I earned in college or every mile that I pushed myself through when I ran or any amount of success that my writing will bring me.

Because the most important thing in a recipe for success is two-fold.

Initially, we need more than goals. We need hopes and dreams and sandcastles in the sky to build foundations underneath—and then we have to be open to the flowing, swirling, mutable way that life unfolds despite our best laid groundwork.

My own hopes and dreams have a fundamentally unchanged core, but much of what I want changes as I give myself permission to grow and shift and, in short, become wiser.

So, for me, my starter recipe for success looks something like this (you know, like a starter for bread dough…I digress):

A well-rounded cup of imagination.

We are at our best when we are inquisitive and capable of understanding that there is more to unearth than what we’ve been given to work with.

Several dashes of humor.

Maintaining a sense of humor gives us the confident foundation to stay malleable enough to go with life’s twists and turns—and fun is absolutely part of the successful journey.

Copious amounts of self-love.

 Yes, love in general is grand, but true love begins with loving ourselves.

If it’s been a long time since you’ve treated yourself with love, then take the baby step of having a gentler inner voice (the way that you would speak to a young child or a beloved friend).

A handful of fire.

 I’m a nice person. Sincerely, I am. However, my recipe calls also for the ability to stand firmly and tenaciously when I need to in my own convictions.

A pinch of cynicism.

Because it’s okay to insist on looking outside of the box and it’s more than okay to question and stay curious.

A shake or two of money.

We need money to live. As a chakra enthusiast, I often keep within the back pocket of my mind that my spiritual self is nurtured and nourished by an equally practical self that wants to care for my basic human needs.

(You know, that whole a tree has roots thing.)

A hunk of willing to get dirty.

And I don’t mean playing dirty or anything undesirable. Rather, we do need to remember that if we want to hang out in sandcastles in the clouds, that someone has to get a little mussy building that foundation.

 A couple smidgens of forgiveness.

 Successful people will fall. More, they expect to fall and to fail.

It’s wonderful to have the aforementioned fire and tenacity to get back up, but it’s even better to forgive yourself for not living up to expectations.

One thing that I find helpful is to recognize that my falls are teaching tools and learning experiences towards my larger success rather than simple, unnecessary set-backs and obstacles.

And your recipe might ask for varying amounts of these ingredients, but that’s the best part about being a master chef—you can create your own new, brilliant—and previously unknown—recipes.

 “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” ~Henry David Thoreau

Photo credit: thephotographymuse/Flickr.

This article was first published by elephant journal.

The post Recipe for a Successful Life. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

Visit here for more of The Caged Girls.

Chapter 29.

My pen rolls across the paper—fluidly—and my words come out almost sloppily. (It’s not my usual, preferred ballpoint pen.)

My fingerprint-laden aviator sunglasses—the ones I’ve had for nearly a decade, with gold rims and the lenses that make the world appear brighter—rest in the cup-holder next to me, to my left.

The warmed car seat beneath my thick, off-white winter peacoat helps me to relax.

My rose gold and turquoise ring—a family piece that’s circulated within us for over 100 years—falls slightly to the right as my thumb and first two fingers press into the firm rubber grip of the black pen, gliding smoothly along my decomposition book.

My cheek itches suddenly and I pull down the mirrored visor to look.

Distracted, I notice the way my dark brown hair wisps out of the copper barrettes that pull it back on either side, creating a few haphazard chunks around my temples.

My forehead has maybe three shallow lines running across, broken in the middle and making it, more accurately, six.

My fine eyebrows arch high and I admire the perfection of their shape (thanks to a recent salon visit).

My eyes have light imprints of sleep-deprivation underneath them that appear somewhat like purple-tinted shadows. Above these shadows, I observe that today my eyes are more blue than green. This changes easily, though—due supposedly to my black Irish ancestry—and I trace the yellow that faintly edges my pupils, lending to this color changeability.

I hear the trunk pop open and smile intuitively at the sound of my husband returning to our little silver Jetta.

I feel the soft, grey light hit the surfaces of the car interior and I hear, once again, the sound of my daughter’s music playing through the speakers. I’m no longer alone inside of my mind and, although it takes me a moment to collect myself and shake free from my thought stream, I smile again; knowing that life isn’t meant to be continuously lived inside of ourselves.

He climbs into the driver’s seat and reaches for my hand. After squeezing it between his much larger thumb and forefinger he pulls away from the two, diagonal yellow lines—and towards the pink and peach setting sun.

