*Note: This blog post originally appeared in the October Letter that went out to Luminous Leanings subscribers. I rarely share these insights on the blog, but I felt this one was important. To get the Letter in your inbox monthly, sign up here!
Oh, Dear Ones, I’m in it right now. Grieving the loss of a precious grandmother. Juggling flights home, funeral plans, and death logistics with pre-planned visits from friends, and no paid time-off from either of my jobs. All the while, trying to carve out time for stillness and healing.
When I first learned of her death, it was in the quiet of the early morning before Jon rises. Just me and Tucker (our cat) and the sunrise. I sat on the couch with my coffee and let the tears come. It dawned on me, my self-care practice has prepared me for tragedy. My body and spirit simply knew what to do, as I had been carving these self-compassionate neural pathways for quite some time.
I listened to my sobs and felt them deep within me. I set an intention to clear my day and really feel the grief wash over me. And that’s what I did. After sending an email to my boss, and sending a chat to my fellow bartenders to see about getting my shifts covered at the brewery, I sat on my meditation cushion and called my family. Then I lit some candles and burned some incense at my altars, rolled out my yoga mat, and practiced yoga (this Yoga for Grief practice from Yoga for Adriene). I talked to her directly, and felt her spirit’s love and freedom.
As I blew out the candles, it came to me to say aloud, “We come from love and we return to love.” Life and death are a mystery, but I know this to be true.
I watched the leaves fall from the trees and reminded myself that tears are medicine. I took a walk to a park filled with cottonwood trees near my house, sat on the ground and read poetry. As the sun waned, I drove to the grocery and bought ingredients for the comfort food I was craving: ramen and pad thai. I came home and prepared the ramen with coconut milk, soft boiled eggs, and spicy sriracha. Definitely not the food of my ancestors, but a dish that always serves to soothe and warm my soul.
In the days since, I’ve carried this gentle reminder with me – there is wisdom in the dying time. Internalized capitalism transmits the beliefs that productivity should never cease and we should DO until we die. The Celtic tradition of my ancestors, on the other hand, called the fall the “dying time” and the winter the “dreaming time.” And it seems so fitting to me. Of course we need the Yin of rest, darkness, healing, even grief to counterbalance the Yang of summer’s activity, life, and labor. The light is waning, days are shorter, and the plants perform dormancy as their energy goes downward into their roots, causing summer’s fruits and flowers to die.
We are a culture yearning for rest, for permission to pause. For the darkness of winter to cover our strained eyes and bring us relief. Grief and death are more pieces of the life cycle that our society resists, rejects and turns away from. We suffer because we know, deep down, that – to resist death is to resist nature and life itself. It’s to resist what is inevitably coming for each of us. But our ancestors knew how to die and grieve. The earth surely knows how. And there are still cultures that celebrate death as a part of life, choosing to remember those who have passed rather than pushing them out of their memory as a defense mechanism from pain (Dia de los Muertos comes to mind).
It’s really important to create meaningful ritual and ceremony with one’s community after death (as with all rites of passage in life). I did have the opportunity to write my grandmother’s eulogy, which my father will read at the funeral tomorrow. And my sister and I will sing “I’ll Be Seeing You,” as made famous by Billie Holiday. This song was on my heart and mind so strongly the days after she died. When our parents asked us to choose a song to sing, I told my sister she should have the honor since my grandmother and she shared a connection over music. The next morning I woke up singing, “I’ll Be Seeing You,” as it was still on my mind. I checked my phone and saw I had received a text from my sister with pictures of the sheet music. “I found it!” she said. Of course, it was the same song – “I’ll Be Seeing You.” So it feels very fitting, and like her wish for us.
As I sit here in the Dallas airport, between my flight from Albuquerque and my flight to Louisville, I set my intention for the days ahead surrounded by family and grief.
I intend to honor and say goodbye to my “Memaw” in the ways that feel most authentic to me.
I intend to be a beacon of light and love to members of my family, even those who are handling grief in a particularly painful way.
And I intend to care for myself and cultivate even deeper self-compassion and connection to the Divine through the process.
Grief is exhausting and expresses itself sometimes suddenly in unexpected ways. If there ever was a time for self-love, this is it. May we all rise to the challenge and be proactive in cultivating a lasting self-care practice. You don’t have to self-care by yourself. I’m here for you! Discover tangible rituals & powerful mindset shifts that lead to a genuine embodiment of self-love in Become Your Own Soul Mate, my 12-week 1-on-1 self-care program! Learn more here.
Dear Ones, have you experienced the death of a loved one? Did your culture and traditions meet your needs? If not, how did you cope? And how did you care for yourself along the way? Sending so much light and love, especially to the grieving ones today.
