Tiny Buddha

Tag: Love

  • One Question I Ask Myself Monthly Since Coming to Terms with Death

    One Question I Ask Myself Monthly Since Coming to Terms with Death

    “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live.” ~Norman Cousins

    On September 23, 2015, Loukas Angelo was walking to his after-school strength and conditioning class just a few hundred yards from Archbishop Mitty High School.

    He was approaching the outdoor basketball courts when he ran out into the street and was struck by a car traveling around thirty miles per hour. The impact sent Loukas flying down the street, and he was immediately transported to the closest hospital where he remained in critical condition.

    I remember sitting on the couch later that afternoon when my phone started blowing up. Feeling curious, I shoved aside my history homework and decided to see what was going on.

    Multiple people had sent some variation of the same text, “Yo. This is so sad. Did you hear about what happened with Loukas…?”

    Confused and a little bit scared, I turned to Twitter and started looking through my feed. I was absolutely floored by the tweets that were being sent out by my friends and our high school’s Twitter page.

    Similar to tragedies like the Boston Marathon, or 9/11, it was one of those moments in life where you’re always going to remember exactly where you were when you found out the news.

    It was almost inconceivable to think about the fact that I had walked across the same exact crosswalk where Loukas was hit just fifteen minutes prior.

    All throughout the night, support poured in from social media sites. The hashtag #PrayForLoukas was trending #1 on Twitter in my local area for several hours. I’m not a particularly religious person, but for the first time in years I said a prayer for Loukas before going to bed.

    The next day at school was one of the most eerie, heart-breaking days of my life. I arrived at Archbishop Mitty High school that day to a campus that was completely silent. Although there were plenty of people walking through the campus, no one said a word to each other

    As I walked toward my homeroom class, I remember seeing one kid carrying a ridiculously oversized backpack. It looked like he was at the airport preparing to leave for a month, and I let out a slight chuckle imagining what it was like to carry that thing around all day.

    However, my smile was wiped off my face completely when I stepped through the door of the classroom.

    Every one of my classmates was sitting there emotionless. Stone-faced. Not saying a word to each other. I sat down and did the same, as we were all preparing for an assembly in the gymnasium that was set to take place in about fifteen minutes.

    The 1400 students funneled into the gymnasium and took their seats. You could hear a pin drop.

    Our principal got up and gave a very powerful speech, which concluded with him leading the entire school in a prayer for Loukas. After a few others got up and spoke, the assembly concluded with a one-minute-long moment of silence.

    The day after the assembly, the news broke that Loukas had passed away after being in critical condition for around forty-eight hours.

    On September 25, 2015, Loukas Angelo lost his life at the age of fourteen years old

    Coming To Terms with Your Mortality

    As we go about our day-to-day lives, we are inundated with thousands of thoughts, most of them the same thoughts that ran through our head the day before.

    But very few of these thoughts, if any, are about our own mortality.

    It’s a little scary to think about the fact that you and everyone you know will perish from this world.

    No one knows when, but one day you will draw your last breath on this earth. Some people have the luxury of preparing for it, while others like Loukas have no idea that it’s coming.

    But at some point, death comes for each and every one of us.

    We all know this deep down, but it seems like so many of us live like we have unlimited time on this earth.

    We put off spending time with family even though they can be taken from us at any given moment.

    We refuse opportunities to get out of our comfort zone even though we have no idea how many of those opportunities we’re going to be given.

    In other words, most of us go through life without coming to grips with our own mortality.

    When Loukas passed, I obviously felt sorrow for his friends and family, who have to carry that burden around for the rest of their life.

    But mainly, I thought about Loukas.

    Given the nature of his death, he didn’t have any time to reflect back on his life. And given how young he was, if he did have that opportunity there wouldn’t be much to think about compared to someone on their deathbed at seventy or eighty years old.

    Yet, I couldn’t help but imagine what he would be thinking about in his final moments had he been given that opportunity. What regrets would he have? What moments would he replay in his head over and over again?

    Eventually, I started asking myself those same questions. It was a pretty cruel exercise that I was putting myself through, but it felt like a way to extract some meaning out of a terrible tragedy.

    As I imagined what it would be like to contemplate my existence at the end of my life, I didn’t feel happiness or satisfaction. I felt regret and shame.

    One common theme that permeated my consciousness was fear. I was only seventeen at the time, but I realized that essentially all of the regrets I’d have on my deathbed were a direct result of being afraid.

    Fear of rejection. Fear of failure. Fear of judgement.

    It was a brutal wake-up call. For the majority of my life, I had missed out on opportunities and experiences due to fear.

    I was here alive and breathing, but I wasn’t truly living. Merely existing, acting as if the end was never coming.

    How to Let Fear & Death Guide Your Actions

    I’m twenty-two now, and since then my approach to life has been simple.

    Twelve times per year, I do a monthly check-in with myself and ask myself one simple question:

    At this very moment, what am I avoiding in life because I’m afraid?

    The answers to this question inform me of exactly what changes that I should be making in my day-to-day life.

    Most people run from fear, but my suggestion is to lean into it. It’s actually an incredibly accurate predictor of the changes that you should be prioritizing in your life.

    It’s different for everyone.

    Some of you may be afraid of changing careers and pursuing something that you love because of the uncertainty that comes with changing professions.

    Some of you may be afraid of improving your social skills because that involves battling with the fear of rejection.

    Some of you may be afraid of moving to a different city because you’ll have to leave friends and family that you care about.

    If you have the courage to actually ask and answer the question, your fears will tell you exactly where your focus should be. It’s almost as if they’re calling out to you, saying:

    “Don’t forget about me. If you don’t take action, I’m going to torture your thoughts when you get to the end of your life.”

    Facing your fears is hard. Staying somewhere you don’t belong is even harder. But nothing compares to the pain of getting to the end of your life and knowing that you let fear stop you from doing the things you truly wanted to do.

    Just like Jim Rohn said, “We all must suffer one of two pains. The pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is that discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.”

    So I highly encourage you to ask yourself the question above each month and write down whatever comes to mind.

    Pick one of the things that you write down and make it the biggest priority in your life. You can’t fix everything about your life at once, as focusing on everything is the same thing as focusing on nothing.

    But once you’ve narrowed your focus, you can start taking small steps every day to overcome that fear.

    If you’re afraid of social interactions and have been for years, start saying hello to people as they walk by each day.

    If you’re afraid of starting a workout routine, start by walking for two minutes each day.

    These initial bursts of momentum that don’t seem like they make any difference are ultimately the foundation upon which your biggest changes take place.

    Do the things that you think you cannot do. Let the pain of not facing your fears override the pain of letting them fester for years and decades.

    Your future self will smile down at you.

    #LiveLikeLoukas

  • Why I Couldn’t Find Love and What Helped Me (That Might Help You Too)

    Why I Couldn’t Find Love and What Helped Me (That Might Help You Too)

    “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start from where you are and change the end.” ~C.S. Lewis 

    It was a dark January day in 2008 when my auntie called with the news “He did it.”

    I felt so confused. “Did he try? Or did he succeed?” I asked as my body moved into shock.

    “He succeeded,” she said. And in that moment my whole life changed.

    This was a moment I often wished for—my dad was gone.

    Dad had taken his life on January 8th, 2008, two days after my twenty-sixth birthday. He had even told me of his plans, I just didn’t believe him. I thought he was far too selfish to ever kill himself. 

    How wrong I was. I was consumed by guilt, but I felt like maybe my life would get easier now that he was gone.

    My mum had left him after twenty-six years of marriage, just months before his suicide, after reaching the brink of a breakdown. She couldn’t handle his behavior anymore. The putdowns. The nasty comments. Not just to her but to her children too.

    She stayed all those years for us. And we stayed for her. To protect her from him, as he could be a really mean drunk. We kept telling each other he didn’t hit us, so it wasn’t that bad.

    I had gotten used to holding my breath around him, not knowing what I would do to set him off.

    Maybe I didn’t shut the door. Maybe I wasn’t working hard enough for him. Or sometimes I was just in the room where he would lose his temper.

    I grew up walking on eggshells since I was a little girl. I thought that was normal. Living in constant fear of an outburst.

    I learned from a young age to do whatever he wanted so that he would not shout. I lived to please him. I did the studies he wanted. Was on track to find a groom he would like. Literally everything I did was to please this man.

    And just like that, one day he took his life.

    As a young girl I would fantasize about the moment when it would be just me, my mum, and my brother. It would be quiet, it would be calm, and there would be no shouting. I got my wish, but I was wrong that life would get easier without him.