Chapter 30.

My fluttering heart stopped beating.

At least it felt that way—time standing still and you swear that you can see a humming bird stopped, mid-flight over your shoulder.

And then it ends and time starts up again, but it’s still slower for you—making the speed of the world overwhelming in its unnecessarily rushed and hurried pace.

When something stops you in your tracks—a loss, horrible news, a heart-cutting blow—it doesn’t seem fair that life shouldn’t pause while we grieve and figure out how to collect ourselves in order to stand back up.

These incongruous places in life can feel hollow and desperately alone—and it’s when we feel hollow and alone that anorexia can become an unfortunately welcome friend.

But anorexia is absolutely a frenemy—not a true friend. It doesn’t make hardships easier to deal with—it adds on to them; it becomes a distraction and, if we’re being honest, this is what we’re really seeking.

So, although I’m that rare once-anorexic bird who is completely recovered, I have to pay careful attention to myself—and to my heartbeat—when life deals me merciless challenges—because I know that I’m not immune from turning to an eating disorder to cope—no, I’m much more likely, considering that this is exactly what I did for years.

And there’s another cutesie saying that occasionally floats around the internet and pisses me off: fat is not a feeling. Because fat is absolutely a feeling—with an eating disordered person, that’s a perfect description of what it is.

And when, finally, we are ready to move forward from this night-terror of a coping mechanism—to begin picking up our pieces and moving a tiny bit closer towards our healing—we first need to admit what emotions we’re avoiding by feeling fat instead.

Anxiety?

Depression.

Loneliness?

Fear.

What is it that’s going on within the framework of our lives that we are trying so hard to avoid that it’s easier to abuse our bodies? (Note: this is where therapy can be helpful, within these early stages of the healing process.)

For me, I’m usually avoiding something that’s severely upsetting and that I’m not in control of—a situation with a family member, an illness, a death—and my eating disorder gives me that wonderful, false semblance of control.

More, it gives me something else to focus my mind and emotions on—my caged, needy body.

Chapter 31.

My fingers work clear, thick shampoo through my hair.

I close tear-rimmed eyes as white lather spills down my back.

Warm—almost hot—water runs down the length of my body, to my feet and down the drain near my toes—and I wordlessly beg for it to wash away anything that I don’t want to hold onto anymore.

I don’t want my guilt. The soapy water can have the fragments of my broken heart too.

I’m also ready to leave behind my anal-retentive need for authority—that piece of me that wants every minute, self-created element to fall in line with a cruelly fictitious plan that’s never played out correctly anyways.

Because I’m not in control—not wholly. Rather, I’m in control of the way that I react.

I’m in charge, also, of my actions. (Which reminds me of a few other things that I’d like the hot water to wash down this drain).

My fingers today don’t clickity-clack, clickity-clack. No, they sound more like pitter-patter, pitter-patter—light and not aggressive; softly hesitant.

Because I don’t mind sharing my intimate feelings—I want to explain how I broke out of my cage and how I don’t even keep it on my shelf for rainy days anymore—yet this doesn’t mean that I always love revisiting my past.

And that’s the strangest part about no longer being a caged girl, like my former self—the one who lived, at times, small and contented and, in others, angry and hostile—she doesn’t feel like me anymore. And when I step back in time and put on her fragile glass slippers and wear them around to see how well they fit now, I discover that, like Cinderella, they’re still perfect, and it scares me more than anything—the reality that I really was her and that she’s not just some character in a story.

Pitter-patter, pitter-patter—I want to tell her that she’s no longer welcome in my home with the sunny, open windows, but I know better—she’s more likely to come snooping—peeping—around if I ban her from my heart.

So I content myself, now, with those, thankfully, rare occasions when my heart stops beating and I can count how many times a hummingbird’s wings beat up and down, up and down, and I content myself, too, with my more reckless emotions and my upsetting human struggles, because it’s when I ignore them that she threatens to move back in—and I like my free—albeit humanly imperfect—life.

And I might not be able to stop my churning heart, nor the busied world from stalling, but I can count the pulsing of my own wings—I can feel the pumping of my reality and I can accept it, even when it doesn’t ideally mirror my quietly quaking soul.

Photo credits: tanahelene/Flickr; Geraint Rowland/Flickr.

