The Holiday Season... a time for family, social gatherings, cold nights and warm fires. For many people, these moments are also filled with alcoholic drinks in hand, and the notion is that if you're not drinking along, you're also not having as much fun. For those who struggle with alcohol and other substance use, this is a time that can be a significant struggle where you may wish you could avoid gatherings all together. We are grateful to be able to share an honest conversation about sobriety as we enter this season.

"Hurt people, hurt people." This powerful and profound phrase holds so much truth. When you are a victim of any form of trauma, and you have the healing and ability needed to step back and look at the person who caused you pain, you can often find that the hurtful behavior patterns that someone exhibits stem from pain that another person had caused them earlier in their lives.

Introverts and Extroverts and learning to understand their differences is always a fascinating topic! Do you gain energy from being around a lot of people and processing out loud? OR, do you absolutely crave complete aloneness and silence to replenish your being? Or both?!?

Today we are joined by Karla McLaren, M.Ed. Karla is an award-winning author, social science researcher, and empathy pioneer. Karla shares with us her experiences that led her to becoming an expert of emotions, and shared with us her Emotional Vocabulary List, which gives us insight to our 18 different emotions, how they show up in our lives, and what they are trying to tell us.

Money is emotional! Spenders, Savers, Planners... we each take a different approach to money. Money can define our self worth. If we're struggling financially, it can dominate our thoughts in other areas of life. Even when we have enough, it's easy to let our internal voices question "what is enough?"