    I had literally lost my reason for living.

    Unconsciously, I had lived to please my dad, and without him I became so very lost. I was numb to the core, and I wouldn’t allow myself to grieve him. After all, he had caused me so much pain right until the end.

    As I moved into my thirties things got much worse. I was the world’s biggest people-pleaser after years of perfecting this skill with my dad. I was always seeking outside approval and validation but was full of self-loathing.

    He may have been gone, but it was his voice I heard inside my head. You’re too fat. You’re ugly. No one will want you. 

    I was desperate for love and affection, yet I looked in all the wrong places, often chasing men who didn’t show me love back. I was always single but would obsess over unavailable men.

    Maybe he was in an unhappy relationship or had issues with drugs and alcohol or depression. These men were my drug! I found them every time and tried my best to fix them with my endless love and kindness, getting very little back.

    I took any small crumb of love someone would give me and then hated myself for it. Sometimes I even wished I could die.

    I didn’t just do this with men, I also did this with friendships, spending so much time trying to save others and resenting it. I felt worthless and like I was here for everyone else and just a spectator of other people’s happiness.

    I felt unfixable. Like I was some broken human. And I loathed myself for feeling that way.

    Everyone around me was getting married and having children, and I was just stuck. Obsessing about some guy, losing weight and then putting it back on, in this constant cycle of unhappiness. I’d numb the pain with my fantasies, food, people-pleasing, and wine, keeping myself stuck in it all.

    I felt so trapped in my own pain.

    One day I read somewhere that self-love was sexy, and that was the way to get the man you loved to leave their relationship. So I bought The Miracle of Self-Love by Barbel Mohr and Manfred Mohr and began to do some of the exercises in the book—affirmations and asking myself questions like “What do I enjoy?” I soon discovered I had no idea who I was, what I liked, or what I needed.

    This kicked off my journey of healing, self-discovery, and learning how to love myself.  

    I discovered that I was super co-dependent and began to attend CODA (co-dependents anonymous) meetings. I tried to stop pleasing-people, learn to say no, and have boundaries.

    At the beginning this would cause a full-on panic attack. Turns out years of living in fear with my dad had given me complex PTSD.

    I discovered Melody Beattie’s books on codependency and began doing all the exercises so I could stop self-medicating with addictive behaviors and make real changes. I learned how to incorporate daily self-care including rituals like affirmations, meditation, and grounding my feet to the earth.

    The shock was I didn’t think I had ever been abused. But I soon learned, by working with various therapists and healers, that I had suffered emotional abuse, gaslighting. and some narcissistic abuse.

    The way I felt wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t a broken human. I was a traumatized child in a grown-up body.

    Living in a home where my dad abused my mum had pushed me into a caretaker role. I was always protecting her. It was like I was trying to save both my parents in some way.

    Such a heavy weight I had carried my whole life.

    Their example made me terrified of relationships, which is why I unconsciously sought love from unavailable men—I was afraid of how toxic relationships were. That was all I knew. So I found relationships that wouldn’t go anywhere. To keep myself safe.

    I chased their love like I did with own dad. My first unavailable love. 

    I began to recover from the codependency, love addiction, and disordered eating by investing my time, money, and energy in myself. I was so good at showering others with love but didn’t ever show it for myself. So I worked hard to change this and began to shine that light within.

    I connected with my inner child through self-healing and reparenting practices, and this was life-changing for me.

    I found it hard to love and accept adult-me, but the little girl in my childhood pictures, I could love her. I put pictures of her everywhere and talked to her daily, telling her that I loved her.

    I would do inner child meditations and write letters to her. Someway, somehow, I began to build a connection to my younger self, and through that my self-love grew. I found a way back to myself.

    I became fiercely protective of the little girl within me. No more unavailable men for her. My little girl deserved the best. 

    Before finding romantic love, though, I needed to find love and forgiveness for myself regarding my dad and his suicide. I had to allow myself to grieve him. When I did, I realized how much I truly loved him. I was heartbroken without him. His darkness was only one side of him; there was so much love he gave me too. He was such a Jekyll and Hyde.

    To learn to forgive him and all the awful things he had done to me, I began to connect to his inner child and the trauma he had faced. I realized that unhealed trauma had been repeating for generations.

    My dad too was traumatized by his parents, and he survived by projecting that pain onto others. I had learned to please to survive, and he had learnt to fight. His dad was physically abusive and an alcoholic. Even my mum was repeating patterns in her own family by allowing herself to suffer domestic abuse.

    Learning about intergenerational trauma helped me to forgive and understand those who caused me pain. They were just repeating patterns and behaviors, but I decided to change them and heal.

    Slowly, relationships got easier as I became more conscious of my relationship with my dad and the impact he’d had on me. I found love with a healthy man who has my dad’s best qualities, is 100% available and no drama. I didn’t even know love like this existed. Just like that, I was no longer attracted to unavailable men.

    For those of you who struggle in relationships with others and yourself, the magic ingredient is connecting to your inner child and reparenting them. Give them all the things they need. The validation. The love. The comfort. Learn to emotionally regulate so you can teach them how to self-soothe. Be the parent you longed for.

    Be honest with yourself about the behavior that keeps you stuck and causes you pain. Then invest your energy in yourself to slowly change these behaviors and heal the wounds beneath them.

    Just sit there and listen to your feelings and your pain. Give yourself what you need. Validate yourself.

    You’ll soon find the power within and learn that anything is possible.

    As C.S Lewis wrote, “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start from where you are and change the end.” That is what reparenting your inner child does.

    You learn to give yourself the life your little one deserves—a life that is safe and full of joy, where their voice can be heard, allowing them to be their authentic self.

    Choose different than the generations before you and the repeating patterns of unhealed trauma. Choose to let love and light in.

    My dad let the darkness ruin his life. He sabotaged his family life and his relationships by projecting his pain onto us, using alcohol to push it down, and then it exploded in his suicide.

    I hope his story and mine inspire you to keep going and to find love for the child within you so you can find your own heart’s happiness.

  • The Vault in Our Hearts: How I’m Learning to Fill It with My Own Love

    The Vault in Our Hearts: How I’m Learning to Fill It with My Own Love

    “If you don’t love yourself, you’ll always be looking for someone else to fill the void inside you, but no one will ever be able to do it.” ~Lori Deschene

    This year I have fallen in and out of love. Not once, not twice, but three times.

    Firstly, I fell deeply into being held, being heard, and being supported. For the first time, in a long time, I understood what it meant to be loved.

    Secondly, I flew quickly into a spontaneous soul, who lit up my world and reminded me who I was.

    Thirdly, I surrendered earth-shatteringly into something that would force me to grow; someone who would crack my heart wide open and inspire my soul.

    And each time I fell a little more softly than the last; a little more tenderly, a little more lovingly, and a little more openly from my soul. Yet, with all this falling and flying, laced with twisted heartstrings and crying, I am still here trying to feel my way through the vault in my heart.

    The black hole that is almost instantaneously filled with the love of another, like stardust filling my heart. The black hole that is continuously expanding and shifting, then engulfing itself.

    The love also expands and shifts, it swirls and grows—I feel temporarily full until I begin to lose my glow. And then I wonder, how I am sat here again with tears in my eyes and a chest full of doubt? And it hits me, like a meteor of light—gold dust running through my veins and lightning in my heart.

    My vault is to be filled, not by the love of another, not by the way I think it should feel, but by my hopes, my wonder, and my soul-powered dreams; the technicolor life I have always wanted to lead.

    And so, I sit here, laughing and crying and sentimentally smiling at the irony of life, as I realize that the love that I have always wished for will never be enough. No one will keep me cradled in my heartstrings and permanently high on love.

    This person, your person, may light up your soul, but they will never fill the vault of your full-blown world. And so, we must vow to ourselves—we must allow ourselves—to fall in and out of love, not just with another, but with our true selves. Not with synchronizing with another but with aligning with our hearts, every single day.

    We must vision our life, our way, the way we want it to be. We must trust that it will yield to us everything we need. And on our paths, others may unlock our souls with golden keys of hope, vulnerability, longing, loss, and growth. But we must stay true to our paths, investing our time in a love that will last.

    The vault in our hearts needs to be filled, with visions of desire and hopes and dreams. Because in all this loving, I refuse to be stagnant. I refuse to let someone fill me and take away my passion. I want to feel it all, even if it means constantly falling and flying, contracting and expanding.