The post The Caged Girls: Flying Above the Storm. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

I hope this isn’t a disappointment, but this particular article is about one of the most sacred relationships that’s ever existed: the friendship between women.

From Ruth and Naomi to the Ya-Yas, some of the best stories ever written have been about the power and depth of the connection between female friends, and for a valid reason—women who have amazing friends can’t imagine life without one another.

And I’ve been thinking a lot about the special ladies in my life because I’m in a spot that makes my friendships exceedingly difficult to spend time on.

My family’s needs—and my own—leave almost no room for phone conversations, much less frequent girls’ nights out. Plus, many of my besties live far away and, well, friendship is something that needs tending to in order to continually blossom, much like a romantic relationship.

So here’s a short list I’ve compiled about how to love another woman—and how to offer ourselves as best friends.

1. Judge less, listen more.

Placing our own life’s experiences and personality traits onto a friend’s situation is not ideal.

Yes, it’s often nearly impossible to not take mental notes about how we would do things differently, but my suggestion is this: don’t only verbally judge a friend less, offer yourself the freedom to listen without needing to assess the information.

This is different than a friend hurting herself or someone else, and this is also taking into consideration that a friend is a healthy, positive influence in my life. Having these crucial requirements met—people are not the same.

Sure, I might never have said that out loud to my mother-in-law, but we choose the friends we do because they compliment us, not because they mirror us.

Enjoy these differences and try to really listen to her more and talk back—and even think critically and responsively—less often.

2. Have fun together.

Just like romantic partners need to go out and have fun together from time to time—in order to be reminded of why they like spending time with each other in the first place—it’s equally important for girlfriends to have fun together.

Not everything in a friendship has to be serious and soul-baring, and it also doesn’t have to be elaborate, expensive or overly time-consuming. (Seeing that many of my friends are young moms, we don’t have that as an option anyways.)

For example, one of my favorite things to do is meet my best friend for a yoga class. We both get to practice our yoga, and if we have time we’ll grab a coffee together.

Speaking of coffee, I often meet my other best friend for coffee before getting our kids from school. We usually have only 15 minutes to interact, but this time is hugely important in my life (I realize this when I have to skip out).

3. Look at her.

We get used to barely looking at the people that are part of our daily lives.

Make sure to take time to pause and look into a friend’s eyes when talking with her. Notice how she’s standing. Typically these little things can inform us about what a friend might not be saying.

4. Touch her.

People need physical touch. Especially when a friend is single or her partner works a lot—frankly, many of us need more human touch than we get.

Don’t be afraid to hug and kiss a friend on her cheek.

5. Be perceptive.

A good friend is not necessarily someone who makes over-the-top gestures. A good friend is the one who knows how I like my coffee.

She knows that when I haven’t been answering texts this means that I’m either upset or busy, so she checks in on me—possibly making “too many” calls and sending several messages (and she knows that it’s not “too many” for me).

And a good friend understands that it’s these little things that make you special to her and vice versa—and you celebrate these quirks together.

6. She can stand up to me.

An ideal friend is someone who, absolutely, doesn’t critique me unnecessarily. On the other hand, my dearest friends can tell me if they think I’m making a mistake or they can offer a piece of wisdom that they think would help me.

For example, I was finally having to deal with teaching my daughter to apologize awhile back and my friend chimed in, letting me know that a much healthier way to do this is to show young kids to ask others “are you okay?” rather than say “I’m sorry.” This teaches empathy instead of reinforcing guilt. Good to know!

And the best friendships? When I can reciprocate this. We’re on equal ground and we respect each other enough to be honest when necessary and no one is regularly feeling bull-dozed by the stronger personality.

7. Forgive her.

She will make mistakes.

I will make mistakes.

Everyone on God’s green earth will make mistakes.

If a friend is wonderful enough to be in my life, then I need to know to forgive her and, better yet, help her forgive herself too.

8. Stay out of her other relationships.

It’s fine and dandy to have friends in common—some amazing friendship circles work this way.

Still, I need to keep in mind that just because I don’t happen to like Suzie Q, she’s allowed to. I should stay out of her other friendships when they don’t involve me, and if I respect her, then I can respect the people she chooses to bring into her life, other than me.

Honestly—I don’t know how some women make it through life without girlfriends. I know that life, for me, would not be worth living.

“Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow.” ~ Swedish Proverb

Photo credits: Valerie Everett/Flickr.

This article was first published by elephant journal.

