The Highly Sensitive Superwoman (2026)

17/10/2020

I woke up feeling tired today after not resting as deeply as I would have liked. Sleep can be a challenge for me at times.
Ever since I can remember, I’ve always been a very sensitive sleeper.

At times, I feel like there is so much energy moving through my body and nervous system that accessing greater states of rest and relaxation feels near impossible.

I’ve learned that my particular nervous system is highly sensitive and attuned and needs a lot more time to healthfully discharge and process the energy moving through my system.

I’ve had to learn to listen and become aware of my internal currents and rhythms and the natural cycles of regulation and dysregulation, and what these states feel like in my body.

I have had to devote myself to studying and tracking the things that support me in feeling resourced and staying connected with my present moment sense of alignment.

The more attuned and in touch with my rhythms and the things that support my natural homeostasis, the more quickly I am able to rediscover my center when I get knocked off my axis.

This is why even though I felt exhausted this morning, I went for a walk. Through the practice of deep listening and becoming intimate with the things that support the flow of my alignment, I knew that going for a walk would help discharge some of the energy in my nervous system still trying to find release.

As the energy finally found release, I knew that this would create greater spaciousness in my system so I could access greater rest.

I also knew that since I didn’t feel as energized today, moving at a much slower pace and giving myself more time and space to become more internally oriented would be really supportive. Taking more breaks throughout the day today would support me in recharging so I could feel more energized tomorrow.

The more rested and resourced we are, the more available we are to show up for ourselves. This, in turn, empowers us to show up more skillfully with others and those that we most love.

How best can you resource yourself today so you can show up for yourself and honor and care for yourself in the ways you are most deserving and worthy of?

17/10/2020

~All of You is Welcome Here~
Yesterday, I was talking to a friend about these two parts of myself that I have often felt challenged by.

On one side, we have team fear and logic working together for the win. On the other side, we have team trust and intuition.

I’ve been on a journey of self-inquiry and spiritual exploration for long enough to know that all of these elements are essential in their own right and have both wisdom and neurotic qualities.

Take fear; for instance, whenever fear arises, I’ve learned that I have an opportunity to slow down and pay attention.

My awareness is becoming heightened around something that has the potential to threaten my sense of safety on some level.
But, if I let fear go unchecked and allow it to drive my logic, I can actually miss out on some pretty amazing opportunities.

Logic purely based out of fear usually leads me to make certain choices that satisfy my momentary sense of safety on one level, but rarely ever gives me the satisfaction I truly desire.
I’ve learned that my deepest satisfaction comes from a very precise equation.

It’s a combination of:
Logic: (critically assessing and reasoning
from an embodied place what makes the
most sense out of the options available),
+
Calculated risks: (that induce a healthy
sense of fear and excitement and lead to
intentional actions based on my awareness
of the available choices),
+
Intuition: (devotion to listening and trusting
myself enough to surrender where I am
being guided).

You see, I wasn’t always oriented towards this way of being and moving through life.

I also know what it feels like on the other side, where I’m taking my primary instructions from trust and intuition and trying my best to avoid fear and logic.

It sounds great, doesn’t it? Ideal even?

So much of what we digest today in spiritual literature and teachings tout the benefits of trusting yourself and letting your intuition guide you as the keys to your greatest happiness and freedom.

So, when I tell you, I swallowed that specific brand of kool-aid many times, I truly mean it.

I read the manuals, did the mindset work, energy mastery, deep therapeutic work and coaching, natural healing remedies, medicine rituals, (to name a few)...

I had hoped to free myself from the confines of my fear-based thinking, and the logic that prevented me from taking the risks that I was assured would lead me to the freedom life I desired.
What I didn’t know is that I couldn’t bypass fear or logic to attain a deep sense of trust in myself and intuition.

I couldn’t just skip over the parts that I didn’t like about myself and avoid the boxes I had learned to confine myself in.
I had to learn to value these parts of myself and understand their origin stories.

Within the understanding, valuing, and acceptance of these qualities, all of the feelings of being trapped or confined, feeling afraid to be and trust myself, and let go intuitively to where I was being guided began to slowly transform.

Suddenly, fear and logic were no longer my enemies, but brilliant feedback and lenses of awareness that could be utilized as tools to enrich and influence my life’s trajectory.

When things flow the most effortlessly in my life, it’s because I’m not in opposition to any part of my experience.

I am able to be an objective observer and aware of all the wisdom and neurotic qualities that are online.

I am also able to value the perspectives and concerns of every part of myself, the wisdom they bring, and the wisdom within each of the neurotic qualities.

By learning the true value of every part and perspective, we create a foundational ground of trust that allows us to expand beyond the confines of fear, logic, and any other definition we might identify ourselves with into the quality and expression of our pure being-ness.