    This is the only way to stay true to my highest self, where my pain meets my madness, and my perspective shifts itself. My vault keeps unlocking and shimmering with gold, but this gold will always fade if I do not feed my soul. And now, I know. It doesn’t just have to be a temporary glow.

    I don’t want to be loved. I want to BE love.

    I want to feel it all, see it all, be it all. I want to journey with another, yet stay true to myself.

    And so here I am again, falling deeply and completely into the path of love; navigating a new relationship, and remembering what I have learned. They will never be enough unless I stay aligned with my true self. But who is my “true self”?

    She is creativity and joy, freedom and passion. She is travel, she is adventure, she is writing and compassion. She is singing from my heartstrings and rolling around in hugs, she is feeding my body good food and taking naps at lunch.

    She is grounding my body and rooting my earthly soul, she is reminding myself to take it easy and schedule in time for myself. She is having space to reflect, to vision, and to create—to live my best possible life every single day.

    She is dancing around my bedroom with a full and open heart, she is appreciating little flower buds and gazing at the milky way above. She is stopping for a moment to enjoy the simplicities of life and dancing in the rain even when storms rage outside. She is crying from my heart center, even when I don’t know what it’s about, she is cleansing my body with long baths and bucket loads of Epsom salt.

    She is moving my body and releasing emotions from deep within, she is letting go of yang and settling into yin. She is expressing my soul in a way that feels good to me, birthing zesty creations that fill me with energy. She is being honest with others even when it hurts, she is sharing my story and lighting up the world.

    She is diving into oceans with sweet and salty hair, drowning in my sorrows and shooting up for air. She is bathing in the sunshine and filling my body with light, allowing myself to rest when my eyes feel dim and tired. She is asking for guidance and praying from my heart, she is surrendering softly and letting life take its course.

    She is asking for help when I feel lost and broken, calling up a friend and sharing what I’m feeling. She is connecting with source and being committed every day, to filling up my cup and sharing it along the way. She is spending time with others who value my time and soul, who give with equal balance, and are committed to the path of growth.

    She is shining so bright that it blinds passers-by, inspiring others gently to shake up their own lives. She is standing bravely, boldly, and oh so lovingly so, when conversations are had and pain begins to show. She is forgiving the past, and not running to the future, living in the now and creating life from a balanced center.

    This is my love, my infinite love—my true self.

    And while I am open to falling into another, I will fall softly and deeply while honoring my center. The journey of love has taken me so far, but what it always teaches me is that I am capable of creating from my heart. And until it stops beating, I will allow it to shimmer and glow, igniting my dreams and letting my vault know—I will fill you. Every single day.

  • Honoring Lost Loved Ones: How I Carry My Son’s Memory into the Future

    Honoring Lost Loved Ones: How I Carry My Son’s Memory into the Future

    “Keep all special thoughts and memories for lifetimes to come. Share these keepsakes with others to inspire hope and build from the past, which can bridge to the future.” ~Mattie Stepanek

    I stood over a pile of my son’s t-shirts, scissors in hand, my breath ragged. I reached for a plain, dark blue one that I didn’t remember Brendan ever wearing. My fingers trembled. The first cut would be the hardest.

    I’d packed away his shirts eight years ago, within weeks after he’d died. He was only fifteen—an unbearable loss. I’d spent days washing and drying and folding his shirts into tiny perfect squares. My daughter Lizzie watched me put them inside my grandmother’s wooden hope chest.

    “When you go to college, I’ll make you a quilt out of Brendan’s shirts,” I said. “And one for Zack too.”

    I didn’t know how to make a quilt. I’d never sewn more than a straight line before. But I had time. Zack was thirteen, Lizzie ten. But the years passed. I walked by the chest every day and yet couldn’t seem to open it.  I was afraid of opening the lid and unleashing the pain hidden inside, like a Pandora’s box. I wasn’t sure if I could ever open it. When it was time for Zack to go to college, neither one of us mentioned it.

    But now, Lizzie was leaving for college in a week. I’d already bought her towels and dorm decorations and twinkling lights to chase away the shadows in her room. But she wanted the one thing I couldn’t buy. She wanted to take something of Brendan with her, something more than a collection of photos. There wasn’t time to make her a real quilt, but I could piece together blocks of his shirts for a blanket. That would be enough for her.

    I opened the chest and stared down at the shirts. So many blue ones. I couldn’t remember if that was my favorite color or his.

    He never cared about fashion, only comfort. I picked through the shirts and carried an armful down the stairs. A pajama top fell to the floor. It was gray and red fleece with a penguin applique near the bottom. At fifteen, he’d long outgrown animals on his clothes, but he still wore this one because it was so soft. I watched him once, falling asleep on the couch. As a toddler, he’d rub his fingers through his hair, but now his fingers rubbed across the penguin’s belly.

    I stared down at his shirts, seeing beyond the colors and patterns. I saw the stories of my son.

    I picked up his buttoned-down shirt with splotches of red on it. I only smelled the woodsy scent of the cedar-lined chest, but I closed my eyes and went back to the day when there was red sauce bubbling on the stove as I fried chicken cutlets in garlicky oil. Brendan snatched a piece of chicken and dipped it into the sauce, dancing away when I shooed at him with the wooden spoon. He never noticed the drops of red falling onto his shirt. I bent over the shirt now and took a deep breath, as if oregano and basil were still in the air.

    I unfolded a turquoise shirt, the one he wore on our last beach vacation. I could hear the ocean waves crashing against the sand and see the wind ruffling his hair as he held a giant crab dusted with Old Bay seasoning. He’s wearing it in one of our last pictures of him, the one we used for the funeral. I love that he’s holding this crab, with a smile of anticipation as he waited, savoring the moment.

    My hand shook as I cut through the penguin top, but the scissor moved through the fabric easily. I reached for another and then another as I cut the shirts apart until I had twelve squares. I saved every scrap, even the skinny ones that curled. I cupped them in my hands, and they spilled over like ribbons of memory.

    My daughter walked into the room, and I shrugged through my tears. “I’m not sure if I can do this.”

    She nodded. “It’s okay.”

    But it wasn’t. I desperately wanted to give her this gift. I imagined her sitting in her dorm room, wrapped in memories while making new ones.

    His stories lured me back to the table the next day. I arranged the squares on the kitchen counter, moving the blues and grays around. I was still overcome with emotion, but something shifted.

    Seeing the blocks of fabric shaped into something new filled me with hope. I played with the pieces, moving the penguin around, first next to the flag shirt and then next to the blue-striped one he wore for special occasions. I kept moving them around, playing with possibilities until I found the perfect combination.

    I sewed the pieces together, feeling a wave of excitement as the blanket grew. When I finished it, I smiled and held it up. This blanket was so much more than just a block of memories. I’d taken pieces of the past and transformed them into something new.

    I smiled, seeing Lizzie in her dorm room, snuggling beneath the quilt. I saw her moving into her first apartment, spreading it out on her couch. I pictured her years from now as she rocked her baby girl, the quilt wrapped around the two of them, their fingers tracing the outline of the penguin.

    I love looking through old pictures, but something special happens when we play with the memories of our lost loved ones. It doesn’t have to be a quilt. Perhaps a collage of photos arranged in different ways. Or a playlist of songs that spark a memory. Maybe a collection of recipes filled with their favorite foods. Or a tablecloth where everyone writes down a story of a loved one that makes them smile. When we create something new, we build a bridge of love that forever connects us to a loved one.

    Zack wants his own quilt now. He wants something different than Lizzie’s, one that has both his and Brendan’s shirts joined together. A quilt for brothers. I’m excited to start it. I’ll make one for me and my husband as well.

    Tomorrow, I will open the chest filled with memories. I will cut the t-shirts into pieces and pin them together.

    I will stitch my son into the present, so we can carry him into the future.

  • What Kept Me Stuck on My Ex and How I’m Breaking the Addiction

    What Kept Me Stuck on My Ex and How I’m Breaking the Addiction

    “When you stop chasing the wrong things, you give the right things a chance to catch you.” ~Unknown

    I might be addicted to feeling good. I’m no stranger to pleasure, and I want what I want unapologetically. But there’s a conflict that arises when one of the things I want is distracting me from having an even bigger thing I want.

    My story is so common, it’s almost cliché.

    Man and woman meet on Tinder. They are both vague enough about what they want that they dive in without really knowing where it will go. They develop trust, intimacy, and discover shared values and approach to life. Along the way, they get clearer about what they want.

