Tag: truth

Stop Being So Selfish The World Needs You, Ready or Not

Posted EmilieLeave a commentPosted in Wake Up Woman

“Focusing on your fear is selfish. Instead, focus on the good that will come when you walk through it.” You are terrified of being selfish. You lug around guilt, mommy martyrdom, and shame for being a human with needs. You feel terrible for letting your kids watch too much TV or eat cereal for dinner when you need a break. You compare yourself to every mother out there and chronicle all the ways you don’t measure up….and then you beat yourself up for not being better. You’re terrified of giving yourself what you need, taking a break, accepting help, or […]

Dear Husbands Your wife needs you to know this

Posted EmilieLeave a commentPosted in Weekly Reflections

“Encourage, lift and strengthen one another. For the positive energy spread to one will be felt by us all. For we are connected, one and all.” – Deborah Day I’m not sure where to begin, I just know begin I must, so here goes. This post is not for you, but for your partner. For your hard working, amazing husband who loves you, but doesn’t know how to support you, not in the way you really need. He provides and he protects and he does his best, and yet, in so many ways he is failing you. He is failing to […]

I Create My Reality

I Create My Own Reality So I'm Gonna Make it a Good One

Posted EmilieLeave a commentPosted in Weekly Reflections

“Be careful how you interpret the world: it really is like that.” ~ Erich Heller ~ I choose my beliefs carefully. I’ve spent a lifetime curating them, deciding what fits me best, what works well, and what just doesn’t align with who I want to be. It’s a daily practice, a habit really, of paying attention to the direction of my thoughts. Every single morning before dawn, I tip toe downstairs, make a pot of coffee, and get settled in at my desk in the dark, pre-dawn hours. I open up my heart and I journal out my fears. I […]

Own Your Body, Own Your Gifts, & Own Your Orgasm #WCW April's Story

Posted EmilieLeave a commentPosted in Woman Crush Wednesday

I found April’s Instagram page on the recommendation of a friend and instantly fell in love. April runs The Vagina Blog and is THE resource for everything you need to know about your lady bits. Her page is hysterical, educational, so relatable and totally important in this era of fake news (and fake orgasms). As a doula, a birth photographer and a birth assistant to a midwife, she’s seen a lot of vaginas.  She covers maturation and menstruation, incontinence and pessaries, sex before, during and after pregnancy, childbirth and so much more.  I’m personally a fan of all the interesting and eclectic […]

F*@k the Fairytale

F*@k the Fairytale Motherhood isn't Always Your Happily Ever After

Posted EmilieLeave a commentPosted in Weekly Reflections

“As for fairy tales, he understood that they were reflections of the people who had spun them, and were flecked with little truth.” ~ Laini Taylor ~ Once upon a time, a little girl grew up, married her prince, had lots of babies and lived happily ever after. That’s pretty much how I thought life was supposed to go. I mean, sure I’d kiss a few frogs along the way, get a degree and a job for a while, but the ultimate goal was a husband, house, and babies. Life would be happy and full. I’d spend my days reading books, […]

The Crushing Weight of Guilt and how to begin letting it go

Posted EmilieLeave a commentPosted in Weekly Reflections

“Guilt’s just your ego’s way of tricking you into thinking that you’re making moral progress. Don’t fall for it, my dear.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert ~ It happened again just this morning. I rushed around, getting my kids back to school after an extended spring break. I was proud everyone had clean underwear and that we had gotten to school on time, but there I was again, looking at my daughter’s preschool teacher with a blank stare and the familiar “oh shit” hot embarrassment flushing through me. “You didn’t forget it’s your day to bring snacks did you?” she asked.  I wanted […]

It’s Not About Doing Different Things, It’s About Doing Things Differently You Don’t Have to Work So Hard

Posted EmilieLeave a commentPosted in Weekly Reflections

“Working smart is harder than working hard. It’s just less visible, and we care too much about what others see.” I stood in a beautiful banquet hall, a microphone in my shaking hands, trying not to break down in tears.  The new pink journal I had purchased for this event lay open on the table in front of me, covered in feverilously scribbled notes. Gorgeous, amazing, smart women from all over the globe filled the room and listened as the speaker and our mentor Gina Devee, grilled me. “You need to go back and reread history.  You need to understand […]

