Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night, the wee hours of the morning and your mind just won't turn off? That happened for me last night, and every single thing that I've ever done in my entire existence was on replay, all the things that I didn't like, all the things that I was ashamed of, all of the things that I judged myself for and found myself lacking. They were all in full living Technicolor, and I found myself cringing.

When I recognized that, I took the time to slow down, to be in my heart and to welcome my experience as best I could. I acknowledged the truth, I acknowledged what it's been like to be me. I acknowledged all those different times by time traveling to them, and acknowledging that I was doing the best that I could with what I had. I acknowledged where I just kind of gave up, or maybe I settled for less, and I saw clearly that before I didn't even recognize what I was doing in the moment. I hadn’t recognized that I wasn't keeping my eyes on what...

What happens inside of us when we are self-critical? Where does that even begin? I’ve spent some time with this and for a couple of nights I would wake up around 2 or 3 and there would be this self-critical voice spinning around and around. The more it would spin, the more critical it would become.  

What would happen for me was a contraction, a kind of collapse inside of myself. As I woke up a little more, to actually pay attention in a new way, I recognized that this voice had a flavor to it. It was, “How could you?” So, there was shame in there, and as I sat with that, I could hear underneath that “How could you?” that there was deep grief inside of myself.  

This voice inside was listing all of the ways that I had failed as a mother. That’s really huge. My life’s dream when I was a little girl was to be a mother. So, it was rehashing all of those moments that I wanted...