Media

The following is a personal look into my own unpacking of the white narrative I grew up with as well as a book review on …

Guys, we’re in a pandemic. Basically, it’s a worldwide crisis quite unlike anything I’ve yet seen (in my adult lifetime, at least). And I am …

Never Give Up: Thoughts On the Coronavirus Pandemic Hello Dear Reader, Things have changed quite a bit since last I wrote to you. The world …

This past weekend, I submitted a piece of my art to participate in a month-long gallery display here in Rhode Island for the first time …

Hello Everyone! I have an exciting announcement to make. As of January 2020, I have moved to Rhode Island. If you’ve been following me on …

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks due to an unfortunate mishap in my home… so I have not been great with social in any …

Becoming a RYT® 500 Yoga Teacher Well, 2019 has been one big, crazy-exciting blur. Lots and lots of yoga, yoga, yoga all year. But I’d …

So I haven’t had a smart phone for six months. Yeah, I forgot to talk about that… but I decided to give it up for …

I’m so excited to announce that in 2019 I will be embarking on my next step in learning how to deepen my yoga teaching by …

The Expressive Arts Institute at Salve Regina University: My Story I moved to NY at the beginning of 2018 because I needed to start over. …

“Don’t let your mind bully your body.” ~Astrid Alauda Today on the blog I thought I’d take a moment to wrestle through a topic that …

Hello, my friends! It has been a rather quiet year on the blog so far, but that will be changing hopefully soon. Finding  a new …

I’m here again on the blog to talk about another topic surrounding yoga, the body, and the mind. Many times in yoga, we talk about …

Today I wanted to offer a simple mediation you can do at home to help you relax and ground down when you’re feeling particularly stressed …

For the past month or so, I’ve been exploring what yoga is and what it isn’t. I’ve talked about how yoga is not just cool …

If you go to any yoga class I teach, you’ll notice I often start the class off with a breathing exercise. There are a lot …

Recently, I talked about how unhealthy our modern obsession with the pixelated image (think Instagram, Facebook, etc) can be. Many of you (including myself) often …

The Visual Emphasis of Social Media on Our Modern Lives Due to Instagram, Facebook, and other forms of Social Media, we live in an age …

Hello Friends! First off, Happy New Year! I hope you enjoyed my Year of Healing in 2017. I’m not gonna lie–I bit off a LOT …

November-December is my month of talking about Emotional & Creative Healing, as well as wrapping up my Year of Healing. This all is part of …

November-December is my month of talking about Emotional & Creative Healing, as well as wrapping up my Year of Healing. This all is part of …

November-December is my month of talking about Emotional & Creative Healing, as well as wrapping up my Year of Healing. This all is part of …

October is my month of talking about Spiritual Healing. This is part of my Year of Healing, in which I tackle different topics of healing …

October is my month of talking about Spiritual Healing. This is part of my Year of Healing, in which I tackle different topics of healing …

October is my month of talking about Spiritual Healing. This is part of my Year of Healing, in which I tackle different topics of healing …

October is my month of talking about Spiritual Healing. This is part of my Year of Healing, in which I tackle different topics of healing …

October is my month of talking about Spiritual Healing. This is part of my Year of Healing, in which I tackle different topics of healing …

September is my month of talking about Bodily Healing. This is part of my Year of Healing, in which I tackle different topics of healing each …

September is my month of talking about Bodily Healing. This is part of my Year of Healing, in which I tackle different topics of healing each …

September is my month of talking about Bodily Healing. This is part of my Year of Healing, in which I tackle different topics of healing each …

September is my month of talking about Bodily Healing. This is part of my Year of Healing, in which I tackle different topics of healing each …

  September begins my month of talking about Bodily Healing. This is part of my Year of Healing, in which I tackle different topics of …

For the month of March on my blog, I talked a bit about mental health. (This is part of my Year of Healing series.) I …

The following blog post is part of my Year of Healing in 2017. March is the month dealing with the topic of Mental Healing. For …

March begins my month of talking about Mental Healing. I thought I’d kick off my writing on the subject by writing a poem about mental …

The following post is part of the Year of Healing I’m doing on my blog, where I will explore monthly themes on different aspects of …

