Why are you here? Why are you back? I was happy. I was waking up living my life, excited about each and every day. You came knocking on my door, screaming, yelling, shaking me telling me to wake up. Are you warning me? Or do you want to keep me safe? Why do you give me these thoughts of the worst case scenario? Don’t you realize we have survived it all. We have crawled through the depths of hell and come out with our wings pristine. The blood of the fallen dripping off the tips. Our blood, our tears, our pain no one ever saw. We survived. Hell we did more than survive, what do we have to be s ..read more

Photo by: Randy Jacob Have you ever stopped to ask yourself who you are? Now when you ask yourself this question- what immediately pops into your head? The reflection of yourself in a mirror. That’s all we really see ourselves as, what is in the reflection. But if we had no mirror, would we know who we were? Would we be able to have a solid sense of self that didn’t have to do with what was reflected back at us. Our whole lives, we have defined who we are based on how someone reacts and responds to us through conversation or action. We believe that if someone tells us we are beautiful enough ..read more

Photo by: Daniel Jensen There comes a point in everyone’s lives where we lose sight of who we are. We get so caught up in our lives we forget to do the things that make us who we are and keep us sane. Losing yourself in a relationship happens from time to time but the key is to catch yourself. Codependency is something many people struggle with, but how do you get through it? I never thought I would say this, or even admit to be honest. I lost myself again. This time though, it wasn’t because of a toxic relationship, or a traumatic experience, or because of an addiction. It was my own doing ..read more

Relationships are like plants. Follow me on this one for a second. When you over water a plant, you will kill it. When you under water a plant, you will kill it. So you need to give it balanced care and attention. Now I am not just talking about romantic relationships but the relationship with yourself as well. When you over indulge in something say junk food, you feel sick right? And when you don’t eat enough you are starving. Now what happens when we are ourselves are starved in self love and attention? We crave anything and everything that could possibly fill us up. We look for something th ..read more

Picture this: You’ve hit the gas accelerating in your car on an open road, and suddenly you see a deer ahead and you start to think of all the possibilities of the outcome based on your actions. The only issue is, you can’t hit the breaks. Your car is going at full speed approaching the deer and you start to panic at what you should do. That is what overthinking is like. Photo By: Robert V. Ruggiero Have you ever felt like you were constantly trying to analyze someone’s behaviors or words so you could better understand them? Sometimes, it isnt always a person we are trying to analyze, it coul ..read more

Anxiety is something that I have had in interesting relationship with. There have been times where it has saved me and there have been times where it has crippled me. But eventually I found a way for it to no longer dictate my state of mind. People have told me for years that I should do yoga and meditate and that will cure it. Those things definitely helped me, but they didn’t cure my anxiety. For some people it isn’t that simple. For some, they have very physical symptoms that cause them to become ill, and they have a hard time living their lives. Here’s what I learned with anxiety- it’s a f ..read more

Image By: Edu Lauton Sometimes, when you’re so used to being in the dark, its hard to want to see that light. Happiness is something we can overlook. It’s the light that dances in the dark, but we refuse to follow the music. When you’re so familiar with continuously getting your hopes up, and having them crash, you expect the other shoe to drop. Pain is familiar to our hearts because we have always had to deal with that, it’s a habit. We try to become these fierce warriors on the battlefront of life, but not everything is war to be fough ..read more

Picture by: Jan Tinneberg Another year has passed us by, and we are all standing here in this new decade waiting to become someone else, change our habits, or start a new life. What we forget to do is remember what the previous year actually brought us. We are constantly told to never live in our past and to “forget your past, and move forward.” That’s bullshit, and I will tell you why: we need to live in our past in order to learn and heal from it. We can’t just forget about the traumatic times, the loss, and heartbreak, disappointment ..read more

Picture By: Hillie Chan I woke up today. I got up and didn’t let the voice in my head stop me from looking at the sun this morning. Yesterday I had suicidal thoughts for the first time in 4 months. I heard that pesky little voice along with the voice of all the people who have ever torn me down, floating around in my head. The dark thoughts that I thought were gone, were back- and that scared the shit out of me. I was so worried that I would let that hopelessness get me and pull me down and drown me. But I fought through it. The people ..read more

Image by: Eduardo Vázquez Depression is one of the most misinterpreted illnesses out there. Depression to most people is just being “sad” for a few days, and then snapping out of it. It’s like it’s hard for society to comprehend that sometimes someone can be down or sad because of an illness. There seems to be this weird idea that something must be going on with you for you to feel that way. People will ask you “what happened” you’re response could be nothing happened, but their response will be to just get over it. You do not need to h ..read more