    Said man and woman decide they aren’t on the same page in terms of where their relationship is headed. They break up so each can happily pursue the thing they want. The problem is, they still really like each other. They still want to stay connected to the other.

    We had been texting and talking on and off—less frequently, but still consistently in those almost three weeks. For the sake of staying connected, I went to dinner with my ex-boyfriend. Twenty days post-breakup, to be exact.

    We flirted. We talked. We laughed. We were brutally honest about how hard it was to sit across the table from each other acting is if we were not boyfriend and girlfriend.

    We felt like we were lying to ourselves and each other. Something about it felt less than authentic.

    As each of us softened around the edges, letting our guards down about what this was “supposed” to be, we decided to just be real with one another. The desire mounted. And then it was like trying to put the brakes on a freight train—it was moving too fast to stop.

    Back at his apartment, the intensity of our desire for one another was undeniable. We succumbed to the immediate gratification of how good it felt to be together. To be so familiar and connected, and yet off-limits enough to be really hot. In the moment, it felt so, so satisfying.

    But in the aftermath? Nope, I was not satisfied at all. I woke up feeling like I’d lost twenty days worth of traction in creating the space in my life to allow for the relationship that I really want to become available.

    Now I was back to being tangled up in my feelings about how much I really care for this man, and why can’t this work, and blah, blah, blah. I felt really torn, and like I was experiencing the feelings that led to the breakup all over again. And I was so frustrated because I should know better.

    When we had been together, my ex was perfectly happy with the way our relationship was going. It was connected, extremely intimate, but still casual enough. I was the one who wanted more. I wanted to put a stake in the ground and grow something.

    Given this, I knew I couldn’t expect him to be the one to cut things off. Why would he? If I really wanted the bigger relationship that I know is possible (with someone who wants to give it to me), I was going to have to put on my big-girl pants.

    I was going to have to end my addiction to feeling good. I was going to have to stop indulging what would feel good now in pursuit of feeling better later.

    It’s like deciding you want to get in shape. You commit to getting up early the next day to go for a run. But later that day, you decide you really want ice cream. So you indulge.

    And then the next morning comes. Your body feels heavy and hungover from the sugar. The idea of running seems pretty miserable, let alone actually doing it.

    Getting in shape starts to feel a whole lot less appealing, and maybe more ice cream is a good idea. The whole thing unravels. You settle for ice cream instead of having a body that functions in the way you really want it to.

    But overdosing on ice cream always gets old. There comes a moment when the voice of the bigger thing creeps up again and haunts you. “Wouldn’t it be great if your body felt better? Wouldn’t you like to be able to climb stairs without the heavy breathing? How would it feel to wake up in the morning with your back not hurting?”

    At some point, you have to decide which one is more important to you: feeling good in the moment or feeling better in the long run. One calls for more discipline, postponing gratification in pursuit of the bigger thing. The other feels really good right now, but a lot less so later.

    Sometimes acknowledging the big thing we want is painful. Painful because we don’t really know if it exists, or if we can have it. It’s vulnerable to wonder if you’re spending energy on something that may never come to be.

    Add to it the question of “Did I let something really wonderful get away because I was so attached to it being on my terms?” and it’s a wonder I’m not completely paralyzed into settling.

    But in my world, settling isn’t an option. The voice of the bigger thing is really loud, and it won’t let me forget it or discard it in favor of something more readily accessible (not for long, anyways). I consider this a really inconvenient but poignant gift.

    As soon as my car pulled into my driveway, I dialed the phone. “I need us to not have any contact for the next two weeks. Maybe more. I’ll let you know. I hate that this is so difficult, but I know we will find the way that is right for both of us.”

    It’s time to cut the addiction. I know the withdrawals are going to suck for a while. But the days ahead will be better. The days when it is out of my system, and I can get back to the things I know for certain, instead of chasing my next fix.

    **This post was originally published in September, 2017.

  • Why Highly Sensitive People Make Amazing Life Partners

    Why Highly Sensitive People Make Amazing Life Partners

    “Our relationships are a reflection of the relationship we have with ourselves.” ~Iyanla Vanzant

    Looking back at my life I see that all of my romantic relationships up until now suffered because I didn’t recognize or value my sensitivity.

    For much of my life I thought there was something wrong with me. I was too quiet, too shy, not interesting enough in group settings, too easily hurt, too easily overwhelmed and stressed. I judged myself for being irritable when I didn’t feel rested. I was easily bored with surface conversation and craved deep intimacy, but thought maybe that was silly and unrealistic.

    For years, all of this made my love life challenging and downright difficult to navigate.

    Though I did find a good match in my first husband, eventually my own self-contempt and inability to accept and honor of my own qualities—the guilt and shame I walked around with much of the time—along with my lack of insight into how to work with my trait, led to my first marriage’s demise.

    My ex had the exact same experience within himself (I happen to know this because we are still wonderful friends). As you may have guessed, we’re both highly sensitive people (HSPs).

    HSPs often reject themselves, as my ex and I did. When we don’t understand our trait well enough, we tend to not value ourselves.

    This is not a surprise, really, because our culture doesn’t yet fully recognize and celebrate us for our strengths—it actually does the opposite—so why would we know how to value ourselves?

    The heart of most relationship problems for everyone—HSPs and non-HSPs alike—lies in a sense of insufficiency on some level. To have thriving, loving, healthy relationships we need to deeply love and accept ourselves.

    It took me some hard lessons and some real courageous work on myself, but now I am so proud of who I am, and my partnership reflects that health. I have a joy-filled, fun, deep, lovingly connected relationship with the man of my dreams.

    When I look at what enabled me to feel so sure of myself as a wonderful person and wife, I know the key was learning to see, appreciate, and honor my sensitivity.

    Because we HSPs are amazing. We make the very best partners when we take our well-being seriously, rid ourselves of our insecurity, and feel deep down good about ourselves.

    I’ve made it my mission to help other HSPs accept and nurture their trait so they can have the relationship they really want. I want you to see your own value and beauty!

    Here are some of the many ways you make an amazing partner, when you are healthy, centered, and honor your trait:

    ~You are naturally conscientious, compassionate, and very caring, so you are great at being supportive or loving when your partner needs it. You want the best for them. They feel and appreciate this.

    ~You are aware of your partner’s feelings and subtly attuned to what they’re experiencing (almost as if you can read their mind, sometimes before they can!). You easily pick up on their subtle cues, which helps them feel understood and cared for. With good skills in place, this ability can also help de-escalate conflict quickly, keeping your relationship harmonious.

    ~You see the best in others, even the subtle beauty and goodness that others easily miss, and you believe in that part of them strongly. Because of this you can draw out your partner’s gifts and be a great source of confidence building and affirmation for them. They will feel very loved.

    ~Your love of meaning and beauty in all forms enriches your partner’s life. You point out and expose them to beauty and depth they may have missed otherwise (including their own inner beauty).

    ~You are loyal, great at listening, creative, and dynamic. You are complex. This makes you a fascinating and safe person to spend one’s life with.

    ~You experience love and joy intensely, as well as other positive emotions. You are full of life and share that with your partner.

    ~You are a loving, calming, grounding presence. You emanate this to your partner and it nourishes them.

    ~Though it can take a long time to make choices, you are so thorough and intuitive, when you finally do reach a decision it’s usually a good one that benefits both you and your partner.

    ~You reflect and work things out inside yourself at length. This can lead to great self-awareness, which can enhance your ability to grow and flourish in your relationship, especially as you learn to be honest and open with your partner.

    ~You like to process what’s going on in your relationship and get to the heart of the matter with your partner, which you do well because you are deeply insightful. This helps you both better understand yourselves and your relationship.

    ~You have a knack for seeing the big picture—all sides of the coin. This gives you strength and perseverance to work through things when relationship challenges arise.

    ~You thrive on depth and complexity. In a love relationship this means you will be dedicated and willing to work hard at creating truly meaningful connection, making it more likely to have a rich and healthy committed relationship!

    See how amazing you are? I could go on and on…

    You really are worth celebrating and loving deeply. Right now, pause for a moment and just take that in. Let it fill you with a sense of pride. Let it touch and start to wash away old pains of not being good enough.

    It’s essential to believe in ourselves. We must do this so thoroughly that we can honestly look at and accept the less ideal parts of our trait, as well. From there we can muster the courage and commitment to address those more challenging aspects and work with them wisely.

    Otherwise, we risk bringing out our worst side: someone who can be grumpy, judgmental, intolerant, demanding, anxiety riddled, resentful, picky, needy—someone our partner needs to walk on eggshells around, which is a death sentence for intimacy.