The following post is part of the Year of Healing I’m doing on my blog, where I will explore monthly themes on different aspects of …

So what the heck is a boundary? In our society, I think it’s difficult to talk about boundaries simply because we hardly function with boundaries …

The following post is part of the Year of Healing I’m doing on my blog, where I will explore monthly themes on different aspects of …

As I said in my previous post, your healing begins and ends with love. The things you believe about it will either hinder or help …

My dear friends, thank you for continuing to read this blog. I really do want to thank you. I hope that the holidays are going …

My last blog post was a bit of a downer, revisiting old grief and new. I was talking about how hard it’s been since I’ve …

Four years ago, I woke up to frantic texts from my sister that something really bad had happened. Four years ago, I received one of …

Let’s be honest: leadership is hard, but it’s important. Because I’m an entrepreneur, I’ve seen multiple small businesses thrive or wilt under bad leadership. Because …

For those of you who might follow me on FB or other social media, you know that in the beginning of June, I lost another …

It’s been a while since I’ve written on here. Life has been insanely busy over the past few months. Insanely busy. Busy. Insane. But I’m …

For the past month, I’ve been rehearsing a performance piece of one of my most popular poems–“I Will Be Me”, a poem about self image. …

Last fall, I was in a relationship briefly, and the guy walked away after a few months. And it hurt. It hurt again (as it …

It’s February, which means that Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. And this year, I just want to confess something: I don’t know what …

In June, I had the great honor and privilege to coproduce a music video for Gungor alongside Joel Marchand Productions. I was the official art …

Just recently, I went on a two-week trip to the Pacific Northwest. (In fact, I’m sitting in the airport waiting for my plane to take …

Stories end, and we don’t know how the plot line of each character continues, leaving a strange hole in our hearts a question, a pondering, a …

Creativity means death, for only true art can find breath after killing one’s own agenda and propoganda. The only way to create true art is …

these are my people the soul-sifters and heart-seekers the wound-healers and light-bringers the love-binders the ones laughing like a child and pondering like a sage …

I tell stories about you, my friend. “I once had a friend who ____”, or “a friend once said___”, or “once a friend and I …

Let love be the gravity that pulls the chaos into order. Let love be the light giving sight to the entire system. Let love be the rootedness …

What is art but the unseen prophetic truths of the soul incarnated in some tangible way? What is art if it doesn’t stir the heart …

You are born with a wound of darkness inside. It isn’t everything. It doesn’t blot out the light. But it will fester as life throws …

Once upon a time, there was a girl who was locked in a tower, waiting for her prince to come save her. She waited years …

One lives a hundred different lives while writing. One steps into a hundred different shoes, following paths both bad, good, everything in between. One experiences …

Why should kids get to have all the fun? Why should childhood be full of rainbows while adulthood drags on and on in monotones? Adults …

the world is so dark today the blackness in people’s hearts seems to blot out even the sun how can we all go on living apathetically …

creativity is a great adventure you don’t know what could happen you don’t know what dangers you’ll run into but the beautiful thing is watching …

There is an ache inside for far off places, An ache to understand unusual faces. An ache for beauty, adventure, growing, An ache for wisdom, …

What if we all had purple or green or red hair and anyone with brown hair was considered abnormal? What if we all rode flying …

Sit down, sit still. Close your eyes. And listen. Do you hear the whispers of the wind among the trees? A bird playing games with …

Buzz buzz buzz phone dictates the chaos of your scheduled-out day Honk honk honk get out of the way I’m going to be late Yes …

The sadness comes knocking at my door, creeping through the cracks like cold mist, leaving me shivering as it slinks its way inside. An unwelcome visitor, …

I was a carefree, wonder-filled child growing up, wild and imaginative and naive. Everything was simple and God was amazingly real and I just knew …

Ten years back, I was falling into my first bout of depression and unexplained sickness. You were a good friend, and you came home from …

Why do people have to die and leave an unstoppable leak that is never quite remedied and your heart bleeds first loudly like a rushing …

Put the mask on. Force a smile. Feel superior. Judge and point. You’re going to helllll!! These all seem easier than facing the reality of …

My soul is no longer in a cage of other’s expectations, definitions, or confinement. I’m riding the wind of freedom, I’m learning to fly. The …