The post 8 Tips How to Love a Woman, From A Woman. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

Part Seven of The Caged Girls: How to Grow Wings (Chapters 20 through 24).

Chapter 20

I’ve never been happier in my life, than when I was pregnant with you.

This doesn’t mean that my life was perfect.

I had difficult people running in and out, under the guise of challenging me to grow. I struggled to earn a reputation as not just a good yoga teacher, but a great one. I wasn’t rolling in money and our bathroom toilet frequently backed up—the only one in the house, mind you.

Yes, I had morning sickness—or, more accurately, all-day sickness—making the frequent joke that this term must have been made up by a man.

I taught classes at six in the morning, went back to teach at noon, sometimes subbed in between and then regularly subbed in the evenings. In short, I worked a lot and life wasn’t faultless—but, still, I know without a shadow of shaky idealistic doubt that I was positively the happiest I’ve ever been, when I was pregnant with you.

But then life doesn’t always happen according to plan.

Struggles that seem like they’ll break you rise and shine and start each new day and you watch the man you love more than anyone in this world—besides you, my dear child—dissolve into fits of anguish.

I had forgotten entirely what it felt like to be a shell of a woman.

I’d let go of that eating disordered girl years before—just turned my back on her and walked away. However, it wasn’t until I’d hit the largest obstacle of my life to date—without resorting to anorexia—that I knew I was truly healed, and I learned another lesson, too: that turning your back on something and letting it go are two entirely different things.

(P.S. That’s me at five months pregnant with you.)

Chapter 21

Hot tears stream down your temples.

They run in a quiet yet small stream that remind you of riverbeds made of black Egyptian kohl eyeliner.

Your hot tears trickle onto your bed where you lie on your right side in the shape of an L, bent at your hip creases.

You are letting go.

You tell people that you are not a crier. You know that this only partially true and that we all cry, some of us just more—or less—willingly than others.

Ironically, you also consider yourself a fragile human being, but this fragility has encouraged you to move through your life with a nicely-built, thick shell—a shell that you falsely think is impenetrable to outside attack.

And you know that you are quite vulnerable in reality. Over time, you’ve encouraged yourself to drop your mask—watching it shatter and crack into fragments—only occasionally gluing it haplessly back together to don it once more.

You wear a mask of ego, of confidence and of an easy social butterfly—and sometimes you are these things—it’s not a mask, it’s the real you.

Your eyes are clamped shut and you hear a rustling at the edge of your bed where you still lie sideways in an L.

The soft whisper, whisper of movement is your tiny daughter as she comes in gracefully—delicately—to wave bye-bye to you before Daddy takes her to pre-school. The tears fall harder—now less of a quiet stream and more of a gathering storm.

You hear your husband in the kitchen, moving quickly and capably, to fill your last-minute request of child prep and school drop-off because your headache makes you feel that you cannot face the muted light of the cloudy day, much less the bright faces of other children and their bustling parents.

You’re thankful; thankful for a man who so lovingly steps in and for a daughter who, with your eyes re-closed, you feel gingerly brushing your hair for you—it’s a loving gesture from one female to another, even though one is only a girl of barely three.

You’re grateful for—no, mesmerized by—the old soul that inhabits a body of such miniature proportions.

She hugs you gently, and looks deeply into your wet eyes as she pulls away. She smiles and runs after her Daddy as he opens the front door.

The door shuts and you let your tears fall heavily onto your turquoise quilt.

This is the anatomy of letting go.

You saw your massage therapist yesterday and she released a spot underneath your shoulder-blade that you’re not sure has ever known relaxation—it’s uncomfortably close to your heart.

You drift into such a state of peacefulness that your skilled therapist notes your tranquility out loud. She tells you tostay there, so you do.

You observe later that the release has moved up from your shoulders—from the back of your heart—and into your throat.

Your throat becomes irritated and you lose your voice, much to the disappointment of your duet-loving daughter.

Still, you recognize that release—that letting go—isn’t meant to be comfortable.

You’ve held onto these emotions so forcefully that your muscles have knotted in places and your jaw can’t help but clench in your sleep. You dream of crumbling teeth.

And you slept well last night—much better than usual despite your aggravated throat—and you woke with a headache so fierce that you thought you might throw up.

Your head pounds while the space behind the back of your heart is strangely calm and still relaxed.

Your voice is still gone and there’s an enormous pressure between your ears, but you know that this is simply your clung-too past leaving your aching body.