    When we do honor and manage it well, we show up beautifully.

    I interviewed my husband one day about what he loves about me. As you see, most of what he said has a big connection to my sensitivity:

    “With you I feel so cared for, seen, and loved for who I am. I feel you really get me. You are so kind, loving, and caring; you sparkle with life. You are so compassionate.  I’m in awe about how deep we can go in conversation and how in tune we can feel. Life is so meaningful with you, and being with you makes me not just want to grow into a better and better person, but to really do what it takes to actually do so.”

    I feel so much love. The tenacity and effort it took to get here was more than worth it. I would do it over and over if I needed to. Because, as an HSP, being in such a flourishing, deeply loving relationship is so fulfilling.

    **This post was originally published in February, 2019.

  • The Grief We Can’t Run from and Why We Should Embrace It

    The Grief We Can’t Run from and Why We Should Embrace It

    “I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.” ~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

    Grief creeps up on you when you least expect it. It reminds you of the person you have lost when you’re out for coffee with friends, watching people hug their loved ones goodbye at the airport, and when you’re at home thinking about people you should call to check-in on.

    Even when you think that enough time has passed for you to be over it, grief pulls at your heartstrings. You think about all the ways that life has changed, and your heart longs to have one last conversation with the person you have lost, one last hug, and one last shared memory.

    A wise person once told me that when you love someone the hurt never really goes away. It grows as we do and changes over time becoming a little bit easier to live with each year.

    Grief is not something we can run from. I know this now from trying to run, hoping I would never have to feel the pain I was carrying deep within my heart.

    In November of 2020 I lost my godfather, a person I loved and cared for deeply. I also learned about my estranged father’s death when I googled his name. The reality that my estranged family had not had to decency to tell me of his death stung. I also lost people I had known and were connected to in my community.

    The news of these deaths hit me with an initial shock—they did not seem real. For a day after discovering the news of each loss I found myself walking around in a blur, unable to eat or sleep. The next day I was able to force myself to function again. It was as if the people I had lost were not really gone.

    When friends and family learned of the losses I had faced they reached out to me and offered support. I assured them that although I was sad, I was fine. Growing up in an unsupportive family I did not know how to accept their support, as it felt foreign to me. So, to avoid talking about my feelings and facing my pain, I turned the conversation back to them and asked about their work and/or their children. Slowly, people stopped asking how I was doing or how I was feeling because on the surface I seemed more than fine.

    I was functional in my professional roles, writing articles, engaging in research, mentoring students, collaborating with colleagues, and making progress in my PhD program. I appeared like myself during online work and social events. I continued to support my friends and neighbors as if nothing had changed. Silently, I was fighting a battle that even I knew nothing about.

    Each day I would force myself out of bed and tackle a lengthy to-do list comprised of personal and professional work and obligations. In the evenings I would force myself to work or engage in physical activity so that I did not have time to feel. In the initial darkest moments, I convinced myself that if I kept going, kept moving forward, I would not have to feel the pain I carried in my heart. 

    I became more productive than normal. I wrote more academic and non-academic articles, I volunteered and provided support to online communities, and I readily volunteered to edit colleagues’ work. In the few moments of downtime I gave myself each day I would either sit blankly staring at my computer or find myself crying. I couldn’t feel sad, I did not have time to feel sad, I needed to keep going I told myself.

    The pandemic made it easier to live in denial about my losses and pain because normal rituals associated with death, like funeral services, had either been postponed or restricted to a select number of individuals. Perhaps if these rituals had been in place, I would have been forced to address my grief in a healthier manner.

    I continued to run from my pain by adding accolades to my resume and taking on as many projects as I could find. Spring blurred into summer, and I found myself becoming irritated by the slightest annoyance. Sleepless nights and reoccurring nightmares became normal. I had less patience for my students, and I struggled to be there for the people who needed me.

    I found my mind becoming slower, and by the end of June I was struggling to function. Yet, because I knew what was expected of me and did not want my friends or family to worry, I hid it.

    As pandemic restrictions began to ease, and other people’s lives began to return to normal, I became painfully aware that my life could not. I saw my friends hugging their fathers in pictures on social media. Friends recounted seeing family for the first time in over a year and shared pictures of them hugging their loved ones. People in my life began to look forward to the future with a sense of hopeful anticipation. Work began to talk of resuming in-person activities.

    I could no longer use the pandemic to hide from my grief, and I became paralyzed by it. I had to feel the pain. I had no choice. I couldn’t function, I couldn’t sleep, and I could barely feel anything except for the lump in my throat and the ominous weight in my chest.

    My godfather, my biggest cheerleader and the person who made me feel safe, was gone. It felt as though anything I did or accomplished didn’t matter the same way anymore. I longed for conversations with him I would never be able to have. The passing of time made me aware of the changes that had taken place in my life and how much I had changed without him.

    Throughout July I found myself crying constantly, but I was compassionate with myself. I no longer felt I had to propel myself forward with a sense of rigid productivity. Instead, I focused on slowing down and feeling everything. I asked work for extensions on projects, which I had previously felt ashamed to do. Other obligations I either postponed or cancelled.

    I found myself questioning my own life’s purpose. Had I truly been focusing on the things that mattered? What mattered to me now that the people I cared about most were gone? How could I create a fulfilling life for myself?

    There were days I didn’t get out of bed from the weight of my grief. Yet there were also days when I began to feel again—feelings of sadness, peace, joy, and even happiness that I had been repressing for months.

    I allowed myself to cry when I needed to or excuse myself from a social event when I was feeling triggered. When feelings of longing washed over me, I accepted them and acknowledged that a part of me would always miss the people I had lost. Within the intense moments of pain and loss I found comfort in the happy memories, the conversations, and the life we had shared.

    Slowly, the nightmares disappeared, and I began to sleep better again. Although I was sad, I also began to experience moments of happiness and feel hopeful again.

    The grief I had tried so desperately to run from became a strange source of comfort. Grief reminded me that the people I had lost had loved me, and the fabric of their lives had intertwined with mine in order to allow me to be the person I am today.

    The questions that plagued me, about what mattered to me, gradually evolved into answers that became action plans toward a more fulfilling life. In running toward grief and embracing it I made myself whole again and discovered a life I never would have otherwise known.

    We instinctively want to avoid our grief because the pain can feel unbearable, but our grief is a sign we’ve loved and been loved, and a reminder to use the limited time we have to become all that we can be.

  • What It Really Means to Be There and “Hold Space” for Someone Else

    What It Really Means to Be There and “Hold Space” for Someone Else

    “A healer does not heal you. A healer is someone who holds space for you while you awaken your inner healer, so that you may heal yourself.” ~Maryam Hasnaa

    I was sobbing quite hysterically, huddled into myself sitting on the kitchen floor.

    It literally felt like my life was falling apart. And so was I.

    I had been striving so hard to start a meaningful business that would change the world and help others, as well as heal myself from intense ongoing physical symptoms. But it seemed the harder I tried, the less things worked.

    My head bobbed slightly off my knees as I took ragged breaths.

    What the hell was wrong with me? The thought that was driving my meltdown was unintelligible in my brain, due to the crashing waves of my emotional reaction.

    But somehow, eventually, I found myself able to fully lift my head and stare straight on at my distorted reflection in the stainless steel door of the dishwasher.

    The whole while, he sat with me.

    My endlessly loving partner, Jonathan, held space.

    I remember when I first turned to a friend and said, “What does holding space really mean?” I asked with the inquisitiveness of a child, like a small human who does not yet know what a word means.

    Because with something like this, can any of us really find the words to accurately explain it?

    She used a story in an attempt to define it, “When I was really freaking out about something, I went over to my friend’s house and just let it all out. My friend was able to just listen to me and just you know… hold the space.”

    “Holding space” is a concept that is hard to define without using the exact same words to define it. But as she explained it to me, I realized I’ve been lucky to have many experiences of people holding space for me, and I for them.

    When it comes down to it, what are we really doing when we are “holding space?”

    The interesting thing about this term is that we aren’t actually “holding” anything.

    When your daughter comes home from school and wants to tell you all about her day, and you listen intently… you are holding space.

    When your boyfriend vents about how hard work was that day, and you give him your full attention… you are holding space.

    When you are flipping out over one thing or another or all the things, and someone looks at you with complete acceptance… that is holding space.

    When you are both recognizing what is currently is going on, and open to stepping into a new reality… that is holding space.

    Holding space is about being in the space. 

