Hey Pioneers! Welcome to April, the month dedicated to Sexual Assault Awareness.  Sexual assault can be a topic that is difficult to talk about. Sometimes, you may wonder if what happened really was a sexual assault. You may question your memory or may even have no memory of the event. You may not want to believe that the other person involved would have wanted to harm you, or you may not even know them. A sexual assault happens when a person experiences unwanted sexual contact. It includes rape, but also other behaviors. Any touch that is not consented to and is done for sexual reasons is sexual assault. If you’ve experienced a sexual assault, or you’re wondering whether what you experienced was a sexual assault, it can be hard to know what to do next and who would be safe to talk to. You may feel very alone and like no one else could possibly understand what you’re going through or how you feel. You’re not alone; there are many resources available at no charge to help you process...

Spring Break is approaching quickly and with that we know that exams are happening right before and after that week.  What we hear and see all the time is that this week that's set aside to "break" and recuperate from the stress of the semester in the first half, actually becomes the opposite.  More often than not, actually, Spring Break is seen as an opportunity to study EVEN MORE, and the idea of taking a break or doing something relaxing and caring for yourself is not even on the radar. Do we have to highlight what this mentality can lead to? You got it, BURNOUT.  You are already grinding and studying in your spare time during the busy part of the semester and go into overtime during this week and trying to catch up or get ahead of the game on learning and studying. Now...are we saying don't utilize part of the break to study or avoid studying at all? Absolutely not. Honestly, we can probably guess the thought of that made your anxiety sky rocket!  Studying during...

It’s February. The days are still cold and short, and we are in that in-between time when the holidays are over, spring has yet to come, and we are being bombarded by all the Valentine’s Day marketing. Rather than a narrow focus on romantic love, hopefully what you are seeing reflects the growing awareness that loving others well probably shouldn’t just be reserved for February 14th, and also celebrates all the various kinds of relationships that contribute to our wellbeing. So with that broader lens on Valentine’s Day, let’s talk about caring for ourselves well, and how that helps us care for others well.  I’m going to challenge us to shift our thinking about self-care away from much of what the popular media promotes under that label (fancy coffee, manicures, wine night, bubble baths, etc). Instead, think about self-care using a house analogy. In a well built house, you need a firm foundation, strong walls, and a solid roof. Likewise, self-care consists of the actions we take to ...

Hey Pioneers and welcome to January's blog on how to challenge the tendency of being a people-pleaser!  Raise your hand if you've ever sacrificed your own peace, needs/wants, or happiness to make sure others felt comfortable and to avoid conflict...Yeah, we see you and we know that struggle!  A people pleaser is defined as "a person who has an emotional need to please others often at the expense of his or her own needs or desires". The key takeaways that highlight where this becomes an issue is "emotional need" and "at the expense of his or her own needs or desires". This emotional need means that somewhere throughout life we learned that by pleasing others and focusing on others' happiness fulfilled some element of love and acceptance. This could be by watching role models/caregivers do this same thing, by growing up in an environment where keep the peace and ensuring other's happiness was the only way to experience a "positive" ...

Hello Pioneers and welcome to the December blog!  You might be surprised to see that this month's topic isn't necessarily "holly jolly". Our society has a great way of painting the holiday season as bright, cheerful, and a time for happiness and memories, but that's not the case for everyone. We expand more on this in the podcast for this month, but specifically for this blog post we want to talk about grief and the holidays.  As we know, grief is universal and something we all have/will experience in our lifetimes, as death is a part of life. But even though it's something everyone will experience, it's not something that people like to talk about or give space to. It seems a common trend in society is to avoid the hard feelings of grief and instead expect grieving individuals to put on a positive and happy "mask" so that others aren't affected. Specifically surrounding our topic, we see this come up around the holidays when others might mak...

Hey Pioneers, and thanks for checking in for another blog post! This November blog is all centered around the gift of presence for yourself, especially with the upcoming holiday season.  "During our average day, most of us speak around 16,000 words, but our thoughts - our internal, tireless chatterbox minds - produce tens of thousands more, 95% of which are reruns. No wonder it's so hard to get to our basic stillness; it's buried under tens of thousands of thoughts." - Caroline Welch In our every day, there are seemingly a million different things happening at once that can be overwhelming, distracting, upsetting, etc. In these moments, it can be easy to not even notice the lack of presence you are experiencing.  But what does presence actually mean for ourselves? Well, by dictionary definition, it means "being with another or in the immediate vicinity or proximity" which implies that the opposite of presence is in fact absence. According to Caroline Welch, ...

  Hello fellow Pioneers and thank you for checking out the third blog post of  When Life Feels Messy... (WLFM) I think we can all agree that a part of being human is the inherent desire to build relationships with others and have closeness.  Sometimes we have a natural ability to create healthy relationships but other times, due to multiple factors, such as role models, environmental factors, etc., we find ourselves in unhealthy and toxic relationships. Sometimes a relationship starts to turn sour and both partner's catch it in time to make amends. Sometimes, it is caught too late and the best thing to do is walk away. But sometimes, we might realize the relationship is toxic and not know how to get out of it.  As October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, we wanted to devote this blog to discussing the differences between a healthy relationship and one that is toxic. Our monthly podcast episode also features a special guest who has a lot of therapeutic e...