Live Joy

  This week, fall didn't exactly ease its way in. We went from a heat index of 105 degrees to 60s in a matter of days. Suddenly I'm reaching for a sweatshirt, and it actually feels like fall. And with the Fall Equinox this week, we're also entering the part of the year when the nights become longer than the days. The sun starts setting earlier, darkness comes sooner, and if you're anything like me, 7:30 PM can suddenly feel like 10:00. I've already noticed the difference in my energy. When it's light outside until late in the evening, I feel like there is still so much day left. There are things to do, places to go, walks to take, projects to finish. But when the sun disappears earlier, something in me naturally wants to slow down. And my first instinct is sometimes to fight it. I should be doing something. I should be more productive. I shouldn't be sitting here already. But maybe we're not supposed to move through every season of the year...

  September 26th is the September Full Moon. There is something powerful about the Full Moon arriving in the same week as the Fall Equinox. The Equinox marks a change of seasons and a moment of balance between light and darkness. The Full Moon is often used as a time for reflection and release. Together, they offer a simple reminder: you don't have to carry everything into your next season. We spend so much time thinking about what we want to add to our lives, new goals, habits, relationships, opportunities, and dreams. But sometimes moving forward isn't about adding more. It's about deciding what we're finally ready to put down. Maybe it's resentment. An old version of yourself. The need to control an outcome. Someone else's expectations. A relationship you've outgrown. A mistake you keep replaying. Or simply the belief that you should be further along by now. Fall gives us the perfect reminder. Trees don't fight to hold onto leaves that have co...

We all have that weight we think we should be. Maybe it’s what we weighed in college, what we weighed when we were 30, or what we weighed when we felt like we were in the best shape of our lives. Somewhere along the way, that number became our “ideal weight,” and we continue to use it as the number we need to get back to or maintain, regardless of how much our bodies, lifestyles, and goals have changed. For most of our lives, we have been conditioned to believe that the number on the scale is one of the biggest indicators of our health. The lower the number, the “healthier” we assume we are. But weight alone tells us very little about what is actually happening inside our bodies, and as we get older, body composition becomes much more important than simply trying to make the number on the scale smaller. Two people can both weigh 130 pounds and have completely different body compositions. One person could have a much higher percentage of body fat and very little muscle, while anothe...

  There is something about the beginning of fall that naturally feels like a reset. The mornings become cooler, the days get a little shorter, routines settle back in after summer, and there is a noticeable shift in the energy around us. While January gets most of the attention when it comes to fresh starts, I have always thought fall offers its own opportunity to pause, reflect and decide how we want to move through the remainder of the year. The Fall Equinox marks the astronomical beginning of fall in the Northern Hemisphere and occurs when the sun crosses the celestial equator. Around the equinox, daylight and nighttime are nearly equal before we begin moving toward shorter days and longer nights. Because of this near equality between light and darkness, the equinox has long been associated with balance, transition, gratitude and letting go. I love the symbolism behind it because balance doesn't necessarily mean giving equal amounts of ourselves to every area of our lives. T...

The universe has a way of making you make changes and usually, it happens when you least expect it and definitely when you don’t want the change. At least, that seems to be how it works in my life. Things will feel good. Stable. Predictable. I’ll finally feel like I have found my rhythm, and then suddenly life decides it is time to shake things up. And there I am, standing in the middle of a situation I didn’t ask for, didn’t plan for, and certainly didn’t feel ready for. I was talking to a friend recently who is going through her own version of a life “shake-up.” We were talking about how difficult it can be when something changes that you had no intention of changing yourself. She said something that stuck with me: When unexpected things happen, I try to find the lesson in them. I love that perspective. Not because I believe we need to immediately turn every difficult experience into something positive. Sometimes things just hurt. Sometimes we are angry, disappointed, c...

  In life, we’re often told to strive for balance. Yet when it comes to our emotions, it can be surprisingly easy to live at one extreme or the other. We tend to think negativity is bad and positivity is good. Be grateful. Look on the bright side. Stay positive. Don’t focus on the negative. But the truth is, neither extreme serves us. Life is made up of hard seasons and beautiful ones. There are wins and losses, joy and disappointment, excitement and grief. We are supposed to experience a range of emotions. The goal isn’t to eliminate the uncomfortable ones. The goal is to learn how to feel and regulate them without allowing them to take over our lives. We all know what constant negativity looks like. You say something good, and they find the problem. You share an idea, and they tell you why it won’t work. Something goes wrong, and it becomes proof that everything always goes wrong. They are constantly looking for what could go wrong, what didn’t work out, what isn’t fa...