To transcend, we must include and, it is within the inclusion that we discover a pathway to our greatest liberation (and creative equations that empower you with the freedom to holistically hack life ;)).

Photo Credit: Angie Barnes Photography

12/10/2020

Trust yourself 💗✨🙏🏼💜

11/10/2020

~You Are Worthy of Rest, Slowing Down, and Moving at Your Own Pace~

There is magic to receive in slowing down. When we move so quickly, we can often miss out on the little details and moments brimming with the most magic.

This weekend feels like the first time that I've given myself full permission to exhale in the ways I have been most deeply needing in a long time.

I tend to skip over giving myself the rest and nourishment I deserve, and the time and space I require to actually integrate everything I am experiencing.

Slowing down has always been a practice. I am often combatting the internal voices that tell me I am not doing enough, or I am not worthy of rest and feeling pleasure unless I check everything off my to-do list.

I can often experience a sense of dis-ease and anxiety if I am not constantly occupying myself in a way that I have been conditioned to believe is productive.

Being in devotion to the process of finding wholeness within and opening into greater depths of unconditional acceptance has required me to examine all the ways in which I've been programmed and conditioned.

I've had to continuously lean into the inquiry of becoming intimate with myself and moment to moment truth.
I've had to astutely study and become mindful of what feels in resonance and supports my deeper alignment with my true nature. I've also had to become familiarized with what is in dissonance and misaligned with my present moment embodiment and optimal well being.

Our needs and parameters for alignment are always changing because we are continuously evolving.

Actualizing our highest potential is less about a specific recipe for success and more about our devotion to the practice of moment to moment attunement.

We need to familiarize ourselves enough with our programming to unlearn it.

We need to understand the depth and complexity of who we believe ourselves to be to grow beyond our perception of what we think is possible.

This depth of intimate understanding of our true self and nature only arises when we have given ourselves enough time and space to connect in presence with the full spectrum of our experience just as it is.

By sitting with ourselves and welcoming all that we are, we become acutely attuned to the rhythms of tension and fluidity and where we exist in opposition to our experience, as well as acceptance.

By studying these rhythms, we no longer live in question or confusion around who we are or what our true direction is. We learn to honor the intelligence and feedback that is constantly being reflected through our present moment experience.

We develop a greater quality of listening that supports us in making micro shifts in the way we relate with ourselves and others, which augments our ability to show up in greater presence and embodiment with our true nature and expression.

In the slow down, our awareness becomes dilated enough to embrace all aspects of our experience.

Through this embracing, we can access an embodied understanding of what it feels like to be deeply anchored and connected to the foundational ground of our inner truth and inner guidance.

We learn to care for ourselves in ways that are most true to who we are now and honor exactly where we are on our unfolding journey.

In the slow down, we learn that we can trust ourselves and experience enough to let go and deeply surrender because we are no longer in opposition to any part of our experience.

In this surrender, we become receptive enough to open into the vastness of our experience and can finally connect with the pure awareness that we are that exists beyond self.
~

25/06/2020

I believe in you 🙏🏼💜✨

19/06/2020

Paved⁣
⁣
Tired, heavy, sleepy, I feel a weariness in my bones and body. ⁣
⁣
It's a soul-deep kind of exhaustion. ⁣
⁣
Saturated, slow, tentative. ⁣
⁣
I open one lazy eye and then the other, my lids at half-mast, light creeping in inch by inch, pupils dilating as I take in my surroundings. ⁣
⁣
"Where am I?," she asks. ⁣
⁣
My awareness traces the familiar lines and shapes of my body, senses awakened, aroused to the crisp breeze kissing my skin, the faint rustle of leaves shimmering with the wind, the way the mattress hugs my body, softening where my muscles feel most relaxed, and melting around where I still feel rigid. ⁣
⁣
Resting, simply being, not doing or questing, nor trying to fix or change. ⁣
⁣
"Who will I choose to be today?" I ask. ⁣
⁣
I feel into this habitual tension, breath tightening, body constricting, mind gripping around the "to-do's."⁣
⁣
I've already lost myself. ⁣
⁣
"Where did you go?," she asks. I tell her, ⁣
⁣
"I let myself think that doing was more important than being. I allowed myself to believe that my ability to produce, accomplish, and achieve was more valuable than listening and trusting."⁣
⁣
"One day, a long time ago, I decided that my worth was defined by success. I decided to internalize a template and trajectory for happiness. Those who spoon-fed me didn't realize their words were coated with poison."⁣
⁣
And, day after day, as I ingested what was colorless, odorless, and all but invisible, I started to sacrifice parts and pieces of myself. I didn't realize what was happening at first."⁣
⁣
We carry the relics of these lies and half-truths within our blood, past down from generation to generation. There is a fee you must pay to enter the gates of eternal happiness. ⁣
⁣
They've always said, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."⁣
⁣
Continued in comments 💎👇🏼