You clumsily find your phone and call your doctor, making an appointment that gives you just enough time for a hot shower.

You know that she’ll most likely tell you that you have another sinus infection—you’re almost positive—and, yet, it doesn’t matter because you know that this is simply how it feels to let go.

This is the anatomy of liberation.

You pat your dripping hair with a warm blue towel after turning off the shower. You throw on yoga clothes, not because you think you’ll practice in them today as normal, but because they—in their own funny way—are an armor of a different kind—one of health and wellness, of happiness and ease.

You know that your pounding headache won’t last forever, although it worsens when you bend over to tie your jogging shoes. You know that it won’t last forever because you’ve become both too tired and too strong to hold onto your suitcase of burdens anymore.

It’s now your turn to open the front door, and, looking over your shoulder at your daughter’s pint-sized pink and white table and matching chairs, you visualize her waving bye-bye and do the same, and though your hand doesn’t move, you are saying good-bye—and you know that you’ve just made space to carry what lies ahead.

Chapter 22

I sit stiffly at my old dining table.

I feel rigid.

My fingers are pale from the lack of winter sun kissing it and my nails are painted a rich, dark blue. My ruby ring—shaped like a slice of the moon—is large and heavy and it doesn’t turn while my fingers race across my laptop keyboard.

My skin is not only pale, but it’s dry from the lack of humidity in the air. Strangely, however, I’m not ready for the end of winter to come.

Others are counting down days, while we sit patiently or irritably within this Midwestern season of arctic cold and snow accumulation. Yet I feel as if this parched season of chilliness settles perfectly into the stillness—the tiredness—of my bones.

My fingers move more cautiously than normal. The words don’t want to come, because I don’t want to anchor into my beating, churning heart.

This morning my tiny lady and I drove to her music class and I purposefully—and unusually—left my sunglasses off. And it wasn’t just the several inches of white that had fallen and then stuck the night before, but the ironically dry road that reflected the sun so brightly that it reminded me of an ocean—a sea of blinding yellow-peach light that felt like I was driving my little silver Volkswagen into a strange morning dream and not towards a shore of store fronts and rush hour traffic.

What hit me most about that gorgeous wash of early sunlight on the street was that I felt like it was washing me. 

A euphoric calm penetrated my depths, as I sat on my heated car seat with my hands at ten and two o’clock. My daughter was quiet in the backseat, looking out the window.

And as I’m driving and this sensation is beginning to approach me on a conscious level, I recognize that the song playing through my car stereo has the refrain “big hard sun.”

I listen, I drive and I feel like everything will be okay, even though mentally and externally it seems that life is not coming together the way I have falsely—rigidly—designed.

We pulled into our destination—a muck and slush-covered parking lot next to the music building—and the tranquility dropped away, but I held onto that indescribable internal stabilizing and settling as the day wore on; as I eventually put on my sunglasses; as I drove home with a different song playing in the background—and as my emotions became more and more turbulent.

 Chapter 23.

The family heirloom ring that I wear most days on my right fourth finger twists and turns as I type. The words do not want to come out.

Normally they burst forth with such a wave of passionate explosion that I can’t contain them, even when I sincerely give effort to doing so.

My right hand hovers above the laptop keyboard, moving quite a lot even though I’m willing it to hold it still.

Nerves are a funny thing.

I’ve been up since three a.m.

I awoke next to my daughter in pink princess sheets—her breath softly filling up my inhales; her delicate sleep sighs making me quake with love. I tip toe out of her room; shutting the door quietly but it still creaks into place anyway. I move methodically through making myself coffee; opening up the laptop.

I realize fairly early on that I don’t want to write about feeling this way because how do you describe anxiety as anything besides its unpleasant play of tangled emotions, sitting in the base of your stomach, making you want to vomit before you’ve had anything to eat or drink.

It hits me suddenly that this one person is my home; that this one, fragile human life has been my home base.

And how do you tell someone, in their tender earthbound skin, that they are your gravity; your weight; your lifeblood? How do you make enough homemade chicken soup to soothe an always breaking and repairing human soul? How can words not fail—despite all of their glory and aspiration—to convey something as unlimited, as unquenchable and as indefinable as love when their own shapes have beginning strokes and ends?

We tell people that it will be okay and that all things work out for a reason, but is this really true? Or are we just filling the uncomfortable space of the uncertainty of life with our flat and hollow mortal words?

