Emotional journey

After Chris and I got married last June, I decided I wanted to learn to let go of the various emotional barriers I've built throughout my life. I wanted to fully embrace being a woman, which meant fully accepting my body and my emotions. When I was in high school, I wanted nothing more than to be accepted as "one of the guys." I suppressed a lot of those "girly" feelings teenager girls/young women tend to have. For quite a while, including throughout college, I pretended not to be affected by the difficult or emotionally painful things that happened. I wanted to be strong, but it turns out I didn't understand the definition of strong. What I ended up doing was building a number of emotional walls in order to prevent any pain reaching me. In some cases, I buried the pain so deep that it's taken until now to fully surface it and work through it. This contributed to my bad habit of having good friends for a while and losing touch very quickly afterward - it was a way to forget, to not be reminded of whatever emotional event happened. I found myself doing this even in grad school, pushing away a close friend because being around her reminded me of things that happened in our broader circle of friends.

I knew I didn't want to continue to this pattern. I wanted to build life-long friendships, to grow together. This is something Chris has taught me. When Chris and I started dating, I realized it was ok to be who I really was, that what happened in my past doesn't dictate what happens in my present and future. I learned I can grow from these experiences rather that continuing to hide behind these walls. Sounds easy, but I'm still working it.

In order to continue my journey, I got the book Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom by Christiane Northrup. She walks through creating physical and emotional health from the feminine perspective. Her writing felt like a guide for me to find my own path. A lot of what she wrote spoke to me on a very deep level. It's been a similar experience to when I was visiting a counselor in undergrad, only this time, it has left me feeling more connected not just to myself, but to the female experience. I just finished the book this morning and feel inspired by all of the women who've worked through their own walls and experiences.

How to take care of succulents

Hello to all who took home one of the centerpieces from our wedding! I have received a number of questions from you about how to take care of succulents. I honestly had no bloody clue - this was the first time I'd ever had succulents! One thing that's happened to at least a couple of people that I know of is the plant grew really tall with the leaves spaced far apart and has now fallen over. Case in point:

What to do??? I started researching online. Apparently the reason the plant does this is because it's not getting enough light (hard to believe in a place like Minnesota). This is your opportunity to create more plants! I found a great how-to guide on Instructables.com with pictures on how to create more plants and what the plants will look like. I've already created a plant from a leaf off my succulent, which was really cool to see it grow. One thing I did differently: I stuck the leaf in dirt soon after breaking it off the original plant instead of drying it out for three days. It took a while to start growing because of the low winter light, but it was really fun to see it grow!

One other important tip that I just learned: if your succulents leaves are turning yellow and drying up, try watering it less. I thought before that that's just what these plants did, but I was apparently wrong and am guilty of this too. To show you how little water these plants need, I only watered my hens and chicks twice this entire winter!

Good luck and let me know how things are growing!