The Greatest Dream
But the greatest dream wasn’t really a dream at all. It was a gentle voice, waking me from sleep, deep in the night. It told me everything I needed to know in eight simple words: “Margo, you don’t need therapy. You need love.”
Second Chakra Trauma
Not long after my first dream, I had another. In it, I am on my way to a dance party in the basement of a warehouse in some unknown city. As I begin descending the stairs, panic overtakes me along with a feeling of being totally out of control. In the next instant, a friendly…
Lifestream
One night I had a dream. And in that dream, I saw an image composed of bubbles and fibers; of bright pinks and blues. And for the first time of many more to come, I heard the narrator’s voice: “This is the lifestream, and you are part of it. But in order to fully experience…
Five Steps to Vitality
While I encourage people to find support on the road to mental fitness, the good news is everything you need to heal is already inside of, and around you. The other piece of good news is it’s not about adding anything, but rather, pivoting away from that which depletes you of your energy, and toward…
The Life That You Are
When I drove down the parkway to climb my first frozen waterfall, I was a young woman with an uninterrupted story since childhood. My inner narrative consisted of thoughts about myself (I am unloved, life is painful, I no longer want to live) as well as the emotions that accompanied these (hurt, anger, unhappiness.) I…
Beyond Recovery
After decades of healing work, I am convinced that power is at the core of our personal and planetary issues. That is why when people ask me what I do, I tell them I am a Guide to Self-Empowered Healing. In our society, men are trained in the expansion and uses of their power, but…
The Power of Choice
The word addiction comes from the Latin addicere, ‘to surrender oneself.’ The opposite of surrender is to conquer, from the Old French conquerre, ‘to overcome.’ If you talk to enough addicts, or work with them as I do, you will notice a common current running through our stories: we lived through painful events that left…
The Power of Now
For decades, I lived in chronic, deep depression. I had no idea why I was there, or how to get out from under the black cloud. So I did what a lot of people in that situation do: I self-medicated with drugs to numb the pain. Then, one day when I was twenty-eight years old,…
Mass Trauma
We’ve all heard of the fight or flight response, a state where your body prepares for threat by releasing hormones to physiologically and psychologically deal with an imminent threat, or run away from it. But there is a third, often overlooked response called freeze, where you realize your best option is to become immobilized, either…
Mass Depression
I can’t say when my anxiety turned into depression, but with hindsight and many years of therapy I know that it goes as far back as I can remember. Long-term anxiety, like the type I lived through as a child, eventually morphs into depression, as feelings of hopelessness and helplessness take over the psyche. Depression…