P.S. I have learned a lot about the death industry in the U.S. and about conscious dying through this podcast episode, from my favorite ancestral worker, Becca Piastrelli. Check it out!
I am a true believer that, no matter where you are in your life’s journey, a life coach can be a great support. If you are just starting to ask what your life purpose is, or if you are a strategic planning pro, having a skilled coach by your side can make all the difference. Read to the end of this post for your chance to win a free self-care coaching session with me!
Life coaching is a partnership with a professional space holder and accountability partner. As a self-care coach, I ask my clients powerful questions to unlock the hidden answers lying buried in their intuition. Session topics range from creating structure for creative entrepreneurs, to self-care for busy moms, to removing barriers for cultivating a sustainable meditation practice.
Receiving life coaching is such a profound experience! How often do you get a full hour to talk about your deepest vulnerabilities, desires, and inner dialogue with someone who has their complete attention on you? Who else can you go to knowing that they will offer space holding and guiding questions, rather than attempting to fix you?
No matter where you happen to be on your self-care journey, here are my 10 reasons why you should hire a life coach:
1. Everybody needs a good listen.
Do you ever try to vent to a friend, only to have them respond with a, “I know! The same thing happened to me…” or a, “You know what you should do…” Friends are people too, God love them, and sometimes they just don’t know how to hold space.
To hold space for someone means to become a container for them to pour their thoughts, ideas, and experiences into. We can’t hold space unless we ourselves have the space to hold. Spaciousness can be cultivated through meditation practice, self-care and training your awareness. Often times, our friends and loved ones simply don’t have the space to give us that we need in order to process.
Processing your experiences out loud with a trained active listener (i.e. life coach) is an extremely powerful experience. A life coach is there to guide your journey with deep questioning and space holding. Together, you identify your goals for the session and then make sure they get accomplished.
You will walk away from a session with a life coach feeling heard, seen, and deeply understood. Because you are! They have taken the time to listen intently and let you know that you are the expert in your own life, and your intuition is the wisdom guiding you forward.
2. You have big goals & dreams.
Is there something in life you want to accomplish, but don’t know where to start? Or maybe you’ve already taken a few steps and feel like you’re stumbling around in the dark? A life coach can be an effective accountability partner to shine the light on your path.
We all need 3 things to accomplish our goals in life – accountability, structure, and space. Accountability is necessary to make sure we don’t fall behind or let our inner critics get the best of us. We need structure to organize our strategy and keep on top of our common procrastination pitfalls. And space (there’s that word again) to process and share our learning along the way.
3. You’re secretly craving structure.
Whether you’re plotting for a huge bucket list-sized goal, or you’ve been wondering lately where your time is going, chances are you need some structure in your life. Structure doesn’t have to be rigid – structure, when balanced with lots of grace, can actually create more freedom in your life!
Think about it – if you had a plan in place for how you spend your time, you could spend less time worrying and procrastinating against getting started. Structure can mean a schedule, template, or outline for your day, week or year. Whatever your time frame, a life coach can help you create a plan for what you need to get done and when.
4. You could benefit from accountability.
Accountability partners help us remember our deepest intentions. When your intention is to wake up and go for a run every morning at 6am, a life coach can help make sure you follow through in a gentle, loving way. I often find with clients that just telling me their plan of action is enough to make sure they follow through. And I’m there in case they don’t, so we can identify what went wrong and adjust the plan accordingly!
5. You want to get to know yourself better.
“If we were not so single minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves.” – Pablo Neruda
It seems like everyone on your insta feed lately is doing deep soul work. There is a cosmic shift going on, and a lot of people are waking up to their spiritual side. Whether you never dipped a toe in your own spiritual waters, or you just want to further evolve into a more purposeful and intentional person, life coaching can help.
Through intention-setting, powerful questioning, and exploring who you need to become in order to meet your goals, the life coaching relationship is designed to foster deeper self-learning. It’s only through learning what makes you you, and what your deepest desires are, that you can discover life’s potential.
6. You are aching for self-care, self-love, & self-compassion.
Maybe your inner dialogue is mostly negative, critical, and even hateful towards yourself (whether you’re conscious of it or not). Deep down, there is a sense that you could be treating yourself better. You could prioritize rest, nourishment and fulfillment over work or productivity.
You’ve seen #selfcare posts on instagram, but you’ve always equated it with mani-pedis or expensive shopping sprees. You’re yearning for something deeper, something you’ve only felt after a really good candlelit restorative yoga session or talking to a friend who really knows how to hold space.
