New Directions For Life

06/01/2026

Very true, and important to realize. And there’s more… if that isn’t realized in childhood, the adults they become exhibit the same problem/behavioral pattern, and it’s far more destructive.

In working with angry and violent men almost exclusively the first decade of my career, once they developed the courage and capacity to name and express the things underneath their anger (as described here), their problems with anger resolved.

Some children are not “bad.”
They are overwhelmed.

Their anger is often grief with nowhere to go.
Their shouting is often pain that doesn’t have the words yet.

Children rarely say:

“I feel alone.”
“I don’t feel understood.”
“I need comfort.”

Instead they slam doors.
Raise their voice.
Push people away.
Act “difficult.”

Because pain in children
doesn’t always look soft and sad.

Sometimes it looks loud.
Defensive.
Angry.

And behind many angry children
is a child still hoping someone will stay,
listen,
and love them through the storm.

04/25/2026

Wisdom.

Not all ghosts are people.

Some are versions of you that died too soon.

The child who had to grow up too fast.
The dreamer who stopped dreaming.
The sensitive soul who got punished for feeling too deeply.

These aren’t just memories.
They’re phantoms that live inside your nervous system.

They whisper when you hesitate.
They wince when you speak your truth.
They show up every time you say yes — when you mean no.

This is the invisible twin —
the self that split off in order to survive.

According to Internal Family Systems,
these are exiles: young, frozen parts of you
still waiting for the safety they never had.

And until they’re met with compassion,
they’ll haunt you in ways you can’t name.

Through sabotage.
Through anxiety.
Through the ache that rises in success, like someone’s missing.

But here’s the thing:
You don’t heal by fixing or erasing these ghosts.
You heal by turning toward them.

By letting the dreamer grieve.
By letting the sensitive one feel.
By letting the child finally rest.

Because what haunts you isn’t their absence —
it’s their unfinished story.

And every time you silence yourself,
you repeat their exile.
Every time you minimize your needs,
you bury them deeper.

But when you choose to listen —
to give them space, to give them voice —
something shifts.

The ghost stops being a shadow.
It becomes a companion.
A reminder of what still longs to be lived.

You don’t need to become someone new to heal.
You need to become the one who was never allowed to exist.

That’s not haunting.
That’s resurrection.

04/25/2026

A beautiful and eloquent description… and why so few enter and make it through.

I am not trying to turn trauma into something beautiful simply because it later made sense. At the time, it was agony. It was destabilising and frightening in ways that are still hard to fully describe. There were moments when I was certain I could not take any more, moments when I believed I might die from the force of what I was feeling.

And yet something else was true as well. What was happening was not random. The pain pushing into awareness was not evidence of my personal collapse or demise. It was not my system turning against me, and it was not madness arriving from nowhere. It was material that had once been too much, too early, and too lonely to feel, now forcing itself upward because some part of me was finally ready, or ready enough, for it to be seen.

03/09/2026

Trying to think if I’ve ever seen an exception. I don’t think so. 😞

Sexual abuse & assault can poison our beliefs about our body. It can condition us to believe our worth is in the physical pleasure we can provide others— and that our body is not ours to do with as we prefer.

03/08/2026

It is often assumed that the most difficult aspect of being a therapist is the horrific stories of abuse we are exposed to, but that has never been the case for me. Not only is this a beautifully done short story/animation, I do not think I’ve come across anything that illustrates the true challenges better. For those with a genuine curiosity, this captures the dynamic that has left me in tears at the end of many work days over the last couple of decades.

Nominated for the Academy Award® for Best Animated Short Film.An orphaned bear cub finds a home with a fatherly evergreen tree, until his hunger for trash le...

02/27/2026

I don’t know about you, but I have definitely stayed on some trains far longer than I should have.

And the truth is… if you’d asked me at the time whether I was making the right choice by staying, I would have had to admit that deep down, I already knew I should have stepped off.

Sometimes we stay because we can’t be absolutely sure getting off is the right decisions. We want to give it more time, more opportunities, more solutions. We stay for hope, for longing, because we feel stuck, because we can’t see a way off. We can even stay because we’ve invested so much and leaving feels like failure and defeat. The list goes on and on….

The “wrong train” is rarely dramatic at first. It’s subtle. Rationalised. Explained away. We tell ourselves to give it time. To try harder. To be patient. To endure.

But the longer we stay somewhere misaligned, the more it costs us in energy, in confidence, in peace, well being. We pay for it in the health of our mind, body and spirit.

So here’s the truth:
Getting off early is never failure.
Changing direction is not weakness.
Choosing yourself is not selfish.

It is wisdom.