The soul is a great canvas, and what you choose to paint upon it leaves a piece of artwork for generations to study. Some souls …

They said I shouldn’t be wild-hearted Because it meant I was uncontrollable. They said I shouldn’t be wild-hearted Because it scared them, And they didn’t …

it is the hardest thing to watch someone you love in destruction mode denying their inner anguish pasting band-aids on bleeding gashes that spread and …

Show me to walk barefoot in the grass and feel the earth beneath my being. Show me the tales in my friends struggles, and the …

Beauty’s in the eye of the Beholder. That’s what…someone (?) always says. But it’s still so damn confusing: There are too many Beholders nowadays. Let’s …

Drip, Drip, Drip, Drip, Drip. This is my brain on Lyme’s Disease. About as useless as a leaky faucet in performing it’s basic function. Everything …

For those of you who remember, I was asked to participate in a 48 Hours episode about my Kindred Spirit, Bethany. I’ve written a lot …

The War Inside My Body There is a war inside my body. My brain explodes with bombshells of pain, the fog of the frontline never …

Fight for Your Heart When the world crushes you with dream-killing deceit, ripping back the curtains of reality to show you the trickster lurking in …

This week marks the two-year anniversary of my Kindred Spirit’s death inside an abusive marriage and cult. This week I’m dedicating my posts to my …

I wrote this poem in Thailand when I was really wrestling through some personal pain the trip brought up. I also rewrote some of it …

Today, my Kindred Spirit would’ve been 29 years of age. Today, I’m also speaking about her to the media for the first time (on camera …

To love is to listen well. It’s a phrase I’ve been thinking on for several months. It’s a seed that has slowly grown in the …

It’s been a while since I’ve shared a poem on here. So here you go. Owning Our Scars we walk into the world unblemished, but …

I wasn’t going to blog this week, but then I read this post over at Micah J. Murray’s blog (if you don’t read him, you …

When my grief post went viral last November and people were sharing their advice on grief, several people mentioned that the second year was harder …

I have never been comfortable in my own skin. Let’s just start out with that basic truth about Teryn. Ever since puberty (because before that, …

Dry I am shriveling. Drip, drip, drip. There used to be a river of living water coursing through my veins. Where did it go? I …

I’m not going to lie. Last week was particularly rough. I was going to write about all the gritty details in this post. But then …

For those of you who have been reading my blog for a while, you know that I lost one of my best friends to alleged …

Note: See an updated version of this poem, along with a video performance, here. Growing up, I used to have this image. An image society placed …

It’s the week of Valentine’s Day. Barf. (Okay, not really. But I’ve never been a fan of how people obsess over this overly-commercialized holiday.) For …

The last post I wrote on grief, I wrote about triggers in grief. Well, just a few weeks ago, I experienced one of the biggest …

For the grieving person who has lost someone (to death or other reasons), there is a lot of unknown in the grieving process. For a …

I’ve been compiling advice from the comments on my 15 Things I Wish I’d Known About Grief post that went viral last week. There was …

I’ve had a lot of people contact me and ask if they can use this piece and pass it out, etc. I was going to …

After a year of grief, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve also made some mistakes along the way. Today, I jotted down 15 things I wish …

The Weight It starts as a sort of hollow feeling in the pit of your stomach And spreads throughout your mind and body. Then it’s …

The purpose of this post is to give a raw and honest glimpse into the grief I’ve experienced in the last year. I’m telling my …

In September 2013, I had another really hard breakdown over my friend’s death. It lasted almost the entire month. I was also really struggling with …

I wrote this poem about a week after Becca’s funeral (November 9th, 2012). I shared it on my blog last year, but I wanted to …

For the month of June, I’m going to be writing about why I write fantasy. This series will be a three part series on fantasy. …

This very day marks the six month anniversary of my Kindred Spirit’s death. “How are you?” people ask me (though it isn’t often anymore).  It’s …

Tonight is a hard night. A year ago tonight, I was driving from Chicago to Colorado to take the job I have now. I was …

It’s the day I hear about my friend’s murder. I’m on my way to the airport, after a long week of grieving the completely unexpected …

Today at 1:00pm was the funeral of my dear kindred spirit. Her family asked me to speak at the funeral about her. I was so …