Self-care is the maintenance of self-love. It’s where the rubber meets the road on our journey toward loving ourselves. Self-love requires unlearning that our worth comes from how much we can produce, and instead choosing to believe we are worthy of love intrinsically. If compassion is where our loving kindness meets suffering in the world, self-compassion is the salve for a hurting heart. Sometimes simply placing your hand on your heart and whispering to yourself, “I’m sorry you’re having a hard time right now,” is more than enough to mend our suffering. There is something deeply profound about practicing self-care, self-love and self-compassion – they are life changing!
My particular brand of life coaching is called self-care coaching. I help my clients learn what self-care, self-love and self-compassion look like in their lives, and how they can foster and nourish their relationship to Self. I believe changing the world begins with our relationship to Self – without it, how can we cultivate genuine compassion for others?
7. You want to learn more about & cultivate mindfulness.
Oh, mindfulness. A word often misused, misunderstood, and the subject of much discussion. Depok Chopra says he dislikes the word, as it sounds like your mind is supposed to be full, which is quite the opposite of the point. I like to distill mindfulness down to letting the activity you’re focused on – and only that activity – be the thing that fills your mind. Meaning, if you’re sitting, sit. If you’re walking, walk. If you’re performing rocket surgery, perform rocket surgery.
Mindfulness practice, or the training of our awareness, can help us cease so many forms of suffering. Although our minds have evolved to process and hold many thought threads at once, our being truly craves presence and simplicity. There’s something very grounding and reassuring about simply sitting on the earth, watching the leaves of a tree blow in the wind.
The truth is, it’s really that simple to meditate. Just sit and remind yourself that right now, you’re going to simply be. Each time thoughts arise, recognize them and then guide your awareness back to the present moment, the experience of sitting. It may be simple, but it’s hardly easy – especially in the beginning! A self-care coach can support you on your journey, provide resources, and guide your deep learning around what arises during your meditation practice.
If you sign up for my 1-on-1 self-care coaching program, Become Your Own Soul Mate, you’ll receive custom guided meditations that I’ll record with you in mind, calling you by name and tailoring the prompts to your unique journey. Apply now!
8. You want to create a self-care routine.
Self-care, this loving maintenance of ourselves, can look like many different things to different people. Maybe it’s a cup of soothing tea after a difficult day with your boss. Or perhaps it’s planning a pilgrimage to your ancestral homelands to do some deep DNA-level healing! Or it could be anywhere in between. Through self-care coaching, we journey together to find out what nourishing activities you can experiment with to develop a unique self-care plan that fits your life!
Some people like to know that every day they’re going to do an hour of yoga, 15 minutes of meditation, and write in their gratitude journal before they go to bed. Other people (myself included!) need more variety, and crave a diverse range of nurturing self-care experiences that heal different aspects of their being at different times. After all, we are cyclical beings and part of our process is to understand how our energy shifts through the different seasons of life. Whether it’s a restorative yoga class after a difficult week, or a solo dance party first thing when you wake up, self-care coaching can help you find the right self-care practices for you. Let a coach support your understanding of your self-care needs through these stages, so you can track and adjust your plan to make the next cycle filled with even more care and healing!
9. You want to grow in your time & energy management skills.
Have you ever crawled into bed at night and wondered, “Where did my day go?” How about, “Where did my energy go?” While we all get the same amount of time in the day, our energy is expandable and collapsible. Our industrial revolution-era minds and society can often make us feel as though our worth is tied up in how much we can output. But the truth is, every one has a different rhythm and energy, and chances are it will change over time.
Nevertheless, if we have goals that are in alignment with our purpose, we need to harness our energy force to work through our strategies and make things happen. A life coach can help you track and analyze where your time and energy are going each day, and how to cultivate boundaries to save your energy and time for the things that matter most to you. Managing your time and energy is a skill that can be nurtured with the help of a life coach.
10. You lack direction & want to discover your life’s purpose.
Or maybe you haven’t yet uncovered which goals are in alignment for you on your path. Your life’s purpose is the intersection of your greatest passions and the world’s needs. True fulfillment comes from helping others in the way that lights you up the most, and then pursuing the skills and experience needed to make it happen.
That might seem like a tall order, but you don’t have to go it alone. A life coach can be there to support and guide your journey, and hold you accountable to whatever goals you set out to achieve. Perhaps you’ve felt isolated and bad for not knowing your purpose yet, when it seems like everyone around you is chasing their dreams. Through powerful questioning and deep space holding, coaching can help you unlock your purpose and find meaningful fulfillment.
And now I’d love to hear from you, Dear Ones! Have you ever hired a life coach? Or have you considered it? What’s holding you back? Tell me in the comments below and you just might win a free self-care coaching session with me! 1 winner will be chosen on October 15th at random. 🙂
Creating a self-care plan is easy & fun. The challenge is actually sticking to it! I can write “meditate” in my calendar every day at 7am, but – unless I have the optimized my environment for self-care – these commitments can fall to the wayside.
