Your Story Counseling Services, LLC

12/27/2025

What behaviors aren’t serving you? It’s time to let them go and replace them with moves that will benefit you and move you forward toward the place you wish to be. It is said it takes about 21 days for a new habit to take root - start today!

12/23/2025

Do you spend time ruminating about what you could have done, what you should have done? Do regrets keep you awake at night? It’s time to let that go! We make the best choices we can with the information and insight we have at the time. Over time, we grow. We learn. We do better. Today, what does “better” look like for you? Do that!

12/16/2025

One step at a time…

12/04/2025

11/19/2025

Honesty can be hard sometimes. It starts with being honest with ourselves.

10/12/2025

🫂

10/09/2025

We often feel shame about the things we have hidden. Bringing them into the light in a safe space will help take away their power. We can help - call today for an appointment. 330-687-4439

HOW?

Notice your defenses:

You overexplain to stay liked.
You criticize others for traits you secretly carry.
You chase light to avoid being seen in darkness.
You rationalize your feelings instead of letting them move you.

Symptoms of disowning your Shadow:

You feel flat, numb, or creatively blocked.
You can’t rest; achievement replaces worth.
You overreact to others’ flaws.
You crave intensity or chaos to feel alive.

Practice meeting it:

When you feel triggered, pause and ask, “What truth in me is trying to surface?”
Journal what you envy or judge; that’s your unconscious calling.
Create space to feel anger, desire, or grief without labeling it wrong.
See it, don’t suppress it. Integrate it, don’t act it out.

Whisper:
“I will no longer exile the parts of me that scare others.
I am light and Shadow; both holy.”

09/23/2025

Some kindnesses are so powerful they move you to tears. Not because they are grand or loud or monumental, but because they arrive exactly when the weight is too much to bear.

A stranger who waits with you on the curb whilst your hands shake. A friend who texts "I'm here" without needing a reply. The colleague who says “take a break for a moment - I’ve got this.” These moments often don’t cost the other person a thing; and yet, they are priceless.

Because they don’t come to fix you; they come to make room for you. And in that room - spacious, gentle, unthreatening - you find, often without meaning to, that you can finally fall apart. That you don’t have to keep holding it all together. The armour you’ve worn for so long starts to slip, not because someone pries it off, but because - for the first time in a while - you’re not bracing for harm.

It’s the safety of it.

The tenderness.

The sense that someone is holding a bit of the weight with you, even if they can’t take it away.

And that gentle moment; that safe space, that permission - being allowed to crumble without judgment - can feel like relief.

Yes, some kindnesses are so powerful that they move us to tears. But maybe it isn’t the kindness itself that makes it powerful.

Maybe it’s how much we need it.

*****

For anyone who's ever said (or been told) "don't hug me, you'll make me cry." ❤

Becky Hemsley 2025
Beautiful artwork by the brilliant Lisa Aisato