I will not pour emptiness into the space just to watch it fill up.

But then I find myself shyly whispering it’s going to be okay.

Because, as it turns out, I’m not filling space with shallow words—I’m filling up another’s heart with love from my own.

Chapter 24.

We hold feelings and experiences in the tissues of our bodies—this is another belief and reality of a yoga practitioner.

I don’t doubt this because I observe the way I clench my jaw, my abdomen, and how I grip throughout my hips when I’m stressed or anxious.

Our hearts and our emotional beings are intrinsically connected with our physical selves.

I notice that I can work so hard to mentally get myself out of a bad mood or an intellectual funk and then I get onto my mat and flow and breathe and be and it just disappears all by itself, by working my muscles in and out of yoga poses.

And as an extremely sensitive, empathetic person, my yoga practice has played a crucial role in my self-love and my willingness to want to get out of my cage—to want to grow up into a strong, whole woman instead of living as a broken little girl.

But that’s the strange thing about healing and about love—we don’t always want to get well.

We don’t always want to be whole. It can be much easier living as a hollow, breakable individual because we’re not filled up with the gooey, mushy, penetrable parts of us that are never immune from pain; from hurt.

And the anorexic attempts to break herself first—a preemptive strike; a self-defense.

It doesn’t work.

Instead, she lives in a constantly broken state of pain and every small, inevitable blow of life comes crashing down with full-force blunt trauma that has the speed and power to cripplingly wound rather than temporarily disable.

What begins as self-salvation from a terror too large for her to handle turns into her Achilles’ heel; making everything that comes her way nearly impossible to manage.

She digs herself into her own grave, even though that was never her intention. Rather, her aim was to set herself free—to fly high above her worries and her sorrows—but now she has nowhere to go but down, down, down or up at a nearly vertical angle.

So what does she do?

Does she keep burying herself?

Or does she grow wings, so that she can finally fly, as she’d originally tried to do, but in vain.

Photo credits: Author’s own; Arwen Abenstern – KWP/Flickr.

The post The Caged Girls: How to Grow Wings. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

I’m sitting here realizing something: that I will never, ever be able to let go.

Ever.

Letting go can bite me.

For real.

But I need to forgive.

I just sat down to talk with my best friend (my husband) and this is what I told him I thought forgiveness is.

It’s not letting go (because letting go can bite me), but it is this:

Forgiveness is never forgetting.

I cannot help that I remember more than I want to sometimes.

Forgiveness is acceptance.

It’s not saying that anything is okay, or not okay, for that matter—it’s not passing a judgment. Instead, forgiveness is admitting that it happened, that it occurred and that this might not be okay because…

Forgiveness isn’t denial.

It’s not pretending that “you’re a better person” for it or that “it was meant to be,” because that’s bullshit.

Still, forgiveness is moving forward.

That was the crux of what I said to him (my glorious husband-best-friend): it’s moving on, with what happened as a reality of our past.

And then, he said this: “But it keeps coming back to me.”

Ugh. So true.

It haunts me.

It visits me in my sleep.

My mistakes—the things that, really, have made me who I am and who I’m happy to be.

All those years spent hating my body, and starving myself because I thought in some odd way that it could starve my emotional self too; and that my old wounds would somehow wither and die along with my shrinking skin.

The sharp, dagger-words that I wish I could take back, but that I can’t.

The harsh withdrawal from someone I love, in order to first save myself.

All of that and more—all of the ghosts.

Because the past might be accepted or, further, even moved on from, but what about when it revisits, like a ghost—like a phantom of Christmas past?

I saw a ghost in my house last night. Twice.

I do not believe in ghosts. Rather, I’m not sure what the hell I believe in, but I’ve seen them more than once—so there’s that. And I saw a ghost in my house last night on my child’s video monitor while she slept. Twice.

I’ve seen ghosts before—although I don’t believe in them.

(It’s funny what happens to you, when you don’t believe.)

Once, in a farther corner of the world from where I currently sit typing, I saw a dog reclining in the sunny spot on the carpet in front of a bay window—right where a dog would actually lie. I was cradling my hot mug of tea in my bare hands and walking myself into the other room, to also sit.

I saw that dog like it was right there—a spaniel with spots just so, and of just this color. I had already seen this vision before, too. The dog had run into our parlor room (it was an old-fashioned brick house in the middle-of-nowhere New Mexico—which we adored, by the way).