You are allowed to step off.
You are allowed to reroute.
You are allowed to say, “This isn’t for me.”
You are allowed to change your mind.

Your life is precious.
Your energy is sacred.
And you are the only one holding the ticket.

So if you get on the wrong train, be sure to get off at the first stop. It’s hugely inconvenient but it’s easier in the long run.

With love,
Fiona
www.earthmonk.guru

02/24/2026

The only path.

02/19/2026

Mountains of credit! The vast majority still say “No!” even when the resources and opportunities to take this path are there. Over the years I’ve had many people vocalize their kind assumption that being a therapist must be so hard, and they assume it’s the terrible stories of abuse and trauma. Yeah, that can be tough, but it’s never approximated what’s hardest. For those therapists who’ve done what is described here, so they can be that necessary healing support, the rejection of that help, the avoidance, and the decision to willingly and knowingly let another generation carry the burden is what makes the job hardest by far! 😞

I read that line and had to sit down. Had to let it sink in. Had to feel the grief of it, not just for me, but for my mother. For my grandmother. For every generation of women in my family who learned that the only way to handle their hurt is to hand it down.

My mother wasn't a monster. She was wounded. And wounded people wound people. Especially the ones they love. Especially the ones who can't leave.

I don't have kids yet. But I think about this a lot. About how the only way to stop the cycle is to do the thing none of them did: heal. Actually heal. Not just survive and call it strength. Not just push it down and pretend it's gone. But face it. Feel it. Let it be as ugly and painful as it needs to be. And then, slowly, with help, with time, let it go.

Because if I don't, I know what happens. I'll be standing in my own kitchen one day. Something small will go wrong. And I'll open my mouth and my mother's voice will come out. Or worse, my grandmother's. And some small person who loves me will learn the same lesson I learned: that love isn't safe. That mistakes are catastrophic. That you have to be perfect to be loved.

And I can't. I can't do that. I won't.

So I'm doing the work now. The uncomfortable, expensive, exhausting work of becoming someone who can hold their own pain without handing it to someone smaller.

Not because I'm better than my mother. Because I have something she didn't: the language for what happened to her. The resources to heal from it. The understanding that breaking the cycle takes intentional effort.

She did the best she could with what she had. I believe that. But I also get to choose differently. I get to be the generation that stops. That says: this ends with me.

The bullying. The unhealed rage. The inherited wounds we pass down like recipes.
It ends here.

02/19/2026

Heartbreaking! 💔 …And liberating, as it goes with truth.

People compliment you for being “easy.”

You don’t ask for much.
You don’t need constant reassurance.
You handle things yourself.
You rarely make a scene.

You’re “chill.”
You’re “independent.”
You’re “so low-maintenance.”

But that didn’t start as a personality trait.

It started as a survival strategy.

There was a time - very early - when you did reach out.
When you did cry.
When you did need.

And the response was silence.
Or irritation.
Or overwhelm.
Or punishment.

So your nervous system adapted.

It learned:

Don’t expect comfort.
Don’t wait to be rescued.
Don’t rely.
Don’t lean too hard.

Because leaning meant falling.

So you became the one who carries everything quietly.

You learned to solve your own problems.
To talk yourself down.
To self-soothe.
To swallow disappointment before it turned into hope.

Not because you’re strong.

Because somewhere along the way, it became clear that if you didn’t handle it, no one would.

Now even when someone would show up, your body doesn’t quite believe it.

Support feels foreign.
Asking feels embarrassing.
Needing feels unsafe.

So you say, “It’s fine.”
Even when it isn’t.

You say, “I’ve got it.”
Even when you’re drowning.

And people assume you’re just built that way.

But low-maintenance isn’t your identity.

It’s what happens when a child learns not to expect care.

And healing doesn’t mean becoming needy.

It means slowly teaching your body that you’re not alone anymore.

That someone can come.
That someone can stay.
That you don’t always have to be the one holding everything together.

You were never low-maintenance.

You were under-supported.

And that’s not a flaw.
It’s evidence of what you survived.

02/19/2026

Love it! ❤️ And, this simple instruction is the key to the better world we all want but don’t know how to create.

Once we realize that children are not property of adults, brought here to serve the interests of the adult world, and understand that this dynamic is completely backwards and that the adults job is to facilitate children’s capacities to bring their song to the world, nothing will improve at scale.

Children come into the world with their own rhythm.

Their own interests.
Their own voice.
Their own way of seeing things.

Our role isn’t to rewrite the music or force them into a tune that suits us better. It’s to notice what’s already there, to encourage it, and to give it room to grow.

Because when a child feels supported in being who they truly are,
their song gets louder all on its own. ❤️

Quote Credit: ❣️

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