Happy New Year lovely! I wanted to kick off 2013 by taking a moment to think back over the course of the last twelve months and share my favorite posts with you.

I hope that you had a simply magical New Year’s Eve, and that you are cozily settling into your intentions in the new year.Thank you for being here. I adore you.xoxoMara

Grieving the Loss of Your Body Fantasy

I am going to assume that I was not the only little kid, teenager, or, adult to fantasize about what it would be like to live in a body that wasn’t the one that I was living in.

The body that I imagined myself in was effortlessly thin. She was so gorgeous, and her skin was always clear. She wore clothing like they were gracing her with their presence, as though they had just fallen onto her body looking that perfect and pulled together. She was successful in every endeavor that she dipped her little toe in, because her smile was enough to make you pull out your wallet. Read more…

What I Miss About Emotional Eating

I’ve been dreaming about this post for a month.  I’ve been wondering exactly how to describe this feeling of loss that I have.

Loss that I can’t quite put my finger on.

Without consuming ____ to glue together all of my jagged edges, I feel a little like a bag of mirror shards, clanging around and reflecting one another’s sharpness.

Food used to tie it all together for me – family, romance, awkward social situations, fear, loneliness, anxiety - Nothing a bowl of mashed potatoes couldn’t fix.  The feeling that I have now is a little bit sad. I feel a little let down. The grandeur of going out and eating a fancy meal is a little less sparkly. The gnocchi has kind of lost it’s mystery. Read more… 

Cultivating Self-Trust

How many times have you broken a promise to yourself?

Whether it is due to a careful negotiation of whether or not you truly deserve what you’ve promised, or whether it just goes by the wayside in the busyness of your daily life – we have a tendency not to follow through on the promises that we make to ourselves, both small and large. Read more…

Granting Yourself [and Others] the Permission to Change

You are always moving, sometimes forward and sometimes backwards, if only momentarily. You are reacting to the world around you. You are learning your lessons, and you are taking them into account. You are striving to be a better lover, sister, mother, child, student, boss, person in the world.

You are busily digging deep, making repairs when you see fit, and praying to the courage to be better today than you were yesterday.

You are doing good work.  And yet? Read more…

They Told Me To Lie To You, But I Knew You Could Handle The Truth

I started writing Medicinal Marzipan with the express goal of getting the words that were boiling up in my body out from beneath my skin and into the most loving container that I could create. I started out slowly, timidly. I had no readers at the time, but I was afraid that the internet itself would reject my words back to me.

And tell me to try again. To be better. To work harder.

To pull my shit together and shellac over my wobbly bits. Read more…

Accountability, Coaching + Getting Shit Done

I kept my “mmhmm-ing” to a dull roar.

I talked to them. Like I would talk to you if I met you in the grocery store. Like I would talk to my sisters or my friends.

I would reframe their discomfort for them, presenting an alternate (and occasionally wrong) point of view. I would ask them the questions that lay quietly beneath their questions, and wonder aloud how it might be possible to eradicate feelings of low self-worth in favor of accepting what is.

I would ask them what they needed, what they were looking for out of their life, and together we would build a foundation beneath it. Read more…

Eating [and Being] Alone

Confession: I am one of those people who knows that you should eat without distractions, and secretly whips out her computer for a new episode of White Collar during lunch or a book to read during breakfast.

I am one of those people who know what is good for them, but somehow thinks that they will be able to manage the impact of not following my own advice.

And so, I get all of track: ignoring my stomach grumbling and drinking coffee instead of eating breakfast, refusing to be alone – ever – by the tag-a-long presence of my smart phone, and watching TV during lunch. Dinner, if I have a proper dinner, dissolves into a series of snacks, without any vegetables, because, well, when eating “snacks,” I don’t feel the urgency to incorporate something green. Read more…

How to Celebrate Who You Already Are

How often have you had this thought:

I will be worth celebrating, when…

For the majority of my life, celebration was riddled with qualifiers. I believed firmly that I would only be worthy all of the revelry and fun that I could imagine for myself if, and only if, I met my levels of expectation.

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that as I got older, and smarter, these levels of expectation grew with me.
Read more..

Becoming a Detective to Your Own Experience

I remember, very clearly, a time when I realized this:

I don’t even know what I like.

I knew what other people liked.

I knew what the people in my life preferred.

I knew how to do it so that I got an A.

I knew what the right way to do things was. Read more…

Fifty Shades of Taking Personal Responsibility

About a week ago, I picked up the first book in the Fifty Shades of Grey series.  I had read an article that about how it had sold over 40 million copies worldwide, as a self-published book, and I honestly, I wanted to know what the fuss was about.

And then I fell in. Head first. Consuming all three books in less than a week. I haven’t poured over books like that since, ahem, the Twilight series, which interestingly enough had a similar sort of effect culturally. Now, you may think both of these series are trashy. In many ways they are, but they have gripped the nation in such a way that it is important to think about what needs they are filling. Read more…

You Are Not Broken. You Are More Ready Than You Think.

On Thursday, I came across a prompt from Erika Lyremark from The Daily Whip that said: If you had the world’s undivided attention for 10 seconds, what would you say? My fingers started to itch and I clung to a voice that begged: your truth. 10 seconds. don’t second guess. GO.

I wrote:

You are not broken. It is not too late. It IS possible. You are more ready than you think. Dig in.

And you responded, in droves. Read more…

If You’ve Ever Been Told You’re Too Much

If you’ve ever been told that you are too much.

Too big.

Too bright.

Too intense.

If you’ve ever been made to feel that you need to dull down your brightness, your beauty.

To dumb down your words.

To fit into a box that is much too small for the magnificence of your being.  Read more…

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Complete my Looking Forward: Self-Love Coaching + Writing in 2013 survey!

Fill out this quick survey to let me know what you would like to see me create + write about in the coming year, and be entered to win a FREE self-love coaching session.  In the coming year, I want to keep cooking up products + services that are truly useful for you – this means that I need your lovely input.

Pretty please + thank you.