It has been said that some of the strongest individuals are the ones that have experienced tragedy, trauma or have struggled with physical or mental illness. And I can understand why.

Maybe you haven’t had it easy. But for that reason alone, you’ve had to build resilience, courage and persistence to find a way to bring hope, love and happiness into your life.

Not everyone has that type of determination. Not everyone has that kind of strength.

But while you spend your days working and striving to be better, it’s easy to feel discouraged. Sometimes it only takes talking with others or seeing a friend’s Facebook page to make you wish your life was easier.

When you spend time with your eyes forward, looking ahead at all the people who have more than you, you may forget to look back. Yes you have a long way to go. Yes, your life may not be as simple as your neighbor’s, but along the way in your own individual journeys, don’t forget to acknowledge and celebrate how far you’ve come.

This week you may even find your own gift(s) in difficulty. You will share a sense of community with those who have faced the same issues as you. You may discover tools to maneuver your life better. The good news is that you’re definitely not alone in your journey. In each of these posts there are threads of hope, and together we weave the most beautiful quilt, don’t we?

From the seeds planted yesterday, hope grows. It grows from the conflicts we dealt with not avoided, the courage to look at our problems not from a distance, but face-to-face, and the steps we took to better ourselves instead of trying to deny them and put on a happy face.

It’s not easy to live life with even an ounce of happiness. It’s not easy to grow instead of wither away in self-doubt, negativity and hopelessness. It is especially difficult to seek help when you feel embarrassed or ashamed to do so.

Perhaps you were on your way to recovery, when you had a relapse or you are a therapist who feels burnout or an adult who is being bullied. Sometimes it takes reading how others have survived what you’re going through to know that there is nothing shameful about your experience.

This week’s wrap-up will remind that you’re far from being alone. From tips on how to better deal with adult bullies to facing emotional burnout when you’re a professional therapists, we’re giving you the resources you need to help you grow, minimize shame and discover ways to make positive changes in your life and feel better about yourself.

Change takes time. It can be a long, difficult process. But start reading these now and they’ll be the seeds for that brighter, more hopeful tomorrow.

A lot of suffering comes from things we don’t have control over. It’s all that worrying about the state of our health, our normalcy, our lack. Spend a minute listening to your thoughts and you might even hear it. How many times have I caught myself worrying about the weather, or whether I offended a friend, or over the potential of negative outcomes (bad health/career/relationship)? Too many.

You can get sucked into the things you will never be able to control or you can stop that tape, focus on what you can control and get on with your life.

This week you’ll read about the heroes who have not only accepted what feels unacceptable, but have inspired others by letting it positively change their lives. You will also learn the role diet and nutrition play on your mental health, navigate relationships when you have ADHD and have a more meaningful life by being true to yourself.

Yes, life can feel unmanageable. But focusing on what you can control instead of what you can’t will successfully transform you from the victim to the victor. Not only that but it will almost always empower you, change your life for the better, and imbue it with possibility and hope.

This Sunday is Mother’s Day. Regardless if it’s a holiday spent celebrating with mom or just an ordinary day, I’d encourage you to think of it as a day to mother yourself.

The increased heat that comes when spring changes seasons can bring up a lot of emotions. Summer can be the beginning of a fresh new start. But it can also be a reminder of the New Year’s goals we didn’t achieve yet, the habits we’re still dealing with and the weight we can’t seem to lose.

It can provoke a sense of desperation. How many times do we have to keep coming around this same circle of problems? Maybe it’s addiction or a reoccurring theme of weight gain or depression associated with bipolar disorder or anxiety from dealing with OCD. Whatever you’re plagued with, the key is to not beat yourself up about it. Be the mother that you’ve always needed. This week’s most popular posts offer compassion, hope and explanations on why you deserve those things.

Happy Mother’s Day!

There are a handful of moments I replay in my head: being 10 years old and feeling bullied by classmates and reacting by hitting one of them, the times I’ve spent trying to numb pain or impatience by playing on my iPhone, the sorrow and despair I’ve felt when feeling like a failure, powerless or not being heard.

In all of these incidences, I wish I could pause time. I wish I could hug that 10-year-old that felt scared and that 30-something year old that felt powerless, afraid, and anxious.

Because in every scenario, I did not pause, take a deep breath and choose wisely. I reacted instead. I reacted out of fear and I gave away the opportunity to do something different.

Our posts this week all offer you a chance to change the way you approach what’s not working in your life. Instead of continuing to react the way you have been, you will get a fresh new perspective, an alternative way of perceiving an old and persistent problem. Time cannot be stopped nor paused, but in knowing a better way, you can learn from your past, alter your present and in doing so, have a more hopeful future.

*The last two mental health heroes are from our own team. Find out who they are here and here.

I don’t know when it became shameful to ask for help. We certainly didn’t start our lives out that way. Imagine a baby reaching for mom’s hands to walk or a child needing his dad to hold his bike before he’s ready to ride on his own. Instead of supporting them, what if they said, “Shame on you for needing help. You should be able to do it on your own.”

Yet, when we grow up, that need for help embarrasses us. It makes us feel less than. We think that because we’re old enough to stand on our own two feet, we don’t need help anymore. And if we do, we should stay quiet about it. It’s much better to pretend we’re okay than to let the world know how imperfectly human we are.

It’s unfortunate that we live in a society with opportunities and resources, yet we’re so afraid to ask for help. The truth is we all need help whether we’re 2 or 62 years old. As adults, we may visibly appear to be less vulnerable than children. But the older we are, the greater the depth of our wounds.

