Youthful Life: X

" Stop holding your truth; speak your truth. Be yourself. It's the healthiest way to be."  T iffany Haddish What are we afraid of? Why do we hold back? How are we stopping ourselves from saying what our hearts yearn to say? So much of life, connection, and relationship is left unsaid. We hold back from sharing what is on our minds for a multitude of reasons. What we don't realize is what we lose in the process of stifling our voices. When we shut ourselves down we teach ourselves that we - all of us, our truths, our stories, our thoughts, are not worth sharing. The more the we do, the more we reinforce that the words we have to offer are unworthy of the air. Smaller, and smaller our voices become until we talk ourselves out of sharing our voices at all. It is wise to be thoughtful in what we share, but intentionality is also sharing bravely. The things that we stop just short of saying often are precisely what we need to say. It's right there. It's jus

"It is not length of life, but depth of life." Ralph Waldo Emerson Death is a natural part of life but that doesn't make it any easier to handle. Death has been part of the human life cycle for millennia, and it's still the worst thing that people can experience. Death comes for all of us, and we can feel its inevitable aftermath as devastating. What is there to say about death besides that nothing and no one prepares us for the despair it leaves us with. It is so beyond the scope of our understanding that we malfunction just trying to wrap our heads around what it means. How can someone we love die? How can they be gone forever? How can I never speak to them, hear from them, or touch them ever again? For the rest of our lives? That can't be real. How can someone who has been part of all my days be absent from them for the rest of my days? It's not fair. It doesn't make sense. It's unbelievable. It is beyond belief. Things beyond belief do not