Blog Archives

Do You Feel All Alone In Your Suffering?

May 10, 2013
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Do You Feel All Alone In Your Suffering?

My friends don’t get it. My partner doesn’t get it. My family doesn’t get it. I hear these sentiments a lot from the clients I coach and from readers of my blog. When the people in our inner circle don’t understand our suffering, we may feel isolated, frustrated, misunderstood, and painfully, acutely alone as a result. Since we’re all friends here, I’ll just put it frankly: It stinks. I recently spent some time with a friend who has fibromyalgia, a chronic illness that causes long-term, widespread pain and tenderness throughout the body. She works...

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Can You Love What is Broken In You?

May 5, 2013
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Can You Love What is Broken In You?

My desktop computer’s mouse is not functioning properly and each time I use it, I feel a mounting rage inside me. I want to pull it out and throw it at the wall with all the force of my being. I feel, for this inatimate object, an unrivaled hatred. I click once and it thinks I clicked twice, opening files and programs I am not intending to open. I try to move my cursor to a word and instead it highlights entire portions of text. Sometimes I click and instead of the wrong thing...

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How to Live Forever (Or at Least a Long, Long Time)

May 1, 2013
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How to Live Forever (Or at Least a Long, Long Time)

There is an island in Greece where people forget to die. It’s called Ikaria, and folks there live longer than almost anywhere else in the world. And not just longer, but healthier, and though it can’t be quantified, it seems they’re  happier too. I read about this magical island in a New York Times article this week. Of course, the million dollar question is: How do they do it? The article’s author, Dan Buettner, attributes it to a combination of four crucial factors: culture, belonging, purpose, and religion. He writes: “If you pay careful...

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Today I’m 37.

April 25, 2013
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Today I’m 37.

Today is my birthday. I’m 37. As I reflect on the year, I find that I am disappointed in my performance with this blog. I want to be better and more and I want this blog to be better and more. I’ve been feeling really…stuck…and trying to figure out why. Sometimes I can’t write because I feel afraid that no one is out there listening and I am just fooling myself, thinking that I matter. Sometimes I can’t write because I feel afraid that my silly little thoughts are not enough to help you....

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Information Overload

April 14, 2013
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Information Overload

Have you noticed what’s happened? The pace of our lives has increased in a major way. In the past 20 years, our world has been Facebooked and Twittered and emailed into high speed. Sometimes I wake up in the morning, turn on my computer, and feel absolutely overwhelmed with the sheer number of emails demanding my attention…watch this video, sign up for this webinar, buy this product, shop this sale, read this blog post, etc etc etc. On the rare occasions when I log onto Facebook, I find myself instantly agitated by the options...

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I Trust You

April 7, 2013
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I Trust You

For the last several hours I’ve been futilely trying to write a blog post. I am so full of emotion and love and ideas I want to express, but I just keep sitting here staring at an empty page. I was expressing this frustration to my dear friend and soul sister, Lina. “I want to create!” I declared. “Why can’t I write anything today?!” “Let the feelings do what they want to do,” she said. “You always think you need to do. But sometimes you just need to be.” I want to create something...

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The Dangerous Dogma of “I Know”

April 2, 2013
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The Dangerous Dogma of “I Know”

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the phrases we play on repeat in our minds and how they frame our reality. I wrote about one of these the other day – the phrase “be free.” When I say that phrase to myself, I feel my consciousness expanding. But here’s another one that many of us have on repeat that we often aren’t even aware of: It’s the phrase “I know.” Unlike “be free,” which creates expansion, “I know” creates constriction. If you know, there is no room to learn. If you know, then...

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Be. Free.

March 29, 2013
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Be. Free.

This morning I was cranky and PMS-y and didn’t want to get out of bed. But my roommate thankfully knew what was best for me and all but pushed me out of the house to go to yoga. I drove my lethargic bag o’ bones there, all the while dreading the feeling of not-good-enough-ness that would surely descend upon me when I failed to meet my own yogic standards. But I got lucky today. I was blessed with a yoga teacher who delivered exactly what I was too constricted to realize I needed. She...

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Your Illness is Your No-Guts Filter

March 26, 2013
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Your Illness is Your No-Guts Filter

I have a friend who suffers from chronic cluster headaches.If you’re unfamiliar with cluster headaches (and hopefully you are), they are like migraines on steroids. Debilitating, stop-you-in-your-tracks, please-stick-a-need-in-my-eye intolerable pain. A few days ago, I was with him when he had one. Today we were talking and he said he wished I hadn’t seen that because it’s ugly and dark and scary and he thinks anyone who witnesses it would, and probably should, turn and run the other way, fast. I told him he’s been blessed with a very effective no-guts filter for use...

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Anxious? Come Back to Now.

March 16, 2013
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Anxious? Come Back to Now.

As I write this, my daughter is sleeping peacefully beside me.  But several minutes ago, this was not the case. This past week was Spring Break so we haven’t been on a regular schedule. I’ve been letting her stay up later than usual, and tonight, without realizing it, suddenly it was 10 o’clock and she was deep in the clutches of an “I’m-Overtired” Meltdown. She was lying on the bed, sobbing in stacatto gasps, crying “I can’t sleep! I tried and I can’t! I can’t! I can’t! I tried!” I asked her to breathe...

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    • Karen Gordon is an author, blogger, and health coach at The Self-Healing Coach.
multiple sclerosis blogs