    It’s about being fully present with the experience. Holding space is viewing someone without judgment and seeing him or her through loving kindness. Holding space is recognizing that although we all may stumble, we are all also so powerful.

    Holding space is like holding the door open for someone to walk through to experience a new model of the world. Instead of feeling like the walls are caving in, holding space literally gives breathing room to express, open up, and simply be where we are.

    What we are really doing when we hold space is nothing but pure acceptance—of ourselves, of others, and of the moment.

    As Brene Brown says, “When we are looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend, and most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.”

    Those compassionate, rooted people in our life are invaluable to help us weather the storm and stand in the light again. But what happens when that other person just is not available to you in that moment?

    Holding space doesn’t have to involve anyone else physically being there with us or listening to us directly. You can each hold space for yourself. When you are going through something big (or seemingly small), you can hold space for yourself by tapping into self-compassion. 

    Dr. Kristin Neff defines three components of self-compassion as self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.

    Self-kindness entails being warm and understanding towards ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate. Instead of ignoring our pain or hurting ourselves with self-criticism, self-kindness involves being gentle with yourself when you encounter a painful experience.

    Common humanity is that reminder that we all suffer. We are all mortal, vulnerable, and imperfect. This suffering is part of the shared human experience. Realizing that can help us feel less isolated and more connected within that space.

    Mindfulness is taking a balanced approach to our challenging emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. Instead of “over-identifying” with our thoughts and feelings, mindfulness is a willingness to observe our negative thoughts and emotions with openness, clarity, and equanimity. It’s a non-judgmental way of becoming aware of our inner experience as it is, without trying to suppress or deny.

    We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion at the same time. This means, the more you can hold space for yourself, the more you can hold space for others. In that space, we all experience what it means to feel unconditional love. 

    When you feel unconditionally loved, you are able to fully own your own experience and truly be who you are. There is a calmness and clarity and an ability to also love the world as it is.

    This is where true power comes from. When we are able to be in unconditional love, all of our thoughts, words, and actions flow from it. We are bringing more of that love into the world.

    Which means holding space isn’t just beneficial for one. It benefits all.

    By loving ourselves, we also hold space for the world.

    **This post was originally published in March, 2018.

  • The World Needs More Love

    The World Needs More Love

  • Why It’s Not Your Fault You’re in a Toxic Relationship

    Why It’s Not Your Fault You’re in a Toxic Relationship

    I remember the first time it dawned on me that I was in an unhealthy relationship. Not just one that was difficult and annoying but one that could actually be described as “toxic.”

    It was at a training event for a sexual abuse charity I worked for. I immediately felt like a fraud!

    How could I be working there, helping other women get out of their unhealthy relationships and process their pain and trauma, but not realize how unhealthy my own relationship was?

    How did I not know?

    Typically, as I had always done, I beat myself up over it.

    I should have known, I’m a professional. How could I even call myself that now?’

    Shame.

    It was always there lurking in the background.

    Maybe deep down I had known … consciously, most definitely not.

    And so, while someone talked us through the “cycle of abuse,” I sat there seeing my relationship described to perfection.

    We had a nice time until something felt off. The atmosphere changed, and I could sense the tension building. No matter what I tried, no matter how hard I went into people-pleasing mode, I couldn’t stop it from escalating.

    There was always a huge argument of some sort, and we’d end up talking for hours, going round in circles, never finding any kind of solution.

    Just more distance and disconnection.

    I never felt heard. Just blamed. It didn’t even matter what for. Somehow everything was always my fault. And most of that time, that ‘everything’ was nothing at all. Just made up problems that seemed to serve as an excuse to let off some steam, some difficult feelings.

    We never resolved anything. We just argued for days … and nights. It was exhausting.

    Then came the silence. I knew it well, had experienced it throughout my childhood too.

    “If you don’t give me exactly what I want or say exactly what I need you to say, I’ll take all my ‘love’ away and treat you like you don’t exist or matter to me.”

    Looking back now, that may have been the most honest stage in our relationship because that’s how I felt constantly— insignificant, unloved, and like I didn’t matter.

    But somehow, out of the blue, we made up. We swiped it under the invisible rug that became a breeding ground for chronic disappointment and resentment. It was a very fertile rug.

    I guess it also helped us move into the next stage of the cycle: the calm before the storm … until it all started up again.

    So how come I didn’t realize that I was (and had been!) in an unhealthy relationship?

    Was I stupid? Naive? Uneducated?

    None of those things. I was successful, competent, and a high achiever.

    I was highly educated, had amazing friendships, and made it look like I had the perfect life.

    Because it’s what I wanted to believe. It’s what I needed to believe.

    But most of all, it’s all I knew.

    The relationship I was in was like all the others that had come before.

    I never felt loved or wanted, sometimes not even liked, but that’s just how it was for me. Somehow, my partners would always find something wrong with me.

    My mother too.

    According to them, I was too sensitive, took things too personally, and couldn’t take a joke.

    I said the wrong things, set them off in strange ways, or didn’t really understand them, and was too selfish or stubborn to care deeply enough for them.

    Which is funny because all I did was care.

    I cared too much, did too much, and loved too much, just not myself.

    And so, I stayed. Because it felt normal.

    It’s all I’d ever known.

    I didn’t get hit, well, not in the way that police photos show. And pushing and shoving doesn’t count, right?

    (Neither does that one time I got strangled. My partner at the time was highly stressed at work, and I said the wrong thing, so it definitely didn’t count …).

    Being shouted and sworn at was also not real abuse. It was just “his way.” I knew that and still stayed, so how could I complain?

    See, I paid attention to different signs, the ones portrayed in the media. Not the everyday ones that insidiously feel so very normal when you’ve grown up in a household in which you didn’t matter either.

    The point is that we repeat what we know.

    We accept what feels familiar whether it hurts us or not. It’s like we were trained for this, and now we run the marathon of toxic love every day of our lives completely on autopilot.

    Most of the time we don’t even question it. It just feels so familiar and normal.

    The problem with this is that we stay far too long in situations that hurt us. And so, the first part of leaving is all about educating yourself on what is healthy and what isn’t so that you know.

    Because once you know, you can’t unknow, and you’ll have to start doing something about it.

    And that’s what I did.

    I learned all about unhealthy relationships and how to have healthy ones. This required me to heal my own wounds, let go of beliefs and habits that kept me choosing people that just weren’t good for me, and learn the skills I needed to know to have healthy relationships such as being connected to my feelings, needs, and wants or setting boundaries effectively.

    Relationships are difficult and painful when no one has taught you how to connect in healthy ways that leave you feeling liked, respected, and good about yourself.

    And so, it’s not really our fault when our adult relationships fail or feel like they’re breaking us.

    But we need to put ourselves back in charge and take responsibility for learning how to create the relationships we actually want to be in.

    So let me reassure you and tell you that that is possible.

    I did it, and so I know that you can do it too.

    But it all starts with deciding that you’re done with the painful relationship experiences you are having and that you’re committed to making EPIC LOVE happen.

    A love that leaves you feeling appreciated and satisfied.

    A love that feels safe.

    A love that lets you rise and thrive.

    A love in which you feel better than “good enough.”

    Decide, choose that kind of love and say yes to yourself.

    That’s the first act of real love.

  • Life is Fragile: Love Like Today Could Be Your Last

    Life is Fragile: Love Like Today Could Be Your Last

    “I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.” ~Steven Pinker

    He was splayed out in the middle of the road. The paramedics had yet to arrive. That was the scene on our way to meet some friends.

    Over dinner, they relayed the tragic story of their neighbor’s twenty-something son who was killed recently in a motorcycle accident.

    Two others lost their lives in an instant on a nearby suburban road.

    An acquaintance told me about the fatal hiking accident of a young man who was making his mark on the world and left it with so much more to give.

    My friend’s father is fighting for his life against COVID.

    All of this in the past week.

    I know what you are thinking. This is SOOOO depressing. I know. But it’s life. Life is fragile. It can end in an instant. I know from experience.

    My parents were taking care of our young children while my husband and I were on a company-sponsored trip on the other side of the Atlantic. We were so excited to catch an earlier flight for the last leg of our return so we could surprise our kids as they got off the school bus. 

    As we pulled up, our home was eerily quiet. No one was home. We entered and found a note on the counter saying, “Bridget we are sorry for your loss. There is food in the fridge.” 

    Panic ensued as we made frantic phone calls that went unanswered. What in the hell happened? Where are our kids!? Finally, the phone rang. “Bridget, Dad died.” 

