Hey Hey,

This week's Friday Fuel Up is all about The World.

When I was 5 years old, I rode an elephant in Thailand with my dad while my grandma snapped pictures from the sideline. At that moment I fell in love with these beautiful animals; strong, beautiful, playful and weirdly graceful given their size. Ohh and did you know they are pregnant for almost 2 years!?

I now know and understand that the practice of exploiting animals for tourism is wrong for all kinds of reasons. But I didn’t know that in 1994 and I still held the belief that it was okay when my husband Nathan and I rode an elephant in 2011 while in Indonesia. 

I’m kinda embarrassed to share the pictures because I feel like I was a bit late to the party on this shift in thinking but as a visual human myself, pictures can be worth a thousand words. It's now a decade later and I’ve been able to reconcile that I did the wrong thing and that although I did a bad thing, I am not a bad person.

Through...

Hey Hey,

This week I had a few black-dog days. Days where the world felt really heavy and hard. Maybe you’ve had one of these days before and are familiar with the feelings?

Over the years I’ve done quite a bit of work on my mindset and mastering my emotions with coaches and professionals. I am not perfect, but I’ve definitely come leaps and bounds from where I’ve been in the past.

Occasionally, one of these dark days, or a few of them back-to-back, take hold of me and all of my go-to tools don’t seem to work. When that happens, I’ve got a husband who both physically holds me but also holds space for me. It’s a fine line to walk between feeling the feels but not letting myself fall into a black hole of desperation. In those moments we are a couple and a team but he is playing lead.

The thing is, when I am in this state, I am not very useful to anyone, hardly even myself. I can’t focus on the wellbeing of the people or world around me....