Thank you quirkychick for your kind words. I feel quite passionately about emotional healing and mental health.
We live in a society that is fractured. People live lonely lives in crowded places; connections have been ruptured. Yet we absorb these broken ways of being, create our own coping mechanisms from childhood, and do the absolute best we can. For women, that often means a loss of identity and the absorption of patriarchal roles—the martyr, the slave, the pathological fixer. All the time pouring from an empty cup, leaving ourselves exhausted and emotionally fragile. This manifests within us as anxiety, depression, poor self-worth, rumination, worry, and a proneness to being triggered. All those processes leave no energy for our creativity, playfulness, and joy, and they eat up our calm.
I see many other women like this—eaten up by the desire to fix their loved ones, submerging their own needs and wants. We live in a society that tells women not to rock the boat, to keep sweet, be good, keep the peace, don't speak up, smile, be pretty, and never get old.
I have had a bellyful of all the destructive instructions I have been fed. I have broken my own shackles and built myself a healthier way of being.
quirkychick, you see the best in people; you can understand their points of view. These are admirable traits—you are empathetic and sensitive, with a good, loving heart. But you can still be your authentic self without damage. Vulnerability shows sensitivity, but that means boundaries are even more essential.
Boundaries allow us to love others more deeply, not less. They don't harden our hearts, but they keep us safe, and they make sure that we care for ourselves at least as well as we care for others.
I am not a psychotherapist, I am no expert in psychology, but I speak from lived experience.
The subject of mental health may seem outside the topic of this thread, but for me it is dead centre. My thoughts and emotions are my magical practice; they are intertwined, they are the same. As my healing has progressed, so my practice has deepened, becoming more powerful, more instinctive, more joyful.
I still have badlands to navigate; my healing continues. I still find myself pouring from an empty cup on some days, I still get dysregulated, I still find myself in anxiety rumination loops, and I still cry with overwhelm. But these times are now rare. And they also mean I am human. Those uncomfortable aspects are welcome within me—I gather and love them, and I show them and myself compassion. These are not failings; they are part of me, and most importantly, they come with a message. Strong emotions are sent by our subconscious mind to tell us something, to alert our focus, so when they arrive—and they will—know that they carry messages of healing and hope.