Free your heart.

Read and relate to personal stories of dealing with stress & anxiety.

Church, Relationship Julia Van Huizen Church, Relationship Julia Van Huizen

“Swift” Judgement

I judged Taylor. Swiftly.

Pardon the pun, but I did.

A couple of weeks ago, I kept seeing all these memes and stories about Taylor Swift’s latest album release “Midnights,” and I thought, What’s all the fuss about? After all, I thought, Taylor Swift is just some talent-less pop artist that everyone has glorified to stardom.

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Julia Van Huizen Julia Van Huizen

I flunked at gratitude

Several years ago, my friend Heather sent me a care package. In it was a little gratitude journal called 101 Joys Make a Rainbow. The idea was that every day you’d record something you were grateful for and then fold the page. When you were done the booklet, you’d have an entire rainbow of “joys.”

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Self-Care, Church Julia Van Huizen Self-Care, Church Julia Van Huizen

The day I decided to take a hiatus from church

I still remember the day I decided to take a break from church.

For months I had been spiralling after attending the church service each Sunday. I’d go to church, hear the sermon, and it was like every word spoken from the pulpit, every song I heard sung from the congregation was pointing a nasty finger at me, telling me I was defective. I couldn’t get it right. I was unlovable.

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Self-esteem Julia Van Huizen Self-esteem Julia Van Huizen

Small potatoes

“I feel like a small potato,” I texted to my husband the other day.

Trying to be a voice for mental health, for women of faith, amidst all the noise “out there” some days feels impossible.

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Anxiety Julia Van Huizen Anxiety Julia Van Huizen

Moody (or messy) Mondays?

I’m not a morning person. And I’m especially not a Monday-morning person. In fact, I hate Mondays so much that I tend to ruin my Sunday in anticipation of Monday. Like what’s wrong with that, right?

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Self-esteem Julia Van Huizen Self-esteem Julia Van Huizen

A “deal” with “ideal”

Writing has been hard today. The words haven’t been flowing. I write in spurts and starts. Type here. Hit delete. Then backspace, backspace, backspace. If I had been writing on paper, I think there’d be a huge pile of crumpled-up pieces of paper in the wastepaper basket.

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