What are the vibes between the two of you?

Good for you. Good for you. Then she starts to cry again. What am I supposed to do? I'm doing my best to find a job. This is not a good time to be looking. And I'm taking care of the house during the day, picking the kids up, playing with them, getting them started on their homework . I know you think you're doing all that. When we originally bought our youth train passes, the nice fellow at the Rome Eurail office gave us a photocopy of a map of the European train system, carefully marking the train path that we were going to take with a black ballpoint pen. He told us that we could use our passes anytime we wanted within the two-month window but that we could travel only along the particular route he had drawn. He stapled the flimsy photocopied map to a more official printed receipt and handed us the package. Initially, we were certain that no conductor would respect this rather unsophisticated-looking map and ticket combo, but the ticket seller assured us that it was all we needed, and in fact that proved to be the case. After enjoying the sights in Rome, Florence, Venice, and a few smaller Italian towns, we spent a few nights on the shore of a lake outside Verona. On our last night by the lake, we woke up to find that someone had been through our backpacks and strewn our stuff all over the place. After taking a careful inventory of our belongings, we saw that all of our clothes and even my camera were still there. The only thing missing was Yoav's extra pair of sneakers. We would have considered it a minor loss, except for the fact that Yoav's mother (my aunt Nava), in her infinite wisdom, had wanted to make sure that we had some emergency cash in case someone stole our money. So she had tucked a few hundred dollars in Yoav's extra pair of sneakers. Do you have a hard time separating work from personal time? Is it difficult to meet your needs and be in relationship with others?

When people have the tendency to hold on to things too tightly or try to control their circumstances, this can cause the structured layers of the aura to tighten and compress, forming clouds in the aura. Healthy structure and boundaries in the aura feel solid and flexible at the same time. Textures in the aura are full of information and tell a story of what is happening. Does the area feel cold or warm? Full or empty? Tight or soft? Perceiving the sensations in the aura opens you to the interconnectedness between the layers. It helps you discern the greater needs present and how to work with them. Instagram just reminded me that everybody else was getting what they wanted, and I was not. I started feeling envious and even more disappointed--thinking that I was never going to attain the things I wanted. As I was scrolling down and feeling sorry for myself, I had a moment of realization: It is not that these people are not being rejected--they are! They're simply not sharing their rejection stories on social media. I went against my superego request and publicly admitted what I was going through. I told my Instagram audience that I too get rejected. And to show them how, I shared the screenshots I took of both rejection emails. All of a sudden, I started receiving hundreds of messages from people sharing THEIR stories. I received screenshots of emails from people who were being laid off, people who were getting rejected from the schools they applied to, and even a message from a girl who at that very moment was being dumped by her boyfriend OVER TEXT MESSAGE. And they all thanked me, from the bottom of their hearts, for making them feel good about their lives again. But do you know how much of it I have to redo or fix when I get home? I don't mean to sound like a bitch, and I don't want to make you feel worse than you already do, it's just that I can't take it anymore.

I spoke to a lawyer today. About a divorce? Joel said, with horror on his face. No, I went and spoke to a lawyer about my tennis serve. Of course, it was about a divorce. What else would I talk to a lawyer about? But don't worry. We just had a conversation. The irony of the situation was painful. We decided to look around the town to see if we could spot someone wearing Yoav's sneakers and went to the police as well. Given the fact that the local policemen understood little English, it was rather difficult to convey the nature of the crime--that a pair of sneakers had been stolen and that it was important because there was cash hidden in the sole of the right shoe. Not surprisingly, we never recovered Yoav's sneakers, and that left us somewhat embittered. In our minds it was an unfair turn of events, and Europe owed us one. ABOUT A WEEK after the sneaker-theft incident, we decided that in addition to the other places on our route we also wanted to visit Switzerland and the Netherlands. We could have purchased new train tickets for the detour, but remembering the stolen shoes and the lack of help from the Italian police, we decided instead to expand our options with a bit of creativity. Using a black ballpoint pen just like the ticket seller's, we drew another path on our photocopied map. This one passed through Switzerland on the way to France and from there to England. Now the map showed two possible routes for our journey: the original route and our modified one. Finally, color can shift in vibrancy and saturation as you express yourself and can become darker and grayer in the areas we are not expressing or acknowledging in ourselves. The Importance of Integration

Most of the pictures we see of the aura and chakra systems are idealized versions of what they could look like in a perfectly healed human with no traumas and no issues. It's like a photoshopped image of a model in a magazine--beautiful to look at but not real. You are a complex and dynamic being with the potential for continuous growth. This means your aura is in constant flux, shifting to accommodate what you are feeling and thinking as well as all your external influences. It does so by opening and closing chakras and shifting energy flow temporarily to help you integrate experiences slowly over time and not all at once. This means your aura is not going to look or feel symmetrical and vibrant all the time, and that's okay. Sometimes it may be difficult for you to access your feelings, while at other times you may feel hit by emotional waves, as if a tsunami were crashing over you. The intelligence of your body creates a natural pendulum that swings between extremes as it finds new balance. And that is how the #ShareTheWholeStory campaign was born. Sharing stories of vulnerability makes us realize we are not alone, and we all feel better keeping each other company. So, I challenge you to share your failures and rejection stories with others as often as you share your wins. You will be surprised by how people react to vulnerability, and you will receive a ton of support when you need it the most. My mission is to maintain some balance: share the good stuff, why not? But also share the not-so-great stuff. You might be surprised to hear that the not-so-great stuff gets me even more engagement, compassion, loyalty, support, empathy, and empowerment from those who read my content. People are so eager to converse about these heavy topics because very few people dare to share the failures, like the rejection letters they get, the mistakes they've made, and the amount of sacrifice behind their success. I Get Fooled Too When I started writing this article I went from I hope some people buy this article and find value in it to Is it possible that this article can turn into a bestseller overnight and sell millions of copies? I needed to know what my options are and what the kids' options are. Life simply can't go on like this.

You are the most talented man I know, Joel, you are the only man I have ever truly loved, you are the father of my children and the love of my life, but you are killing me. You're killing us. I can't stand to see you waste your talent and also make my life into this . I want to scream at you all the time . But I love you, Mary. I need you. I know you need me, Joel. That's the whole problem. When we showed the maps to the next few conductors, they did not comment on our artwork, so we continued sketching extra routes on our maps for a few weeks. Our scam worked until we were en route to Basel. The Swiss conductor examined our passes, scowled, shook his head, and handed them back to us. You are going to have to buy a ticket for this part of your trip, he informed us. Oh, but you see, sir, we said ever so politely, Basel is indeed on our route. We pointed to the modified path on our map. The conductor was unconvinced. I am sorry, but you will have to pay for your ticket to Basel, or I will have to ask you to leave the train. But, sir, we argued, all the other conductors have accepted our tickets with no problem. The conductor shrugged and shook his head again. These shifts can be felt instantly, or it can take weeks or even months for you to fully experience the results in your life. Just like with any physical change you make in your body, it's most helpful to look at your patterns over the long term than to judge your aura health by what is happening in the moment.