    If you are like me you probably don‘t spend time thinking about your mortality. It’s uncomfortable. Yet, it’s one thing that is certain in this life. That, along with our choice of how we show up and navigate each day.

    As I reflect on the years since my dad died, I think of all the missed milestones that have marked my children’s lives, both big and small. From the fun, everyday moments to the can’t miss celebrations. This year in particular is bittersweet. It marks the high school graduation and college start of my youngest; another important milestone that we will celebrate without him, and it makes me sad.

    But he’s been with us all along the way in spirit. Sometimes I hear his voice. Sometimes I sense him around my house. I can still feel his warm hugs. And see the twinkle in his eye when he really saw me for me. 

    We continue to tell the stories. To remember who he was as a dad and a grandpa. We share his goofy idiosyncrasies, like his love for peanut butter, lettuce, and mayonnaise sandwiches. I know. But he loved it!

    It’s the little things that we remember about people. How they make us feel. Whether they are friends, family, or strangers. 

    Recently, before a class I taught, a student bolted in the door and stormed past me. No check-in. No hello. She kept going when I asked her to stop. She eventually made her way back to me and all was good. Yet, I could feel the frenetic energy oozing from her.

    I’ve been her. Many times. And I don’t want to be like that. I consciously choose to live with no regrets. To acknowledge the people I encounter with care and kindness. To be aware of the energy I am putting out there.

    I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. I hurt others. But I continue to try to do my best to be intentional and thoughtful in my interactions and make amends when I falter.

    When our mind is wrapped up in work, bills, responsibilities, to-do lists, kids, grandkids, and more, it’s easy to go through the motions of life. Sometimes the days become routine, and one rolls into another. We’ve got things to do and little time to get it all done.

    It can be challenging to quiet the chatter in our head, to look at the person in front of us, and to speak, listen, and interact with them like they matter. Often with strangers, and even more so, with our loved ones.

    They are the ones we take for granted. They understand our moods. They know our shortcomings. They forgive us time and time again. But is that what we want?

    If you died today, what do you want those closest to you to know? Do they know how you feel about them? How much they mean to you? Do they understand how important they are to you?

    Tell them. Leave nothing unsaid. You never know if today is your last.

  • What’s Really Important: 3 Things I Realized When I Lost My Grandmother

    What’s Really Important: 3 Things I Realized When I Lost My Grandmother

    “We forget what we want to remember and remember what we want to forget.” ~The Road

    “Okay grandma, we’re going to run away!” I wheeled my grandma Jeanne in her wheelchair into the sunlight, through the courtyard, after we exited her nursing home. She knew though that she couldn’t leave, but she went along with the game. She knew she was stuck there. But we had fun with it, nonetheless.

    I really did want to run away with her. I’d had a dream the night before that she told me, “I’m at the end of my life. You will be judged for how you take care of me.” That shocked me. I felt fear and worry about the potential of losing her and not doing a good enough job at helping her through her last days. She’d had a stroke and then was diagnosed with dementia. I wanted to care for her and make her proud of me.

    “Do you work here?” My grandma looked at me, and suddenly I felt like I was failing her. It wasn’t my fault she didn’t recognize me. But I still felt like it was, like I wasn’t doing enough, especially due to that dream.

    “No, it’s me. Your granddaughter, Sarah.” I pleaded in my heart that she would recognize me. She looked confused then said, “Oh.” I knew she felt ashamed she didn’t know it was me.

    It was bittersweet when I left her. We had so much silly fun together. I knew I brightened her day. But it was darkened by her dementia and not knowing who I was at the end. It made me feel sad and defeated. Life’s unfairness hit me. Why did it have to be so hard for so many?

    Losing your memories seems like the worst thing to happen, and that was at times her reality. She could only escape it with me so much.

    If I could go back in time, I would visit her every day. I had already lost my other grandparents. She was the one who was there through to adulthood. I missed her so much after she passed.

    It made me think of what would happen to me as I got older. Would I look back and be proud of myself? What would my future self say to me now? Who would I become?

    Would I be an old woman wheeled around in a wheelchair by her granddaughter in a silly way? Was that success? That moment of love we shared was everything.

    And like that, it was also gone. Little moments like this can be so fleeting. Happiness can be so hard to hold onto. But her spirit stayed with me.

    That was also a time when I truly let go. I’d had a guard against love all my life due to the trauma of abusive boyfriends and more. I didn’t know how to truly feel it. But my grandma’s love sent me wisdom.

    Her love made me realize that I was special, worthy, and enough. I didn’t have to try to become someone. I was already someone. I was loved by her, and it was the type of love that changes you.

    I may have lost her to dementia and then death, but she taught me my value when I couldn’t see it myself. Even when she didn’t recognize me in the end, I knew that she was guiding me in this realization.

    That day with my grandmother made me think about life and what was really important. Here’s what I found.

    Life is a Gift

    And one day, you have to give it back. You’ve heard this a thousand times, but it’s short too. It goes by fast. This makes you think you have to hold on tighter, fight harder, and become better. What you should be doing is the opposite of that: letting go.

    Let go of the reasons you are afraid to be real in a relationship, go somewhere new, or be happy with yourself.

    Embrace the fleetingness of it all so you can make the most of your life while you have the chance. It’s okay to feel like things are not in your control. None of us can truly control anything or the outcome of a life.

    I couldn’t control my grandma losing her memories, but I made each moment with her count. That’s all I could do.

    Instead of trying harder, try softer. Release and surrender to the fact that you can’t make everything last. But some things do. The most important things do.

    Love is what stays when everything else has left us. Love is what we know even when we lose our memories of the past. The feeling remains even when the knowledge of it is lost. At least, that’s what happened with my grandma. I knew she felt my love even if she didn’t remember me. And that’s why I was able to see the impact of our time together anyway.

    You Are Enough

    When we look back at our lives, we will not say, “I should have had more achievements, greater wealth, more popularity, higher status, or a perfect body.”

    So why do we focus on these things?

    Society makes us feel like we have to be a celebrity or a massive success to be important. It makes us feel like we have to have a huge Instagram following to be an influencer. It makes us feel like we have to perform at all times on social media, only showing the highlight reel of our best moments. It makes us feel like we have to be thinner, richer, younger, more successful…

    Where is authenticity in all of this? Where are the poets, the artists, the ones that heal a hurting world?

    That’s what it really means to be important: to embrace our authentic selves so we can make a genuine difference in our sphere of influence, however big it may be. We don’t need to reach millions. We just need to reach into the hearts of the people we encounter knowing that truly is enough.

    Don’t feel like that’s enough—or that you’re enough?

    Do it anyway.

    Love anyway.

    Risk being yourself anyway.

    Forgive anyway.

    Show kindness (despite having experienced cruelty) anyway.

    Choose happiness anyway.

    Surrender anyway.

    That’s what saves the world. It’s not about being known and admired by everyone. It’s about being authentic in a world that makes us think we are not enough. Because authenticity connects us. And genuine connection is what heals.

    Very Little Matters in the Grand Scheme of Things (and That’s Okay)

    The missed opportunities, the exes you had to leave behind, that perfect situation you thought you had to maintain… none of it matters. I’m not saying these things didn’t matter to you, or that they shouldn’t have mattered. Just that in the grand scheme of things, our circumstances aren’t as important as our character.

    What really matters is who you are in those moments in between waiting for the next best thing to happen to you. It’s how you treat the people in your own little world when you’re wishing your world would change.

    What really matters is your attitude when you feel lost and confused. It’s letting yourself find reasons to smile even though you’re not sure where you’re going or what you’re even doing. It’s being happy with what you have, even if you aren’t where you want to be. And it’s loving life even when you don’t know what to live for.

    Cherish each second you are alive. Muster the strength to comfort and to be comforted. Inspire and lead whoever you can, help others through shared problems, and remember to talk about that which is hardest to talk about.

    Forgive who you can, most of all yourself, and remember that it is the small moments that make up our lives. It’s the little joys we share with the people who take up the biggest place in our hearts. I may not remember everything at the end of my life, but I know I’ll remember I loved, and that I was loved in return.

  • Why Strong Chemistry Doesn’t Always Lead to a Strong Relationship

    Why Strong Chemistry Doesn’t Always Lead to a Strong Relationship

    “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” ~C.G. Jung 

    Everyone says it. They say chemistry is a must. I know I say it. But why do we say this?  What exactly is chemistry, and is it really the best indicator of a good partner?

