Veronica Foster, The Sea Within

12/13/2025

✨ Minimizing Alcohol During the Holidays: Two Kinds of Support ✨

The holiday season often comes with more gatherings, parties, and social pressure to drink. Even small changes or intentional choices can help you feel more grounded and supported.

This season, support can come in two important ways: what you drink and how you care for your body and nervous system.

The article linked below from California Association of Harm Reduction Therapists written by Dee-Dee Stout offers practical, external supports, including:

- Non-alcoholic drink and mocktail ideas
- Ways to keep something in your hand at gatherings
- Simple swaps that reduce pressure without drawing attention

In addition, here are some gentle internal supports:

Set intentions before gatherings
Check in with what would feel supportive before you arrive. Intentions create choice not rigidity.

Decide your “yes” and your “no” ahead of time
Knowing your boundaries in advance reduces in-the-moment pressure and supports self-trust.

Eat food (especially protein and fats)
Eating before and during gatherings helps stabilize blood sugar, supports the nervous system, and slows alcohol absorption. When your body is nourished, cravings and emotional reactivity often decrease.

Drink water regularly
Alcohol is dehydrating and can intensify anxiety, fatigue, and headaches. Staying hydrated supports your nervous system, improves decision-making, and can naturally slow drinking pace.

Alternate alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks
This helps pace intake, supports hydration, and reduces physical strain on the body.

Have an exit plan
Knowing you can leave at any time allows your body to relax. Autonomy is regulating.

Tend to your nervous system not just your willpower
Stress, overstimulation, grief and social pressure often drive overuse. Grounding practices like slow breathing, stepping outside, movement, or connecting with a supportive person - address the root need more effectively than force.

🔗 Resource:
Help! It’s the Holidays: Ideas to Minimize Holiday Alcohol Use
https://www.harmreductiontherapy.com/post/help-it-s-the-holidays-ideas-to-minimize-holiday-alcohol-use

Whether you’re reducing, pausing, or stopping altogether, this isn’t about control, it’s about care. 💛

12/13/2025

12/12/2025

Your resilience is woven into your history, your community, and your culture. For many people, healing has never meant sitting alone in silence. It has lived in shared stories, rhythmic movement, laughter, prayer, music, and collective care, practices that regulate the nervous system through connection, expression, and belonging.

When modern wellness culture tells us to simply “be still,” it can unintentionally dismiss the ancestral ways many communities have survived, soothed, and healed. Stillness is not universal, nor is it neutral. For some bodies and cultures, safety is found in movement, voice, and relationship, not quiet isolation.

True emotional well-being does not ask you to abandon your roots. It invites you to reclaim them. Healing can include stillness and song, rest and rhythm, reflection and relationship. Honoring the wisdom that already lives within your lineage.

12/11/2025

Redundancy keeps us stuck in old pain.
Let’s stay fresh, awake, and present.
A mindful lens helps us ride the waves of change.

No denomination, class, or title can lead you to your inner wisdom
it already lives inside you.
You are divine.
You are a star.
You are made of stardust, dear one.
Don’t forget who you are.

You are over a billion years old.
It’s in your DNA.
It’s in your coding.

Breathe. Everything is shifting.
Breathe. You are a leader in these times.
Breathe. The spell has been broken.

How you breathe is how you live.
If it’s slow and intentional, your life and your love will follow.

Listen to your heart.
Be the shining forest, the star, the snowflake, the light that you are.

The light is you. ✨

12/11/2025

One of the hardest parts of parenting a teen is trying to understand what’s happening beneath the surface. Their brains are navigating massive shifts in identity, belonging, social connection, and academic pressure. And when emotions become too complex to articulate, the body often steps in to communicate for them.

From an interpersonal neurobiology perspective, this isn’t defiance or “teen drama” it’s a nervous system signaling a need for safety and regulation. Chronic headaches, stomach issues, irritability, or sudden fatigue aren’t just “teen problems”; they’re often distress signals from a mind and body overwhelmed by anxiety.

When we shift the question from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What is your body trying to tell us right now?”, something powerful happens. Curiosity replaces judgment, connection deepens, and healing becomes possible.

12/10/2025

When your internal alarm system is ringing, trying to reason with it is like shouting over a siren. It doesn't work because the thinking part of your brain has temporarily gone offline. That feeling of overwhelm isn't a failure of willpower; it's a physiological response from your amygdala, your brain's threat detector.

The fastest way to restore a sense of safety isn't through complex thought, but through the body. By intentionally engaging your senses, you send a powerful signal back to your brain: 'You are here. You are safe in this moment.' This isn't just a distraction; it's a neurobiological reset button that allows your rational mind to come back online. The key is to shift your focus from the storm inside your mind to the anchor of the present moment. True resilience is built not by avoiding the storm, but by learning how to ground yourself within it.