Lauren Rubenstein, PsyD, Psychologist

07/11/2025

Permission to rest

“DON’T DO ANYTHING. JUST REST.

Don’t fall into the trap of believing that doing nothing… means doing nothing for yourself.

We’ve been conditioned to believe that not being productive is somehow a failure.

That if it doesn’t have a visible outcome, it doesn’t count.

That rest is wasted time.

We’ve become so used to being busy —

to checking off boxes,

to tracking our progress,

to measuring worth in output —

that we’ve forgotten something essential:

Rest is productive.

It’s the moment your body heals.

Your mind exhales.

Your soul whispers.

Reading a magazine.

Taking a long shower.

Sitting in the garden with a warm cup of coffee.

None of it is a waste.

Because time spent resting… is time well spent.

We’re not machines.

We’re not meant to hustle 24/7.

We are human beings.

And sometimes, we just need to be.”

— Becky Hemsley

Echoes of Insight

06/16/2025

This is It
and I am It
and You are It
and so is That
and He is It
and She is It
and It is It
and That is That

O it is This
and it is Thus
and it is Them
and it is Us
and it is Now
and Here It is
and Here We are
so This is It

- James Broughton

04/08/2025

“Children require healthy, caring, and attentive adults to help them develop their social and emotional intelligence. It is the job of a parent to help children feel safe enough to express uncomfortable feelings. When children feel supported, they learn that stressful moments are only temporary and that they can resolve into positive experiences of empowerment or deepened connections in relationships.

However, when parents are emotionally withholding, controlling, or abusive, they fail to help their children develop a healthy emotional landscape. Within this unsafe territory, children become explosive or cut off from their feelings. In some cases, children become hyper-aware of their parents’ distress or are compelled to take care of their parents’ emotional needs. This process of abandoning self for the purpose of attending to the needs of others is called the Fawn Response.

The fawn response involves people-pleasing to the degree that an individual disconnects from their own emotions, sensations, and needs. In childhood, this occurs because they must withhold expressing their authentic emotions of sadness, fear, and anger in order to avoid potential wrath or cruelty from a parent or caregiver. As a result, they turn their negative feelings toward themselves in the form of self-criticism, self-loathing, or self-harming behaviors. In adulthood, an unresolved fawn response can then become the root of co-dependence, depression, or somatic symptoms of pain and illness.”

The fawn response involves people-pleasing or disconnecting from emotions, sensations, and needs. This occurs because they withhold feelings..

02/13/2025

The Welcoming
– Michael Stillwater

Let yourself relax into this moment.
Let yourself be held without any need to hold yourself up.
Let yourself meet the unknown.
It’s OK. It’s a place we don’t have to know with our mind.
What if there were angels all around you and you just couldn’t see them?
What if there was a love so vast that you could never be apart from it?
What if it was impossible for you to go anywhere where this love could not find you?
You are entering the Beauty not far fro your heart.
It’s a place that embraces you as you are.
I trust that you will be met by a welcoming presence that knows you, and that meets you with a deeper love than you have ever imagined in this world.
May you know, without any doubt, the precious gift that you are.
And may you be welcomed by a presence so loving that all fear subsides.
Far beyond where winds have blown, waking into realms unknown
Footsteps free of space and time, silent thunder, holy mind
In the heart a song of peace and mercy calling me back home.

02/09/2025

"The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them.
How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give. If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair.
If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop much compassion for other people’s suffering.
Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible."

~Francis Weller

12/30/2024

12/29/2024

It's okay not to have New Years resolutions

It's okay not to have big goals for your life

It's okay not to have plans you want to

Manifest

It's okay not to chase your dreams

That path is not for everyone

Some walk the path of

Unbecoming

They are traveling the road

Backwards

Seeking the core

What is basic and essential

What has been there all along

Though we may be headed the same direction

Our spirals are mirror opposites

Some walk the path of the visionary

Creating abundance and

Dancing inside a multiplicity of forms

And Some walk the path

Of the serpent owl

Becoming more and more naked

Shedding layers of fantasy into the ash

Night sky

Sitting in the dark

And seeing the way the wind moves

They do not walk a line or

Poise their arrow to the target

They sit at the bottom of the ocean

And wait

Letting the waves devour them

They are following the pulse

Of listening

To silence

Like a tiger in the brush

Waiting for existence to strike lightening

Into the fire of the heart

For this kind

Nothing less will do

Some are opening the palms of their hands

And unraveling

To become

Less and less

Until they are

No-Thing

To become the still point

In the center of

All

You know who you are

Keep going

- Maya Luna

11/28/2024

Letter to the Parts of Me I Have Tried to Exile by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I’m sorry. I thought banishing you
was the way to become better,
more perfect, more good, more free.
The irony: I thought if I cut you off
and cast you out, if I built the walls
high enough, then the parts left would be
more whole. As if the sweet orange
doesn’t need the toughened rind,
the bitter seed. As if the forest
doesn’t need the blue fury of fire.
It didn’t work, did it, the exile?
You were always here, jangling
the hinges, banging at the door,
whispering through the cracks.
Left to myself, I wouldn’t have known
to take down the walls,
nor would I have had the strength to do so.
That act was grace disguised as disaster.
But now that the walls are rubble,
it is also grace that teaches me to want
to embrace you, grace that guides me
to be gentle, even with the part of me
that would still try to exile any other part.
It is grace that invites me
to name all parts beloved.
How honest it all is. How human.
I promise to keep learning how
to know you as my own, to practice
opening to what at first feels unwanted,
meet it with understanding,
trust all belongs, welcome you home.

11/28/2024

🙏🏻

11/07/2024

Inviting Spaciousness

Today when the heart is a small, tight knot,
I do not try to untangle it. I don’t tug on the strings
in a desperate attempt to unravel it.
I don’t even wonder at how it got so snarled.
Instead, I imagine cradling it, cupping it
with my hands like something precious,
something wounded, a bird with a broken wing.
I cradle my heart like the frightened thing it is.
I imagine all the other frightened hearts
and imagine them all being held in love.
And I breathe. I breathe and feel
how the breathing invites a spaciousness.
I breathe and let myself be moved by the breathing
as I open and soften. Open and soften.
And nothing changes. And everything changes.
The heart, still a knot, remembers
it knows how to love. It knows it is not alone.

~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

11/01/2024

The image is a midwife that allows inner experience to be birthed into conscious expression.”
— Matthew Fox

SoulCollage® is a gentle, playful and often joyful way of exploring your life and your deep self. Using images from magazines, individuals create their own unique deck of cards, where each card represents a different aspect of themselves. There is a deeper level of knowing that is accessed through images. The process combines image, words, intuition, and synchronicity into a unique creative and artistic process that anyone can do. It requires no special skills, but can often produce images and insights that are surprising and full of depth and meaning. SoulCollage® works directly with the language of symbols, images and archetypes and is an insightful process of self-discovery.

10/16/2024