So many people ask me how they can renew their dedication to a meditation routine. When I ask them to describe their meditation environment, it’s often, I meditate in bed.. or I try to meditate on the couch with the TV on.. yikes!
I highly recommend creating an optimal self care environment – a zen den or meditation room can work wonders for your routine. But if you don’t have a whole room to spare, fear not! Carve out another dedicated space where you can be inspired to practice, uninterrupted. (Remember this post too on optimizing your sleep environment!)
For many of you, this will be your bedroom, and that’s okay. My suggestion would be to create a meditation altar to display calming artwork and to hold your candles or incense, or using a meditation or prayer rug/blanket/cushion that helps signal to your mind – it’s time to meditate!
Once you have set your self-care goals, scheduled time into your calendar, & optimized your environment, the next step is to create your self-care toolkit! While practicing self-care doesn’t cost a thing, arming yourself with the right tools can exponentially increase your efficiency, deepen your experience & support you on your self-care journey.
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It wasn’t until I set up my own kit with the items below, that I really started to look forward to my scheduled self-care routine. These products* have helped me tremendously!
My Gaiam yoga mat is my security blanket. Whether I tote it to the park or a class, I’m basically Linus. Pairing it with my bolster or cushion is nice for a supported meditation practice, but on it’s own I use it for yoga, abhyanga, and restorative yin practices.
These little guys seriously changed my self-care practice. First thing in the morning, I like to roll them under my feet with a little peppermint oil to get grounded. Rolling with them under my sits bones has become part of my yoga therapy homework. And rolling them along my jaw and temples can relieve a migraine or TMJD symptoms almost instantly.
This coreageous therapy ball has proven so delectable when lowly inflated as a lumbar support on planes or long car rides. Due to my scoliosis, sitting upright during meditation can be quite uncomfortable. Placing the ball just under my sacrum can help give me that little bit of support I need to sustain my practice. And rolling around on it under my spine and low back is a lovely fascia release.
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Is there anything more calming than aromatherapy? Whether it’s sprinkling a few drops of lavender in my bath with my epsom salts, or using a diffuser with eucalyptus when I’m stuffy, essential oils are a near constant staple in my household. I just have to be careful when Tucker’s around, as they can be harmful to pets. Diffuse ’em or mix a couple of drops in with a base like coconut oil for a nice abhyanga warm oil massage. Instant luxury.
Mine & Lizzo’s go-to self massage product, coconut oil smells divine and absorbs quickly into the skin. The scent mixes well with lavender and peppermint, my two fav essential oils. Be careful with old plumbing – it’s recommended to pour a degreasing dish soap and boiling water down your drain every week or two to protect them pipes! I even use it as a cuticle oil just before bed.
I love journaling just after meditating – I find this time to be super-charged with spiritual creativity. I also recommend jotting your thoughts down at the end of the day, even if only to list a few things you are grateful for before dozing off. Focusing on the positive is one of the best ways to rewire your brain to break that negativity bias!
Baths are divine, aren’t they? There is something so yummy and sacred about that time alone with yourself. I love epsom salts and essential oils as I mentioned before, but nothing feels more indulgent than a shimmery bath bomb, like the ones in this Organic Lush Bath Bomb Gift Set! Pop one in and watch it fizz and change the color and scent of your water. Ahhhh.
Again, with the aromatherapy. 🙂 Paired with the beauty of a flame and the sound of a burning wooden wick, these Woodwick candles are a treat for the nose, eyes, and ears! It signals to my mind that it’s time to unwind and meditate. Namaste.
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Is there anything more cozy than a cup of tea? I got super into tea time when I studied abroad in Ireland – and it’s a habit I’m happy to report has never left my side since. I can’t recommend Yogi teas highly enough – Yogi Detox Tea, Yogi Stomach Ease Tea, Yogi Stress Relief Tea are some of my favs. This Yogi Tea Sampler looks amazing! There’s one for every kind of symptom and mood. Put that kettle on and prepare to be cozyfied.
Tarot might not strike you as a form of self-care, but for me it so is. It feels a bit rebellious to me, as a child of a Christian home, and always, always, ALWAYS teaches me something new. Whether I just want to learn about how to best care for myself in that moment, or I’m looking for bigger clarity in my career – exploring the Tarot has never let me down. With an open mind, how could you not learn and with learning more about yourself, how could those self-compassion juices not get flowing? This is the deck I use – The Wild Unknown Tarot Deck and Guidebook. The art and energy behind each card is stunning. I just love it!
Luminous Leanings 