Dear Vivienne A letter to my daughter and all young girls

Posted EmilieLeave a commentPosted in Weekly Reflections

“As for my girls, I’ll raise them to think they breathe fire.” ~ Jessica Kirkland ~ Dear Vivienne, The day you were born I knew I had to do better.  I gazed into your bright eyes and inhaled the earthy, pungent smell of new life still fresh on your waxy skin. You arrived precisely when I needed to step into my own new life…. a life that wasn’t limited by my fears, my need to please, or other’s expectations. As I thought of all the things I wanted to tell you, I knew instead it was time for me to become […]

You’re Probably a Shitty Mother Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Posted EmilieLeave a commentPosted in Weekly Reflections

“Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.” ~ Robert Fulgrum ~ Becoming a mother was the hardest adjustment of my life.  I wasn’t prepared for the suffocating, constant, never-ending demands of a newborn. I wasn’t ready for that feeling of vulnerability, responsibility, and fear that comes from your heart beating outside your chest.  All I ever wanted was to give up my career and have lots of babies. But learning to let go of myself, to open my heart and to survive exhaustion beyond comprehension (with leaking breasts, raging hormones and a […]

The Treasures Buried Within Us Unearth Creativity & Inspiration to Change Your Life

Posted EmilieLeave a commentPosted in Weekly Reflections

“Unused creativity is not benign.  It metastasizes. It turns into grief, rage, judgement, sorrow and shame ”  Brene Brown I am having an affair.  I sneak away, under the cover of darkness to meet my lover while the rest of the world unknowingly sleeps.  It is here, in the predawn hours, I connect with my old flame… creativity. I arrive sleepy but eager to conceive beautiful, genuine, and honest work.  I flirt with prose, pursue errant thoughts, and entice inspiration to join me for a salacious fling. This blog is my daily nurturing of creativity. For too long, my life […]

Nothing Changes Until You Do If You Want to Change Your Life, You Need to Change

Posted EmilieLeave a commentPosted in Weekly Reflections

“Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.” – Carol Burnett –  I was running. The day glorious. The spring air was clean and fresh, new signs of life popped up in the neighborhood all around me, green tulip shoots poked through dead mulch and tiny, yellow forsythia buds were beginning to emerge.  As I rounded a corner, my brow sweaty, lungs and heart pumping, I felt the fire of life beating within. The music blasted in my ears, my legs pushed me forward with every stride, and my head, oh my head was the […]

I Am Enough: Change Your Story

I Am Enough Change Your Story

Posted Emilie2 CommentsPosted in Weekly Reflections

“If you find yourself constantly trying to prove your worth to someone, you have already forgotten your value.” – Anonymous –  I am not enough. I am a 36 year old confident, self assured, sassy, fit, financially stable, happily married mother of 4, and yet…I am not enough. I am stronger than I’ve ever been, physically and otherwise, and yet… I’m not enough. I have grown, achieved, and built a beautiful life I am proud of, and yet…I am not enough. No matter how hard I’ve worked to identify and modify my paradigms and limiting beliefs, no matter how far […]

The Power of Belief: How to Change Your Life Right Now

The Power of Belief: How to Improve Your Life Right Now Chose Happiness, Release Fear, and Kick Ass

Posted EmilieLeave a commentPosted in Weekly Reflections

“Whatever you believe to be true, whether it is true or not; if you believe it, then to you it becomes the truth.” ― Stella Payton It seems there is always something we long to change in our life.  We want more money, more love, less debt, better behaved children, and smaller jeans. Most of us know it’s up to us to make change, we don’t sit around and wait for things to get better, we put our focus and energy into our actions in order to bring about that change.  And while that’s all well and good, the reality […]

Parenting challenges no one tells new moms

The Parenting Challenges No One Talks About What I Wish I Knew Before Kids

Posted Emilie8 CommentsPosted in Weekly Reflections

“I don’t know what’s more exhausting about parenting; the getting up early, or acting like you know what you’re doing.” ~ Jim Gaffigan ~ Parenting four kids while trying to keep my identity and sanity is by far the hardest thing I have ever done.  It wasn’t drugs, or sex, or rock and roll that inspired Ozzy Osbourne to declare “I’m going off the rails on a crazy train,” but rather, trying to manage his own life and parent two young children at the time.  I don’t know if this is true, but as a mother of four, I’m going […]