16/06/2020

Override.⁣
⁣
This word splinters across the surface of my consciousness leaving fragments that slowly imbed themselves into the alcoves of my memory to be recalled at another time and place.⁣
⁣
It’s convenient to ignore the subtle signs and signals.⁣
⁣
After a while, the voices are barely audible, and the insistent nudging becomes less frequent.⁣
⁣
Feedback is only feedback, isn’t it? You can take it or leave it.⁣
⁣
I say to myself, “But, what do you gain from not listening?”⁣
⁣
“Are there untold treasures awaiting you on the other side of apathy?”⁣
⁣
“Or, is it fear that holds you hostage, its roots and tendrils slowly slinking around you, as it whispers you aren’t good enough, worthy enough, deserving enough, lovable?”⁣
⁣
Long ago I discovered that I could be just as skilled in the weaving of lies as I was of truths.⁣
⁣
I could twist and mold my perception.⁣
⁣
I could align the visage of the outer world with the beliefs that I held to be most sacred.⁣
⁣
I could gorge myself on the feast of my deepest fears and hurts, belly distended and quivering with a fullness that wasn’t true nourishment, but a proclamation and rebellion pointing to the irrefutable proof of my resistance.⁣
⁣
“Resistance is futile," I say.⁣
⁣
I ask, “If my fear had a voice, what would she say?”⁣
⁣
“You can’t make me change,” she says. “I refuse to grow, get bigger, be seen, let go of all the things that make me, me.”⁣
⁣
“You can’t make me,” she says again. “If I am so big, how will there ever be room for my smallness?" she says.⁣
⁣
I tell her, “Loving one part of you isn’t an option. Loving and accepting you includes the smallness as well as the bigness and everything in between. Loving you means that there are no parts or pieces of you that need to sacrificed. Truly loving you means you get to be scared, vulnerable, fall apart, not know, be messy, get mad, lose control, call me names, and I’ll still be here.”⁣
⁣
“When I say I love you unconditionally, it means I love and accept you just as you are right now. It means I am not going anywhere, ever.”⁣
⁣
“You might not trust me at first, and that’s okay.”⁣
⁣
Continued in comments. ⬇️

15/06/2020

I am often in touch with this quality of aloneness that pervades all, this fundamental sense of spaciousness that is vast and limitless.⁣
⁣
When I breathe into it, I do not know where I begin, and the space ends. My awareness melts like hot wax, slowly trickling out in all directions.⁣
⁣
It flows through every curve and crevice of my body. It saturates every groove and alleyway of my mind.⁣
⁣
It fills the expanse of the deep well of my emotions; every feeling and undercurrent bubbling to the surface and evaporating until all that is left is pure awareness.⁣
⁣
Pure awareness has no story or attachment.⁣
⁣
Pure awareness is just in observation and witnessing of the never-ending happening and unfoldment; the movement of life and creation itself.⁣
⁣
I recently discovered that it is not the act of dying that I fear.⁣
⁣
What I fear most is what comes after death.⁣
⁣
I fear the day that inevitably arrives when I surrender my last breath, where I let go so profoundly that self exists no more, and I am left to rest within the eye of infinity with no set beginning or end.⁣
⁣
There is nothing to hold onto.⁣
⁣
There is nowhere to hide.⁣
⁣
There is no story to become lost in.⁣
⁣
There is just pure being.⁣
⁣
Isn’t it ironic that my greatest fear is synonymous with my deepest desire; to be utterly and completely free?

11/06/2020

No longer living in opposition to our authentic nature, we become sculpted, chiseled, and honed into the living song and scripture for the holy truth of all that we are.

08/06/2020

What’s one thing you can appreciate about yourself today?

02/06/2020

I have always been hungry for love, to know that I am loved, to love, and be loved in return. ⁣
⁣
I have come to know love through loss, through devastation, through my heart being shattered into millions of pieces over and over again. ⁣
⁣
I didn’t know that something that was already broken could break apart, even more, splintering into something foreign and unrecognizable even to myself. ⁣
⁣
I didn’t know that my heart could heal after being fractured so many times.⁣
⁣
I didn’t know that it was in the bursting that my capacity for love and loving could grow even more. ⁣
⁣
I suppose I should be grateful for every breakdown, every breakup, every heart wrenching and soul-crushing experience that I have tasted in this lifetime. ⁣
⁣
Without the pain, I would never have grown to learn my true capacity for love and pleasure.⁣
⁣
© Sandra Bershad, 2020

21/05/2020

💜

The Highly Sensitive Superwoman

17/10/2020

17/10/2020

12/10/2020

11/10/2020

25/06/2020

19/06/2020

16/06/2020

15/06/2020

11/06/2020

08/06/2020

02/06/2020

21/05/2020

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