The Briana Hansen

My Feelings Are My Superpower

I will no longer tame or apologize for them. Photo by Joshua Abner on Pexels.com I’ve always been an expressive human being. I came into this world screaming and crying, and I haven’t stopped since. For years as I was growing up and into my adulthood, I’ve been warned not to show emotions. I’ve been manipulated or called out because of them. I’ve had to learn to keep them in check. I’ve had to…

To Those Who No Longer Recognize Me…

I’ve been through a number of physical, emotional, personal, and spiritual transformations lately. And yes, all at once. It started slow, like a trickle. But then it hit hard, like a waterfall. I eventually had no choice but to simply throw myself over the falls and hope for the best. To give up the land I was standing on for the rapids below. And to allow myself to drown so that I could breathe…

I recently became the number one post on Nextdoor. I’ll sign autographs for anyone who wants one. If anyone is unfamiliar with Nextdoor, it’s basically a social media app for your neighborhood with the slightest amount of accountability. You have to put a name (it doesn’t have to be your real one). You have to be confirmed that you live in a certain area (I’m sure there’s easy work arounds for…

Please Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself…

Welcome back. I say that to both you, dear reader, and to myself. It’s been a hundred emotional years and a couple lifetimes since we last met. I was looking at my last post and thinking of everything that has happened since then. The timing of that last post was incredibly the end of one season. I just didn’t know it yet. I was a frog in a pot on the stove, happily flopping around. Someone had…

One Step at a Time

I’m currently in the midst of a particularly busy season.

If August was the sprint, this is the marathon. This is the part that feels overwhelming and exciting and where all the growth and anxiety and change happens.

This is the best and worst part.

I’m loving and hating it.

Without going into detail, mostly because I don’t have time, I just wanted to take a moment here in my personal space to…

I was inconvenienced yesterday. It was minor but I found it annoying because it was very nearly avoided. Ten extra seconds and the next twenty minutes of frustration could have been avoided.

I wasn’t proud of my initial reaction.I was pissed. I was annoyed. I was resentful. I was heated. I thought the person who made a mistake was an idiot. I thought the company who employed the person was…

I talk a lot about my dogs.

Believe me, I know.

To me, dogs have a lot of simple pleasures figured out. And, like all living creatures, there are lots of wonderful things you can constantly learn from them. My dog, Clyde, taught me another lesson recently that I have found to be incredibly inspiring, so I’m going to share it here with you.

Plus you get to see a cute Clyde pic. So really, all…

Lesson from the Islands

I just got back from Hawaii yesterday.

I spent a long weekend in Maui. I was there for a wedding. They call it getting “Maui’d.” I enjoyed that pun probably too much.

I feel somewhat behind on things. That’s likely thanks to the intense travel I had for a couple weeks before this trip. I don’t have to travel again until early next week. Woot. Go me.

I realized this morning I wanted to share the…

Deliberately Taking the Hard Way

I spent this morning playing at the City Museum in St. Louis, Missouri. If you haven’t been, go. I don’t care how old you are, you need to experience it at least once in your lifetime. It’s basically a large welded windy weird and wonderful playground for kids of all ages (and that includes grown-ass kids aka adults).

My body is sore and I have bruises everywhere. I loved it.

All around the City…

One of the most powerful visuals I remember learning when I was first learning how to meditate was the idea of your thoughts being like passing clouds. Usually you hear this when you’re learning Buddhist-based meditations, which I probably was. But the truth is, so many good meditation teachers this same idea (and I’ve always been pretty voracious about learning so I like to learn multiple styles…

The more you learn about listening, the more you realize what a skill it actually is. It’s something everyone can do, sure. But it’s not something everyone is necessarily good at.  And I’m not just talking about listening with your ears. There are lots of ways to listen. Yet we often do whatever is the bare minimum and whatever is easiest.

Have you ever been listened to? Like, really really…

I got a piece of advice recently that I’ve been absolutely obsessed with.

I don’t really feel like giving you the full context of how I got this advice. Not out of laziness. I think just out of boundaries. As my ongoing readers already know, I’m working on learning boundaries.

Anyway, I had sought out a person with more knowledge in a certain field than me and was asking them for help with…

On Not Being Liked

I think a friend of mine is upset with me.

It’s unclear to me if perhaps this is the case or if perhaps I’m misinterpreting a number of signals. When his actions first shifted shortly after we were creating something together in a larger group, I asked him about it. In fact, because of his energy shift, I asked him several times in different, varying ways. I wasn’t confrontational. I attempted to…

There have been several periods of time in the past year or two that I have dedicated to waking up early. They’re interrupted by long and short periods where I’m traveling too much or my schedule explodes and it’s physically irresponsible (notice I didn’t say impossible) to get up early and have the same schedule.

But when I can, I do. And I find it to be really delightfully productive.

In order…

The Power of Silence

When I perform, my favorite sound in the world is laughter or giggles or some sort of visceral response (ideally not a “boo”). I like to hear it. I like when everybody hears it. I like when people hear themselves.

I like that the organized noises I make with my mouth make other humans make noises with their body. It’s fun.

I don’t usually think of performing comedy like that. It’s a weird way to…

I’ll keep this short and sweet since I made some ambitious deadlines for myself this week that, at the time, I thought were reasonable. Now that I’m in the thick of it, I see now that they were somewhat unreasonable.

But, hey, I like a good challenge and all this stuff is creative anyway, so I won’t complain.

In fact, I almost skipped the blog this week. I have too much on the plate. But then I…