self-care
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Nine Free Things to Bust Stress and Boost Mood
Stress is a killer. Not only does it put you on edge, it actually damages your physical health. Stress causes inflammation in the body, which is implicated in a whole host of medical conditions no one wants, from heart disease and stroke to cancer and Alzheimer’s. Sometimes the things that feel like they ease stress […]
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How to Do New Year’s Resolutions Right
Instead of making the same old resolutions as last year and the year before — you know the ones: going to the gym every day, saving money every paycheck, only drinking on weekends; the promises that are “forgotten” by mid-February — how about making resolutions for 2020 that you actually want to keep? This new […]
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How to Stay Young
“Live hard, die young, have a good-lookin’ corpse every time.” _ Tom Waits (and countless other raconteurs). There’s only one way to actually stay young, and that is to die young. Morbid, I know, but true. Otherwise, aging is inevitable, but your attitude about the accumulation of years can keep you feeling young right into […]
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What it Feels Like to Quit Drinking Alcohol for 3 Months (After Drinking Almost Daily for Years)
In a word: Enlightening. I did not consider myself an alcoholic, even though I drank wine most nights. Wine with dinner is totally normal. No cause for alarm. I’d pour my first glass when I got home from work or while cooking, and when it was empty, I’d refill it. Some nights it would be […]
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Some Miserable Shit About Aging: Ladies’ Edition
Even though I’m in the middle of the Self-Love Challenge and looking for new lovable things about me to celebrate each day, I am not immune to experiencing Miserable Shit About Aging. Because I am a ladyperson in her mid-40s, this includes all kinds of hormonally induced wonkery that I wish I’d known more about […]
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Five Ways to Use Coconut Oil Outside the Kitchen
A salve for the body, inside and out Made from the white “meat” of the coconut, coconut oil is solid at room temperature and great for high-heat cooking, with a bundle of benefits outside the kitchen, too. This pantry staple removes makeup, soothes scrapes and bug bites, heals dry skin and parched strands and even […]
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Week One of the Midlife Makeover Did Not Go Well
I was so fired up, yet I failed to follow my own plans. In hindsight, it was probably unwise to launch my aspirational makeover during an exceptionally busy week of assignments. Also, success may have been more likely had I devoted some time and energy to preparation. I scheduled in my workouts haphazardly, then proceeded […]
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Self-care
The Midlife Makeover
I’m doing it. I’ve had some grand ideas about what to do with my life since leaving my full-time job last year. In a way, the past 12 months of sporadic freelancing and big-dreaming has all been part of my midlife makeover, but I am ready to approach things more thoughtfully. I am setting some […]
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Tiny Tip
Tuesday’s Tiny Tip: Don’t Believe Everything You Think
So this tip really isn’t tiny at all, because even being aware of what we’re thinking is hard. Thoughts come so constantly, so incessantly, that it can feel as though we are passive in the process, like the thoughts are just coming and we have nothing to do with how they got there. But (one […]
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Self-care
Essential Self-Care, Vol. 1: The Hard Stuff
Before we get into all the little things we can do to treat ourselves well each day, we’ve got to get into the three biggies: rest, exercise and sustenance. These elements of self-care are so essential, all the self-help in the world can’t help if we’re not attending to these critical components. Entire books have […]
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