Mental Wealth

Moments along a journey to self-worth and connection.

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Trusting My Own Touch

“…the ability to distinguish between self and others is extremely important. During the first period of life, new-born children develop an understanding of where their own body ends mainly through being touched by those who care for them. Problems with the self-concept, such as the ability to recognise one’s own actions, are common in several psychiatric disorders.…

Jada & Gabrielle Share about Codependence

I ADORE THIS. !!! Thank you thank you thank you both for sharing!! Please, anyone who comes across this post, watch this wonderful video. If anyone watching this can’t afford an AJ (the wonderful life coach), I highly recommend reading Codependent No More by Melody Beattie. It, and the journey it starts, has helped me so much…

My Relationship with Cleaning

I liked reading the Vice article ‘Tidying Up with Marie Kondo’ is Inadvertently About Women’s Indivisible Labor and The Guardian comic within the article. They’re part of a conversation I hadn’t heard before and I think it’s an important one. I have a mental catalog of where every object is in our house, just as this article discusses. It’s nice…

A Walk Down Craft Ave~ Memories of the Pittsburgh Playhouse

I went to college in Pittsburgh. I lived in Tucson, Arizona before that. It was a strange decision to move there. But they had musical theatre as a major and I was accepted and they gave good scholarships. I thought the little city and cold weather would be good practice for New York. I didn’t know what…

We’re Only as Sick as Our Secrets

“We’re only as sick as our secrets…” I’m so grateful to see the other side of speaking shame out loud. I was raised with the good intention of respecting humility and somehow, claiming tiny, or large, shames seemed too selfish. I like that this man talks about his friend who considered suicide a better option than speaking…

Freedom To Be Myself On Stage, and Off

My mom gave me the July issue of Elle magazine for my birthday. It is about women in comedy and I wish every magazine was just like this one. I read Bridget Everett’s article about her comedy icon, her mom. I only know Bridget’s work through rave reviews and photos in Time Out New York magazine. They…

“Doormat and Boots”…a love story

everything this woman says is exactly what i’ve been working on for the past year. each word resonates with me and feels warm to read. i’m mid-this. but i feel so much better already. i have more inner presents to open and wrestle or acknowledge or celebrate, but growth is happening and i’m grateful.

Long-term Erotic Intelligence

Esther speaks of opposites that have battled each other in my mind. She says them with an obviousness that makes me wonder why I could have ever seen them as opposing ideas. They are opposite, but a pair. There is no harmony without both. Thank you, Esther, for your help today. Happy Valentines Day. From the Ted…

The Dreamer Becomes the Dream

“True desire, in the heart, for anything good is God’s proof to you, sent beforehand to indicate, that it’s yours already… That itch that you have to be whatever you want to be… You already have it. Claim it… Understand this also: you have these dreams… Dreams without goals remain dreams and ultimately fuel disappointment… Goals on…

Can’t Sleep? Have Anxiety? Relax with this drug that will ERASE YOUR MIND! AAAAA!

Can’t sleep so I’m reading about insomnia. Just discovered the sleeping pill my mom’s been taking for insomnia for 5 years has an 84% chance of giving her Alzheimer’s. Great way to calm myself before bed. Xanax, Valium, Ativan, Restoril and Klonopin, to name a few, are not to be taken lightly. Or more literally,…

Owing the Good Samaritan: Anxious Thoughts on Receiving

The Good Samaritan didn’t say, after helping that guy, “Ok, now you owe me.” I like to imagine that if he did, he looked like Clint Eastwood, squinting and sweating mud, with a rolled cigar-ette sticking to his lip, standing beside the fellow he helped, but looking off into the sunset because people who receive…

Solitude in the City

I feel peaceful in nature. Because it’s so expansive, I feel like I’m bigger and the world opens when I’m in it, so it’s bigger too. When I think of solitude, I feel small and think of an enclosed space. But today, walking on the sidewalk of my poor, bustling Hollywood neighborhood, which is both…

Microwave Babies

My friend Simon said babies taking nine months to be made has always stayed the same. He likes that it’s something that can’t go faster. What if there was a machine that made time not take as much time? It would essentially make everything go faster, which seems like what we want, but it also…

Thank You For Making Things BETTER

Thank you friends and family for helping Shane​ and I over the past few months. Thank you for helping us eat, pay our rent and bills and turn Shane’s phone back on. Thank you for sending anonymous cards and non-anonymous cards filled with love and hope and survival. Thank you for writing emails and Facebook…

Math on the Beach

While our East coast friends are stuck in the cold, here in LA, the desert flowers are blooming. I went to the beach to do my physical therapy sand walking on a Tuesday at the end of February. And it was much more than therapy for my body. Rain had fallen the day before, which…

*Spoiler Alert: I’m Angry.

I found my breaking point today. Which breaking point? The one where I, from the depths of my soul, want to physically attack/maim/permanently scar another person in the Whole Foods parking lot. I’m in physical therapy still and my foot hurts more while we’re strengthening the muscles, so I can walk less right now. I’m…

I find solace in the ocean.

I find solace in the ocean. The past few years, I’ve become very grateful to learn that there is healing there. I’ve lost two friends in those years and went on the nights of their passing, with Shane, to sit by the sea and weep. My tears feel small there. Maybe it’s because my salt-water…

Good Things

This could also be called Temporary Pessimism: A Doorway to Reality & Growth or Complaining. I was feeling very discouraged on Friday, June 6, 2014. I was confused about how to crawl out of the financial hole I’d created from being injured for many years and how to do that while simultaneously pursuing my acting career and still…

Rusty Glass

Shane said, “How strange that glass can sit in water and not rust.” Which made me think… Yeah! How strange. And metal makes up swords and is considered much stronger than glass, but water does nothing to glass and eats away at metal. I hope to be more like glass than metal. To be too fierce or…

I Stayed in My Seat at iO Last Night

I stayed in my seat at iO last night, deciding to see the next show, excited to get to watch Mo Collins live for the first time and learn what happens at Mo and Tell. First thing, she shared about Robin Williams… I had somehow not heard the news yet. We all cried together. She…

A Little Golden Journey

I had my first callback today. It felt wonderful. Thank you Lord, for friendly, funny, genuine people. They were in the lobby and in the hallway and in the audition room. They spilled into the rest of the day. They were in lobbies of other places I went. They magically appeared in offices where I…

20 Ways to be #PositivelyPoorInLA

When you can only afford water at the bar, you can say you’re on “a cleanse.” When you can’t afford shampoo and your hair gets clumpy and wild, you can say you’re from Venice Beach. ‪ When you’re wearing the same clothes you wore decades ago because you could never buy new ones, you can say…

Laundry Woman

Last minute audition today! For a hardware store. Breakdown only said: Laundry Woman. Fit because she does yoga. Wardrobe: Christmas Casual. I found all of this hysterical! And naturally assumed I must be a woman who does laundry at a Christmas factory. Luckily all of my Laundry Woman Christmas Factory clothes do not exist. So…

Duck Banter

The other day, while I was home working, I heard a man and a woman arguing outside. Like really yelling, back and forth, with the speed and intensity that only a couple that has been together for a while could organically volley. Being a good neighbor, I went to the window to be entertained, and/or…

Thank You for Keeping Ruth Outta Jail

I want to thank all these people below. They gave me hand-me-down clothes at one point in the last 12 years and I’m still wearing them. I’ve been thinking about how when someone gives you new clothes, you think to write a Thank You card. And if you are an asshole, like me, that is…