Whether you or a loved one is struggling with porn addiction, loneliness or anxiety, I hope the posts below will encourage you to seek help. There is nothing embarrassing or shameful about doing so. In fact, seeking the help you need means you’re probably somebody’s *mental health hero.

Oftentimes it’s not that we don’t want to be happy, but we’re too afraid of taking the necessary steps to get what we want. It goes something like this. You or someone you know continues to complain about their current job or employer, but they never do anything about it. Or it’s not a job, but a relationship, a desire to seek help, or an inability to cope that’s causing you unhappiness. But fear prevents you from doing what’s required to invite positive change in your life.

If you have ever put happiness on hold out of fear, I feel for you. The journey is often lined with disappointment, hopelessness and discouragement. But there is hope.

This week our bloggers will show you new ways to tackle old problems. And it’s all in an effort to help you make small, tiny, doable changes now to give you confidence to make those big, intimidating ones in the long run. Whether you are overcoming a fear of rejection or finding a way to cope with food or anxiety, it’s an opportunity to finally stop wishing for the life you want and start living it.

Growing up I didn’t have fancy clothes, cool gadgets, or expensive toys. But I hardly felt I was lacking for it. Instead, my childhood was filled with homemade mud pies “baked” on old water heaters and DIY glass dome homes for pet beetles. I think what my family lacked in finances they more than made up for with time, love and lots of creativity.

When I grew up and eventually got the things I wanted as a kid, I still looked back fondly on those days. I think about the magic of make believe and cars made out of cardboard boxes and tiny paper boats that sailed atop rain puddle rivers. This is why I’m always surprised when people attempt to procure happiness from financial wealth, professional success and a perfect life. Maybe they bought into reality TV, dreams sold by commercials and that temporary, false facade of what happiness really is.

If you’ve lost sight of true happiness, don’t despair. This week our bloggers will steer you on the right path with helpful tips, informative strategies and a bit of laughter so you can invite a little more happy moments into your day and ultimately your life.

I can barely remember the pain of losing a loved one, getting my heart broken or any physical injury I’ve had to endure in my life. But I can describe to you in vivid detail the dessert I had almost 4 years ago while honeymooning in Santorini, Greece. I remember the velvety texture of the dark chocolate, the cocoa powder dusted on top and how the combination of sweet honey drizzled on white eggplant comfit delicately played on my tongue.

I doubt my husband will forget it either. But for him, it wasn’t the dessert that was memorable as much as my reaction. He remembers how long it took me to finish it, the permanent grin on my face and the intensity with which I savored every bite. I hadn’t even realized I was audibly expressing my satisfaction until he laughed and said, “You do realize people can hear you right?”

I think the reason why the memory was so memorable is explained in one of our posts this week. When we can find moments to savor, when we pay attention to the things that bring us joy, we have more delight, happiness and zest for life. That single moment so many years ago still brings back feelings of complete wonder, sensory overload and joy. If you want to start adding more of those moments in your own life, read our first post below.

Do you remember how you were as a child? Do you recall how you perceived the world? How you interacted with others? How you saw yourself?

It’s been awhile for me, but I often reflect upon my childhood through my adult eyes. I remember, for example, my self-consciousness about my messy hair and short stature, my fear of getting my ears pierced and of big tall grown-ups. I also recall how impatient I was to be an adult so that I could choose what I wanted to eat for dinner and when I could go to bed.

Of all the things I thought being grown up would mean, I didn’t have the ability to see the hard stuff that would come with the territory. I didn’t understand both the blessing and difficulty that comes with our freedom to choose. I can choose, for example, what I wear, what to eat, and where to live. And I also can choose how I live my life. It’s a huge responsibility, one which my little mind couldn’t begin to comprehend.

This week our bloggers remind us that being able to make conscious choices is the privilege we have as adults. Whether it’s learning how to be better parents, managing our emotions, accepting the unacceptable or re-learning how to savor and enjoy our food, they all teach us how turning off autopilot and being mindful can change our lives.

It could be a single stressful event or a string of them, but one thing is for sure, the constant worries, fears and anxiety that weigh heavy on your shoulders are what’s to blame for your unhappiness. The energy given to unnecessary what-if’s prevent you from living the way you want to live, sucking hope and possibility from your life.

Think about the obsessive thoughts and “shoulds” that wear on you day to day. The thing you should have said or shouldn’t have told a friend when they were grieving a loss. The lack of empathy we have, not just for our kids for bad grades, but ourselves.

Over time, they wear you down. They sabotage the life you were meant to live by draining your physical and mental energy and stressing you out.

The solution?

This week our bloggers are giving us all a mental shift by freeing us from limitations, from labels that don’t help us, and from teaching us how not to let our own impossible expectations and pressures dictate our lives. It’s a way to open up, break down old patterns and build new healthier ones. Sometimes all it takes is a shift in old thinking. This should help.

Happy Friday the 13th! Want to hear something really scary?

As we get older, it’s easier to shrink inside ourselves. Gone is our ambition, flexibility (physically and emotionally) and our courage. It’s not an inevitable transition if we are aware of it early. But most of us walk around in a haze allowing time to render our muscles worn and our ambition shot.

We rarely stop and think about how stuck in a rut we’ve gotten until we’re faced with a challenge that forces us to step outside our comfort zones.

If you’re open to spreading your wings a bit, read our top posts this week. It’ll give you a new perspective on things like sexual addiction, creativity, blogging and recovery. It seems like quite an unrelated mix. But all together they show us that we’re never too old to learn something new, that we can re-engage our creativity, take more risks, heal ourselves and get through difficulty regardless of our physical age.