I got my first tattoo when I was a freshman in undergrad. It was small and easily hidden, but it was not something that was common in my family. Hell, this was also back when tattoos were not nearly as common (because I am old). Looking back, I had always had an interest in tattoos. One of my favorite GI Joe characters had a tattoo and I was always that kid who probably had their gaze linger juuuuuuust a little too long when I saw someone with a tattoo. I slowly got more tattoos, not as many as I wanted because there were always objections to what I wanted to put on my body or the price and for the longest time, there was also a need for my tattoos to be hidden for work.

For almost all of us there is going to be some amount of baggage in our lives. This baggage is really how we adapt to changes we face due to external stimuli and how we handle similar stimuli in the future. We encounter things that impact us in differing ways as soon as we enter the world. We start feeling some amount of stress with having a sudden change in the way we interact with our surroundings. Initially our only way to get our needs met is to cry. As we grow older, we learn other ways to communicate, our needs and to seek out the comfort, safety, and security we need to be happy and healthy. However, that does not always mean that those needs are adequately addressed, sometimes due to circumstances, available resources, or any number of additional factors.

I don’t know how I would best describe the show to someone who was uninitiated. Maybe it is a show about fatherhood and father figures. But it is also a show about redemption, growth, accountability, and the power to change and grow that all humans possess.

I will continue to point to the “health and wellness” industry as a root of that, because they promise things that they cannot deliver, and because there is little to no regulation of them and their claims, they face no repercussions for swindling people and doing a number on their self-worth.

Take your time getting to know someone, give it several months of time to explore how they treat you and make you feel to ensure they are on the level. Beyond that, make sure you are doing the “controlled descent into vulnerability” where you both are being vulnerable a little at a time, and in fairly equitable ways

It is not about partnership and respect; it is about control to them

May the Fourth be With You, and also provide some therapeutic insights.

For so many of us, the lesson we are taught from an early age is that we SHOULD forgive people. The problem with forgiveness for most of us is that we treat it as a thing we give to other people to make their lives better.

What if I told you that maybe acting childish isn’t such a bad thing after all?

Mindfulness is not just us sitting in a corner in the traditional meditative pose, but rather it is being so deeply focused on a task that we are able to truly be in the moment.