1. You have a role to play: love people who need to be loved.
2. You can find peace in the wild animals that rampage in your chest.
3. Your hands and feet are roots, built for clinging to the earth and sticking around.
4. A heart that feels too sensitive for this world is exactly what the world needs. Things softer than us have found ways to thrive, not just survive or exist.
5. The worlds inside you are longing to be made reality.
6. Everything that is pulled apart will be put back together; everything broken will be made whole.
7. The beauty in the world often comes from scars. The canyons were formed by the earth being cut straight through, the mountains by enormous collisions.
8. You are made of the same blood and bones and elements as everyone else—you belong on the earth as much as anyone.
9. There are bands you will love that have not even formed yet, novels that will hit you straight in the heart that haven’t been written yet.
10. There are dog breeds you haven’t petted yet, trees in your city you haven’t identified yet, coffee shops you haven’t visited yet.
11. To fall in love, with a person, an idea, an art form, a city, a song, a hobby.
12. Hard times will cycle through, but so will the cicadas on summer evenings, so will the trees painting the landscape in fall.
13. Your worth isn’t determined by your Instagram feed, by the cruel things people say to you, by how ignored or forgotten you might feel. Your worth is inherent and infinite.
14. Grace is more powerful than shame and guilt. You are not defined by your failures, your shortcomings, your flaws.
15. Hope is just as real as hopelessness.
16. Help is available—you are not stuck like this.
17. There are people who love you, even if it doesn’t feel like it.
18. Fresh starts and second chances are endless. You have time to dream new dreams and pursue them.

[Read more…]

Do you ever feel too heavy for the world? Not in a scale way, but in a heaviness that won’t let go of your heart way?My friend Ethan says some people are born with a weight, and I think he’s right. And I think I’m one of those people.

Are you? [Read more…]

Everything you never wanted to be, everything you hoped to become, everything you never thought possible either because it sounded too good or sounded too painful. You can be everything.

Because you are here. You are alive. And that is enough.

It’s good to have goals. It’s good to go after what you want. It’s good to dream. [Read more…]

If the holidays are hard for you. If they’re filled with ghosts. If you’re hurting or haunted or barely holding on.I hope you can feel what you feel and know that it’s ok to feel it.

These are the holy days, and there is space for suffering in holiness. There is space for hope, too. And there is space for you.

—

There’s something about winter that encourages vulnerability.

Maybe it’s the constant layering and unlayering of clothes that gives you practice opening up.

Or the realization that while your body is frozen your heart still longs and hopes and loves and that these things somehow are just as true as your fingers and toes and ears.

Or maybe it’s simply the need to fill the silence that the bugs and birds once filled.

I’m not sure what it is. But on a walk on a cold night, I swear I could heat every home with the fire of my honesty, conduct choirs of singing spirits and lights with the truth pouring out my hands.

And yet, despite the weather, being vulnerable is still hard for me.

Is it hard for you? Do you think maybe it’s supposed to be hard? [Read more…]

When the ice was too thin to walk on, my grandpa would lie down flat and slide his body onto the lake so he could go fishing.

When the weather got colder and the ice thicker, he could walk upright. When it got warmer, he could take a boat.

It was the change of seasons that brought the most uncertainty. The times of transition that brought him to the ground.

And in those times, survival meant lying down. Staying alive meant moving forward gently. [Read more…]

This is a screenshot of two words that appeared next to each other in a word cloud graphic on my crisis counselor dashboard. The graphic shows some of the most common words that have popped up in my conversations with texters.

Everything hurt.

I know it was a random computer generation that put these words together, but it struck me as being particularly poignant and poetic. [Read more…]

We spend so much time warring with the things we don’t like about ourselves, about our lives. We rage against our ghosts.

You can see this in our language. We struggle with depression and anxiety. We fight to get over heartbreak. We battle thoughts of suicide or self-harm or self-hate.

Sometimes I wonder if all this fighting isn’t hurting us more, if the violence isn’t taking its toll.

Sometimes I wonder if instead of fighting, if we’d be better off welcoming depression or heartbreak or hardship with a handshake of peace. Befriending the things that hurt us. Loving the enemies inside us. [Read more…]

You will inherit the dirt. And you will inherit the trees. And you will inherit the tomatoes and lettuce and raspberries.

Because the earth is your inheritance. For the breaking. For the lonely nights. For your heart that feels too soft, too big, too buried.

The earth is your inheritance, and all it contains. The wind, the whispers, the warmth. Everything that pulses and prods and pulls you apart or puts you back together. All of it is yours.

All of it is yours.

—

“You’re not alone.”

We hear this a lot. But is it true? Is it always true?

Because sometimes it doesn’t feel like it is. I know some people feel alone. They don’t have friends. Their families aren’t supportive. They’ve been abandoned and abused and forgotten. They feel like they don’t have anyone.

Are those people alone?

If you feel that way, are you alone?

I know it can feel like you are.

But you’re not. You’re not alone. Here are six reasons why: [Read more…]