You Validate Your Dark and Light – Not Others!

I’ve been consciously on my own spiritual path for around 24 years now, and I’ve gone through a whole host of experiences, attachments, struggles, awakenings, and resistance too. One thing I have learned is that we are not at all responsible for validating another person’s emotional journey. Neither are we responsible for making emotional experiences invalid for another human being, but let’s face it, we’ve all been there and bought…

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Embrace Authenticity: Quit Hiding Parts of Yourself to Win Others’ Love

The unspoken deal is this : If you will bury the parts I don’t like, then I will love you. The unspoken choice is this: Lose yourself or lose me After reading this in a book called ‘Necessary Losses’, I know I was given this deal growing up. I had to lose myself to feel safe, to feel even an illusionary sense of acceptance, but all of it was based…

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With Pleasure Comes Pain – Is This True?

It’s interesting how much we hide hidden blocks behind what seem like nothing much at all. We may think we are resisting eating healthily for example or resisting exercising and we just think ‘Oh it’s just because I find it boring’ or ‘I’m just too tired to do any of this’ 2022 was a pretty hard year for me, I fell in love for the first time, it was unrequited,…

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Why Feeling Safe Is the Beginning of Change

It may seem counterintuitive to talk about safety at this time, especially when so many are scared during this pandemic, but I wanted to come at the subject of safety from a different direction. In a previous podcast episode and blog post I talked about Why Risks Are an Important Part of Life and how uncertainty is a big part of life and the unknown. However it has recently come…

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Why People Pleasing Hurts and How To Drop The ‘Good Girl’ Act

  I pleased people since childhood, wearing my mask of smiles and niceness because when I let out the assertive honest me, people disappeared from my life. So as I enter my mid-life, I release the need to please people who cannot accept the ‘real me’, even if that means being alone. You may know the story. Young woman with opinions and a strong voice is rejected early on because…

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How Painful Shame Taught Me A Very Valuable Lesson

How many times have you felt shame for being human? For making normal, human errors? For expressing your vulnerability and weaknesses out loud to other human beings? I know I have and just did it again today. Being a woman with hormones flooding can sometimes be empowering but also can make me feel extra sensitive and vulnerable to my own feelings and my own trigger points. Shame feels a biggy…

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10 Ways To Have A Stress-Free Christmas

So the Christmas season is heating up, the stores are full to brimming with gifts and sales, your little ones are tugging at your heartstrings to provide for them the perfect day and perhaps you’re losing your head a little and the stress is setting in. Being mindful at Christmas can take a little more practice than at other times of the year. We are encouraged and trained by society…

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How To Stop Being Triggered By Life

“Not this again,” I’d catch myself saying. It was usually after a triggering event like someone parking my car in the driveway or when I felt unseen or excluded. I’d feel really pissed about it. I mean, how dare they! How could they be so rude? So inconsiderate? This reaction may seem pretty intense and I’m not going to sugar coat it, recovery from trauma is intense. Once that can…

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Kelly Martin Speaks: 10 Year Blog Anniversary

  Kelly Martin Speaks: 10 Year Blog Anniversary 10 years today I wrote my first blog entry. This blog was initially meant as an online public journal where I got to express myself when I felt very insecure and socially anxious. Fast-forward 10 years and since that first post ‘Why I Became A Vegetarian and Why I Quit‘ I’m officially: Less socially anxious Far more secure as a person I’ve written…

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The Important Freedom and Power in Being Wrong

    At the end of 2016 some old issues began to rise for me. Deep fears and stuff that has held me back in life, but I chose to brush them under the carpet.   Being Wrong – Owning This Grizzly Bear   I was brought up with a repetitive phrase told to me throughout childhood and into teen years whenever I had an emotional reaction, frustration and not…

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