Twenty-three years ago, I was introduced to meditation at the end of a yoga class. I eventually dropped the yoga because I just didn’t have the time for both, and frankly, my mental flexibility was more important to me.

Through meditation, I learned how to get comfortable with the stressful discomforts of life.

Through mindfulness, I learned how to stand up for myself in ways that did not cause more damage to myself…or others.

I also realized: there are no Others…there is only Us. This made me a kinder, more compassionate, person.

As I studied everything I could about meditation, mindfulness helped me take what I was learning on the cushion out into my daily life. These tools were a game-changer for me. Meditation helped me understand that there was nothing wrong with me…nothing wrong with my life.

I stopped seeing myself as a victim of my experiences and was able to take more control of my choices.

Meditation slowed my busy mind enough to see that I actually had choices in how I wanted to move through life. It showed me ways to effectively deal with stress of all kinds and how to not cause myself even more.

Like many people, when I was well into my 50’s, I had to acknowledge changing relationships, unrealized dreams, and the emotional baggage I didn’t want to carry any further into my life. I decided to get serious about dropping the mental and emotional s#it that no longer served me.

So, I traveled to the other side of the world to a village in Indonesia, where, to deepen my practice, I did a 10-day Vipassana silent meditation retreat.

Ten days of silence.

Ten days of 14 hours in meditation. Ten days of witnessing the hamster wheel of hell, the mind creates. It was a shocking thing to see how much pain we cause ourselves, just by thinking.

And while a retreat may sound relaxing, it was actually the hardest thing I have ever done. But it kickstarted my way to a wiser, lighter, and certainly saner, way of living.