The Antidote is a newsletter and meditation community featuring essential healing modalities for the modern woman. Our mission is to inspire women to realize their fullest potential through educational content, guided meditation, and self-reflection tools.
To see the world as both a “mystic temple” and “hall of doom”1 and still say YES to life, is a state of being Nietzsche called “the great health.”
There are a lot of terrible things happening in the world right now, things that are difficult to comprehend. Anyone with a pulse on this planet has reasons to despair. Watch the news; a global pandemic; a climate crisis; a system where social inequality persists. Divide and chaos.
In the microcosmic view of my community, I see the hearts of good women ache as we experience shades of abandonment, betrayal, and illness. In my own private corner, I’ll cry alone in the shower when the reality of mortality becomes too much. I’m a helpless witness to my mother's rapid aging and struggle in the cureless bind of Parkinson’s disease. It hurts just as much to miss someone who is still here.
And yet...I am grateful. When my tears are dry and I’m awake to feel, it’s Grace that is there to welcome me into the family of things. I’m learning so much. The transpersonal experience of surrender, compassion, and impermanence. I’m learning patience and how to return care…how the cycle of life continues.
What soul-growth learning are you experiencing from the current challenges in your life?
Gratitude is the antidote to human suffering. Gratitude is the same frequency as bliss.
Count your blessings, they say.
Gratitude list-making habits are preached by all the wellness blogs... for good reason. Gratitude is good for your health, they say. It’s good for your brain and immune system. Science now proves what the spiritual teachings across religions have sung for ages.
I don’t keep a gratitude journal, although I’ve sincerely tried. Maybe that works for some people but my experience with the mother of all virtues does not awaken in writing a list. It’s been an experiential learning of utmost spontaneity.
A force of energy recognized, gratitude is an internal spontaneous combustion brought on by presence. Gratitude hits me like a flash of lightning; a sudden awareness that everything I have is not from my own doing. I’m a small pair of eyes held in a vast universe. I am one beating heart in the pulse of creation. What a gift to even be aware of this greater nature. Life is a miracle.
Should we really?
The experience of gratitude is a pleasurable feeling, quite possibly the most, so whether lighting strikes us or not, it’s worth trying to conjure up anyways. So yeah, maybe we should all keep gratitude journals.
But should and the movement of energy are two things that don’t really go together. The idea that you should be grateful for something is the very antithesis of that force. Just like if we’re told, you should love me, or, you should feel this way, it’s almost a guarantee we will not feel that way.
This advice is missing something. Gratitude isn't found in checklists or thank you cards. It’s a deep feeling state. The question then becomes, how do we feel more?
How can we slow down, open the aperture of our awareness, widen our dim eyes, to not just go through motions of “thanks” to family, friends, and strangers?
Here’s one idea:
Get off your phone. Get out from behind your screen. Go outside. Watch the sun rise and set. Be charmed by the moon. Kiss the air. Meditate on the generosity of nature. Her endless beauty that revives our spirits. Her abundant nourishment that sustains our bodies. Place your hand over your heart and feel it beating YES, YES, YES, to this life.
Wishing everyone “the great health” this Thanksgiving.
With so much love,
Christina
The Antidote offers donation-based virtual community events to support healing, self-reflection, and connection. Our classes and workshops bring women together to spread feminine wisdom and well-being.
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I offer a bespoke high-touch 1:1 coaching containers for ambitious, heart-led women to translate their innate feminine power into actionable results.
Women I have worked with have aligned with their purpose, up-leveled their businesses, gotten promotions and raises, reclaimed their inner artist, deepened their spirituality, healed from burnout, attracted an ideal partner, prepared for motherhood, cultivated fierce self-love and so much more.
My clients include founders, business professionals, and creatives, who believe in a world where all women are empowered and honored.
What clients are saying:
“Sessions with Christina opened up possibilities I never knew existed. I feel like the woman I was always meant to be, not the woman I thought I was. I'd recommend anyone wanting to gain a deeper understanding of themselves, or to prepare for change, or suddenly having to face change, good or bad, to see Christina."
- Summer Kellogg, Photographer and new mother
The words of Scottish philosopher, Thomas Carlyle
I feel pain and wanting to learn to be more patient with my husband's companion (Pd), the Parkinsons Condition that triggers me, making me difficult yo be un gratitude