I recall standing agape and holding the hinged screen door ajar—a dog just ran into my house! And then I turned, and it was gone.

And let me, equally, tell this: we received a gift from our New Mexican home’s former tenant.

It was a beautifully framed, old photograph of the house after it was first built—and there, in the foreground, was a woman holding a dog’s paw as it stood on its hind legs, shaking its hand. The dog was identical to the one I’d seen and felt in that house on more than one occasion.

(For those of you who have ever loved a dog, it will come as no surprise that if a ghost could exist, a dog deserves to be one too.)

I didn’t want to re-hash my spectral tale, but I must. Because the past is not irrelevant—or even invisible—and this is how we forgive:

We remember.

We never let go.

But we live on—we hold our former experiences and our former selves in the palms of our hands like apparitions that we can’t abandon—and we walk on.

We get out of our own minds, and our own prior experiences, and we live the fuck on.

Period.

And I’d love to insert an inspiring forgiveness quote here, but they all suck.

However, I’ll offer this up:

Letting go can bite me—it’s not going to happen—but my present will not now, nor will it ever, be determined by my past.

This article was first published by elephant journal.

The post (Letting Go Can Bite Me.) This is How We Forgive. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

Daily Mini-Resolutions

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. Why? Because I think we should be working on self-improvement and overall life satisfaction on a regular basis, rather than on some arbitrary date.

Having said that—in re-thinking my anti-resolution stance—I recently realized that I practice mini-resolutions every single day.

Here is a list of 10 of those things.

 1. Open your heart.

Don’t let life make you cold and callous. Remember that to truly enjoy life you have to be open to the reality that sometimes it hurts too. Keep opening your heart to love.

 2. Give sincere compliments.

I’ve blogged before about how our society is so critical that people often don’t even know how to receive compliments. I’m not suggesting you go around throwing out so many compliments that they become meaningless, but sometimes letting someone know that you notice them in a positive way is exactly what that person needed—and that positivity will come back to you.

 3. Put effort into life.

My husband often says that people have a sense of entitlement, that they think they’re owed success or happiness. Guess what? You’re not. The reality is that life isn’t fair; happiness often takes working at having a positive outlook and mindset and worthwhile success comes from effort. However, I truly believe that God, the universe, or whatever you believe in, helps people that help themselves.

 4. Be honest, but not hurtful.

Honesty should be your only policy, but not when this honesty serves to make you feel better while hurting someone else. Learn when to be open and forthright—and when to keep your yapper shut.

 5. Sing.

Yes, sing. Singing clears our energy and brings lightness to our hearts. It really doesn’t matter if you’re a good singer. Just close the door, turn on your favorite song and belt out a tune—I promise you’ll feel invigorated.

 6. Play.

Every single day you should be doing something fun. Even if you have the craziest day at work or your kids are sick, there’s always one minute to joke and laugh with your spouse, to read a few pages of an inspiring book or to simply play along with your children (trust me, kids know how to have fun). Even making dinner can be enjoyable—if you have the right attitude.

 7. Drink water.

I love water—a lot. If you don’t like water, too bad, drink it anyway.

 8. Quit reading the news.

All right, I’m certainly not saying that we should become uneducated drones, but how often do you read unnecessarily damaging headlines—about depressing things that you can’t change or that don’t really affect you—and you feel like crap afterwards? So stop. Put down your phone or the TV remote and, I don’t know, sing a song instead.

 9. Hug.

Hugging is so underrated. Hugs help you become happy and relaxed almost instantly. Too often the people that we love become ordinary faces that we don’t spend enough time loving in basic human ways, like hugging.

 10. Forgive.

Almost every day presents us with challenging people or situations. These people and opportunities are put in our way because they serve to make us better people—if we allow it. So stop carrying old baggage around, and open yourself to the notion that every minute provides you the chance to start again—regardless of the date. Let yourself move forward—without the weight of burdens that don’t serve your best self.

While I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions, I definitely do believe that every day can bring us closer to our highest, happiest selves; so consider trying these 10 small things on a regular basis—because it’s these little steps that get you where you want to be.

If you like this article, check out:

The Best Day of Your Life: A Guide to Transforming the Ordinary Into the Extraordinary.

Photo: John Templeton/Flickr.

This article was first published on elephant journal.

The post 10 Things You Should Do Every Day. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.