Interview

With Toni Moran, MA, LPC

Owner, Boost Counseling & Consulting, www.boostcounseling.com

What are you passionate about?

I am passionate about whole person health. The mind body connection is vital to our well-being and it’s my goal to help women start to trust and listen to their body. Our bodies are always communicating with us and giving us answers, but we are usually disconnected from our bodies and living in our minds. My passion is to help bring harmony to the relationship with the mind and body, so they work together. As a women, I know that it is hard to trust our bodies, especially if we have experienced any kind of trauma to our body. I’m passionate about healing the wounds – emotional, spiritual, physical – so that our body can thrive.

What message do you have for women in our community?

Quiet the inner critic and strengthen and amplify your inner wise woman – your intuition, your gut instinct. Let that voice guide you. We need to address and tame our inner critic, so that it is not in the driver’s seat of our mind.

What message do you have on the issue of Relationships?

Vulnerability is the key to connection in relationships. It takes self-awareness to address the walls and barriers we have put up to protect our heart. The only way to take off the armor, as Brene Brown calls it, is to be vulnerable. Therefore, we have to take risks. We can’t live in fear of getting hurt. It’s a leap of faith to trust others with our heart, but that is better than staying closed off. Communication is another very important ingredient when it comes to healthy relationships. Communicate your needs and deal-breakers in a relationship, don’t make assumptions or create stories about the other person (and then believe those stories), and always share your expectations.

a blog post from Toni:

https://www.boostcounseling.com/blog-2/relationshiphacks

Women in History

Ixchel is the Mayan Goddess of the Moon. She and the Sun God had a chaotic love affair; her grandfather grew angry and killed her. She fell to Earth where dragonflies mourned her loss. Ixchel returned, but saw the Sun God for who he truly was; she left to create her own life as a Goddess protecting women and fertility. She is remembered as the mother of reinvention and removing obstacles, and reminds us that we can overcome oppression to create relationships with ourselves and our community.

Letters

"Modern Love: Relationships aren’t the movies or stories that get produced. They are the crumbled papers covering the desk, relationships are the work it takes to continue to revise and commit to the story, trying again and again. The dedication and effort it takes to put page and page together. Some only build to become cliffhangers with no endings while some find the words to fill the page after page. As we approach the holiday deemed for love it’s time to value the relationships in our lives, the ones we may not have gotten to finish and the ones that continue to fill pages on their own. Your story will go on after the curtain closes and the end credits stream, continue to write and rewrite." -Anonymous