Susan Kenny, LMFT

10/31/2025

Yes, love can be fierce…

At times, the wisest and most compassionate action is to establish a boundary.

To stand up and say No. To move swiftly and clearly to protect integrity — to honor your own interior life.

Sometimes love wears the face of fire.

We tend to think boundaries are only about others — but they are also essential in how we meet the inner world. Inside each of us live the voices of the past: “You’ve failed. You’re not enough. You don’t belong. You’re too much.”

These are not your true nature speaking. They are remnants of cultural trance, intergenerational trauma, and the loss of connection to body, nature, and soul.

To set boundaries with these inner figures is not unconscious aggression; it is sacred discernment.

It’s the moment you step out of the time machine of the “there and then” and return to the living present — proclaiming your basic goodness, your sensitivity, and your right to exist just as you are.

Sometimes the most radical act of love is to refuse the old story and become a vessel for a new one to be told through you.

10/31/2025

Support local families

✨ When you have more than you need, build a longer table, not a higher wall. ✨

Starting Nov. 1, SNAP (CalFresh) benefits will pause due to the federal shutdown — leaving many Marin families, especially women and children, struggling to afford groceries.

At Moonstone Skincare, we believe abundance is meant to be shared. That’s why we’ve launched Building a Longer Table, a community matching campaign to help feed our neighbors in need.

Here’s how it works:
💖 You donate directly to SF-Marin Food Bank or North Marin Community Services.
💖 We match your donation dollar for dollar, up to $3,000 total.
💖 We send funds out weekly so help reaches families immediately.

The campaign will continue until the federal shutdown ends or we’ve matched the full $3,000 ($6,000 to feed local families!).

Bring in, or email your donation receipt to info@moonstoneskincare.com, and we’ll add your name to our Longer Table Gratitude Wall — a growing in-studio display of generosity and hope.

Because no one should ever have to wonder where their next meal will come from.

10/23/2025

This is important for people to consider. When you feel “ghosted” it may not be about you at all…

People who go silent when something upsets or hurts them are often experiencing a coping mechanism called **emotional withdrawal**. It’s not that they have nothing to say — it’s that their mind and body have learned, often through painful experiences, that silence feels safer than being misunderstood, dismissed, or attacked. Their quiet isn’t emptiness; it’s self-protection.

When someone withdraws emotionally, it’s usually because, at some point in their life, they were punished for expressing how they felt. Maybe their emotions were mocked, invalidated, or ignored. Over time, their nervous system adapted — instead of fighting or explaining, it shuts down. Silence becomes a shield. The person doesn’t stop caring; they simply stop believing that speaking up will make a difference.

This kind of silence is heavy. It’s filled with unspoken words, unexpressed pain, and a desperate need to feel safe. On the surface, they may appear calm, detached, or indifferent, but inside, their thoughts are racing. They replay conversations, question their own feelings, and fight the urge to justify themselves. It’s not that they want to pull away — it’s that they don’t know how to stay connected without feeling vulnerable or unsafe.

Emotional withdrawal can be mistaken for coldness, but in reality, it often comes from sensitivity. These individuals feel deeply. They just can’t handle more hurt, more invalidation, or more conflict that leads nowhere. So, they go quiet. They retreat to protect their peace, to process, or to keep themselves from saying something that will later be used against them.

If you’re with someone who withdraws emotionally, patience and empathy are key. Instead of demanding that they “speak up,” create a space where they *want* to. Let them know that their emotions are safe with you, that their silence is heard, and that their feelings matter.

And if you’re the one who goes silent, remember this: your voice deserves to be heard. You don’t have to stay quiet to stay safe anymore. Healing means learning that expression and safety can coexist — that you can speak your truth without fear. It takes time, but reclaiming your voice is one of the most powerful steps toward emotional freedom.

10/15/2025

There are seasons in a life when the heart can no longer hold itself together. What once felt like wholeness begins to dissolve, and in the dust that is left, a portal appears.

We are conditioned to rush toward mending, to patch the wound, to turn away from the trembling. But perhaps healing does not always mean repair.

Perhaps the deeper medicine is found within the breaking —
in allowing the ache to open us, in letting the tears soften the soil around what is longing to be born.

Inside every shattering are seeds of new life. It is through a conscious, embodied, devotional relationship with the allies of grief, as they cycle and spin and twirl within and around us, that that water of life may flow again.

The threshold through which the soul ripens into its next becoming.

It is a conscious breaking - one that is fiery and alive, felt in the very bone and tissue - that prepares the field.

10/08/2025

Time to reframe this…

07/26/2025

🙏🙏🙏

06/13/2025

05/21/2025

Beyond all the theories, conflicting approaches, interventions, and strategies, for me therapeutic companionship is a process of bearing witness to the life of another as they come to befriend themselves in a way that was not possible until now.

To excavate meaning where there was none, to find purpose in the core of the purposelessness, breath where there was no breath to be found.

This befriending is not ordinary or passive, not always flowing and peaceful. It is fierce, on fire, and an act of revolution. It is the light shining out of the core of the dark night, the outrageousness of the human spirit, and the basic goodness of the human heart.

To walk into the dark wood, into the disorienting and hopeless places, without knowing where the journey will lead, if we will make it out in one piece, or where new life will be found.

Making sense together of where they have been, who they see themselves to be, and what they are longing to become. To illuminate what matters most to them and cradle it in our shared heart. To help them gather the pieces of the broken world.

To proclaim their experience as utterly valid, their feelings as ragingly honorable and intelligent, that they are worthy of love as they are.

That despite the pain of the present, the traumas of the past, and the fragmented dreams of the future we will dare to reclaim the aspects, parts, and pieces of the soul that have been turned from, now longing to return home.

We will assert together that pain is not pathology, that they need not be "cured" in order for us to stay near, that their suffering is authentic, that their hopelessness well-founded. Even their doubt is holy when allowed into the inner sanctum. What they are is not some project to be improved, but a mystery to be lived.

And then, from that foundation of companionship and bearing witness to the sacredness of what a human being truly is—including the profound grief, despair, and moments of great joy—we are able to turn together into the unknown and bow before its immensity.

It is awesome, in the truest sense of the word, to bear witness in this way. To fall to the ground in the beholding of the Totality in action, of the unstoppable wild bravery of the human spirit, and the relentlessness and creativity of love as it makes its way into form.

12/22/2024

When darkness envelops your soul,
When every limb is aching
and weary with fatigue
and your eyes are tired from the dimness
of the night.
When sleep won't come and dreams
remain unanswered,
And you're about to give up..

This is the time when change
is coming.
Nothing on Earth is static.

You've walked a long weary road
longing for respite
Praying for an opening, a way forward,
a way out ..
Your faith unwavering,
with each struggle, each fight, each loss,
each knock back;
You are stoic but exhausted.

Soon it will appear, at first a small dot,
then gradually expanding to illuminate your path, guiding you along the way.
Renewing hope, carrying you forward,
It's nearly here ..

The wheel will turn
The light will return
Your heart will feel lighter
Your path will be brighter

May you find hope in the light
that kindles, on this sacred night,
The night of the Winter Solstice...

Serendipity Corner ✨ C.E. Coombes

Artist Credit: Vivian Hansen de los Rios