I hope you will be less sugar and more spice, and only a little bit nice. Embrace your crunchiness, girls, your crustiness, your passions, your selves. Retain your sparkle, your individuality, your eccentricities

You neednt be ladylike to be a woman, for being female is complex, an essence encompassing all that is you Kind, thoughtful and generous of heart, but honest and fierce and resolute.

Bobbi Linkletter

At some point in life, women very often lose connection to their true selves, inner wisdom, voice, spirit. This process happens through messages given to us by our parents, religion, education, the media telling us how we should behave, think and feel. Over time, as we incorporate these messages, we develop our own inner critic and lose connection to who we are essentially. We internalize the idea that somehow who we really are is not good enough. This inner critic takes over for the outside voices we grew up hearing. We begin to feel this is how we really think. Of course, the messages continue and reinforce this process throughout our lives.

As the years pass and we grow into adulthood, we take on the appropriate roles of student, employee, good friend, girlfriend, wife, mother. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these roles as long as they are conscious choices we make. Unfortunately, too often we take some of these roles on because we think it is what we should do. When this happens, over time, we move further and further away from who we truly are. By the time we are fully entrenched in these roles, we have all but forgotten our essential selves.

On the outside, it may seem like everything is okay. The busyness of the duties of all the roles numbs us, and we dont always feel the underlying nagging feeling that something is wrong; there is something missing. But this feeling of discontentment inevitably grows inside of us. We begin to wonder why, when we have so much, we still feel so empty. Or, the busyness of our lives gets us to the point where we feel stressed out. With all of the role fulfilling busyness, we get even further away from our true selves. But whenever we get the feeling there is something more, our inner critic kicks in and reminds us of all we should be doing, and we dont have time to take care of ourselves.

Here is the beauty. When you begin to take care of yourself and get to know who you really are, you will have more energy to fulfill all of the roles you choose to fill. You will begin to make conscious choices that are centered around your deepest priorities.

There are three strategies you can apply to your life to relieve the stress and begin to reclaim your voice. I call them the three Rs: release, reconnect, and radical self care.

Release your inner critic. This is an important step on the road to "finding yourself" as they say. You can learn methods of releasing. In fact, I recommend an excellent book on the subject, The Sedona Method by Hale Dwoskin.

Reconnect to your inner voice of wisdom. Basically you just need to slow down enough to hear it. You can begin by just taking 5 quiet minutes per day. You will want to increase that as time goes on.

Begin practicing radical self care. This is an excellent strategy, as long as we guard it from becoming another "should". One way to start this is by blocking out just one hour in the week for yourself to do something you consider fun. This can also be increased over time.

As you apply these strategies you will begin to embrace your true self and feel more fulfilled. You will notice a significant reduction in your stress level and get more enjoyment out of life.