Gratitude List

Things I'm grateful for this month:

The hot weather (although I have struggled a bit adjusting to the heatwave!)
Summer!
Ice cream at the park and beach
Going to the Black Rabbit pub in Arundel
New series/season of Bring It! showing in the UK (Mondays at 9pm on Lifetime)
New penpals
Skin-on fries (have had them while out and at home recently)
Having a meeting at Alcampo Lounge in Brighton with my belly dance group

Feeling Your Emotions- Sadness and Depression (Part 1)

This is the next post in my Feeling Your Emotions series. It follows on from Anger- Part 1 and Anger- Part 2. You can read the Introduction post here: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2017/11/feeling-your-emotions-introduction.html

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, so if you're having mental/physical issues please seek medical help in addition to reading this. :)

Note: It's taken me a while to write this, I think like with anger, it's not a particularly easy subject. As with the Anger posts, I've decided to break it into two parts. This post will focus on sadness and depression in general, and the 2nd part will look into healing and what you can do to feel better in general.

I've titled this post "Sadness and Depression" because I believe they're different in the way that sadness is a natural state that everyone feels at some point in their life, whereas depression is more of an intense, prolonged sadness and it's classed as a mental health condition. I've also heard depression described as "anger turned inwards". So I'm looking at them both. For more on the differences you can read these articles:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201510/the-important-difference-between-sadness-and-depression

https://www.healthline.com/health/depression/depression-vs-sadness#symptoms

Update 4/11/19: This post explains it well: https://www.blurtitout.org/2018/01/04/understand-difference-sadness-depression/

Gratitude List

I normally post on a Sunday or Monday, but got behind, so it's a Tuesday post for a change!

Things I'm grateful for:

Hot weather
Going to the beach
Litha/the Summer Solstice
The proper start of summer!
Ice cream
Library books
New vampire book I bought
Positive online connections

Mid-2018 Reflections

Last year I did a post called Reflections writing a bit about how I was feeling then. You can read that here: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2017/05/reflections.html

It was last May, so it's already over a year since I wrote it. I thought that since we're now halfway through 2018 I'd do a mid year reflection post. (Seems strange that we're already in June!).

On New Year's Eve I wrote a post called Letting Go of 2017 which you can read here:  https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2017/12/letting-go-of-2017.html

I always find it hard after the excitement of Christmas; New Year doesn't seem that exciting to me and then January is bleak because all the celebrations are over, and it's winter and cold. I like spring and feel better as the weather lightens up, but this year it seemed to take until May for me to feel like I'd really "eased into" the year. I enjoy following seasonal cycles and celebrating the Wheel of the Year, so I think a lot about how the seasons affect me. As I wrote on my other blog The Seasonal Life, winter seemed long this year but now summer is finally starting. During 2018 I'm reading Debrorah Blake's A Year and a Day of Everyday Witchcraft and Kate's West's The Real Witches' Year, both of which have meditations, spells or just something to think about for every day of the year.

Gratitude List

Things I'm grateful for this month:

Beltane
Eurovision
Sunny, hotter weather (summer is starting!)
Roses on the bush outside my window
New series/season of Teen Mom 2 starting
The Tribal Remix show I went to with my belly dance group
Having Harry Ramsden's fish and chips
Free reservations on non fiction books at my local library

Gratitude List

Things I'm grateful for this month:

Easter
Leftover chocolate eggs!
Blossom trees
Spring properly starting
The lovely summer like weather we had a couple of weeks ago
Joy Challenge with Amina Makhdoom- been doing it all month
Going to a Turkish restaurant with my belly dance group BD4U
Doing a tribal fusion/gothic belly dance workshop with Lianna Greene

Feeling Your Emotions- Anger (Part 2)

In February I wrote my first post on the Feeling Your Emotions series on the subject of anger. You can read the Introduction post here: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2017/11/feeling-your-emotions-introduction.html

I decided to write two posts on Anger and you can read Part 1 here: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2018/02/feeling-your-emotions-anger-part-1.html

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, so if you're having mental/physical issues please seek medical help in addition to reading this. :)

In the first post I wrote about anger itself and how suppressing it can be bad for you. I also talked about accepting anger. This post will focus more on releasing it. It's taken me a while to get back to this, since, as I said in my first post, I don't think anger's an easy subject to talk/write about. But I'm trying my best. :)

First of all, here is a good article I've found about anger management: https://pathwaytohappiness.com/blog/anger-management/