    The man I had the most chemistry with (we’ll call him Tim) treated me like an option and was never particularly concerned with my needs, desires, or feelings.

    I remember the day I met him, and he opened the door and flashed his ear-to-ear grin. I literally said to myself, “FML, this guy is going to break my heart.” Despite knowing he would, and despite his treatment, I stayed with him in a long-distance, off-and-on relationship for two and a half years. Oh, and yes, he did break my heart.

    Not only have I done this once, but I’ve done it SIX times!

    Why did I place my feelings for him and my desire to be with him over my own sanity, my security, and my needs? Why do we do it over and over again? Why do we value chemistry over caring?

    What is Chemistry?

    According to anthropologist Helen Fischer, chemistry is really a mixture of hormones (testosterone and estrogen) and neurotransmitters (dopamine and serotonin). In her book Why We Love, she lays out a framework indicating there are four distinct personality types, each made up of varying degrees of hormones and neurotransmitters.

    The Four Personality Types

    • The Explorer, defined by high dopamine activity, is adventurous, novelty-seeking, creative
    • The Builder, with high serotonin activity, is cautious, conventional, managerial
    • The Director, pumped up with testosterone, is aggressive, single-minded, analytical
    • The Negotiator, more estrogen-influenced, is empathetic, idealistic, a big-picture thinker

    But, underlying this biological chemistry is a psychological chemistry, which is when we are seeking out someone to heal the damage done in our childhood. This chemistry is where our problems come in.

    Most of the time we don’t know that we are drawing this parental figure toward us in some quest to get them to do things right by us this time, thereby fixing our wounded hearts. Sometimes we know it, but we keep moving forward anyway.

    With Tim I knew immediately. I felt his avoidance and his emotional unavailability. My intuition told me to run the minute I met him. Unfortunately, my hormones, my soul, and my heart told me otherwise, and I continued a pattern of push and pull, love and disdain for over two years.

    With all of my other boyfriends and even my husband, it wasn’t so obvious. Some it showed up later and some were worse than others. But I felt an immediate connection with every single one of them and went from being single to being in a relationship within a matter of days.

    So, Is It All Or Nothing?

    Not once did I take the time to determine how they treated me. Not once did I take the time to observe their behaviors and their willingness to meet my needs. I let chemistry and my feelings toward them override common sense.

    This isn’t to say they are to blame or that they were bad guys, because they weren’t. My childhood issues were running the show and have been since I can remember.

    Every one of them had the same characteristics. They were all kind, honest, good guys. But none of them seemed to care about my needs as much as their own. Life was all about their wants, needs, and desires, and I was supposed to just accept it. Unfortunately, I did accept it. I took it for as long as I could until I eventually left.

    However, this is not a healthy way to interact in a relationship. I was at fault for settling and not speaking my mind and discussing my needs. I suppose I felt that I was lucky to get their crumbs, and if they said they loved me that should have been enough. It wasn’t.

    There was always an underlying chemistry with all of them that kept me there and kept me trying. One night while I was separated from my husband, he spent the night after we went out to dinner. I remember lying there next to him. My body craved being physically next to him, but I kept looking over at him and thought to myself, “I really don’t like you very much.”

    Chemistry can override our common sense, and it can keep us with someone who isn’t right for us or doesn’t treat us well. Chemistry can be the most amazing thing on the planet. The highs you get are amazing. Unfortunately, the lows that can also come with it are very low. So, what do you do?

    Moving Forward

    I’ve come to realize that as of right now I am always going to be chemically attracted to someone who has a little bit of an avoidant personality. Emotional ambivalence feels safe and normal to me at first. It feels like love and it feels like home. Unfortunately, that type of love is not at all fulfilling as an adult, and I have to figure out how to rewire my brain.

    I’m not a doctor or a therapist, but I know myself and I think I’m fairly smart. What I think needs to be done going forward is to examine my choices more carefully before diving in.

    Almost all dating experts will tell you the same thing: Relationships are built on mutual trust, intimacy, and how each partner is willing to meet the other’s needs.

    If you haven’t heard of the famous study by John Gottman, here is a quick recap. They put couples in a room together and let them interact. They followed them over the years and came to this one conclusion: Every person turns toward their partner in an effort to make an emotional connection. They called these needs bids.

    They found that the couples that were happiest and that remained married met their partner’s emotional bids eighty percent (80%) of the time.

    Gottman identified nine separate emotional bids that include:

    1. Attention
    2. Interest
    3. Affection
    4. Extended conversation
    5. Emotional support
    6. Humor
    7. Enthusiastic engagement
    8. Play
    9. Self-disclosure

    What does this have to do with moving forward and with choosing a partner based on caring instead of chemistry? It means you have to observe them. Don’t rush in. Don’t choose someone just because you like them so much or you have chemistry with them.

    When you reach out in an attempt to make a connection, how does your partner respond? Do they respond to your bid or move away from it? It doesn’t matter whether they do it consciously or subconsciously; what matters is how they respond.

    Of course, it’s your responsibility to communicate your needs, desires, and wants, and if you fail to do this, you can’t blame it all on your partner. But, if you have and they still fail to meet your bids, then your relationship is likely doomed to fail.

    Choices

    It’s irrelevant if the person you choose has the physical appearance, job, sense of humor, ethics, or personality that you covet and are attracted to. If they fail to meet your bids for emotional connection, you will end up miserable and it won’t work. Period.

    So, take some time to write down what it is that you need in a partner. What are your non-negotiables? This should not really include things like height or hair color or body type.

    Non-negotiables are things like:

    • Honesty
    • Considers my needs as well as their own
    • Hard Working
    • Not selfish
    • Makes me laugh
    • Able to communicate their needs
    • Wants children/doesn’t want children
    • Accepts the fact that I get super fussy when I’m tired and doesn’t make me feel bad about it
    • Listens to me

    This is a basic list of some things to consider. Before you invest time dating you need to invest time in yourself. Figure out what you can and cannot do without. Write down three to five of your non-negotiables and stick by them.

    I’m not saying it will be easy to do this. The heart wants what it wants and chemistry can be a powerful force. Maybe this is what we all should think about if we keep choosing chemistry over caring.

    **This post was originally published in February, 2017.

  • 4 Things I Learned from Being Possessive and Controlling in a Relationship

    4 Things I Learned from Being Possessive and Controlling in a Relationship

    As she stood there watching the puppet show, our eyes locked. I was instantly attracted.

    After what felt like the longest fifteen minutes torn between the desire to talk to her and the fear of rejection, I mustered the courage to introduce myself.

    She gave me a smile, then without saying a word, walked away.

    “What just happened? How can such a beautiful lady be so rude?” I stood there in disbelief, overtaken by embarrassment, pretending nothing had happened.

    Two weeks later, as if by pure serendipity, a mutual friend reconnected us. That was the beginning of a relationship I could only dream of.

    Oh boy, did I misjudge her! Her attractive appearance was an exact expression of the beauty of her soul.

    One year and a half later, we were dating. Yes, I spent one year and half chasing after her. I guarantee a minute spent with her would convince you it was well worth my while.

    They say it takes longer to build a castle than a chicken coop. One and a half years must be the foundation for a skyscraper that not even the worst storm could break.

    For about a year, it felt that way. We were inseparable. Both our parents gave us their blessings. We moved in together. We even made wedding plans.

    It was like a relationship out of a fairy tale. We had every reason to believe we would live happily forever after. Life without each other was inconceivable.

    But there a problem… I was excessively possessive and controlling.

    I couldn’t stand my girl talking to another guy. I had the passwords to all her social media accounts. Whomever she was talking to, I knew. If she had to meet a male friend, I was present.

    Little by little I was withdrawing from her emotional bank account, as Stephen Covey put it. Worst of all, I was taking more than I was putting in.

    As a fervent Buddhist who believes in “letting go,” she was very tolerant. That gave me plenty of room to throw tantrums, ruminate, and blow the littlest issue out of proportion.

    Well, patience has its limits. After three and a half years, she had reached hers. I had emptied her emotional bank account.

    It was over. She had broken up with me.

    I was so clingy that I wouldn’t even accept her decision. I spent eighteen days trying every trick under the blue sky to get her back, to no avail.

    How did that happen? We’d spent so much time building our relationship, cherishing and loving each other. What went wrong?

    The eighteen days that followed were like a living hell. I suffered panic attacks, lost my appetite, and couldn’t sleep. Life became meaningless. I was at a breaking point.

    On the eighteenth day after the breakup, when I realized she wasn’t coming back, I had a reckoning. My desperation suddenly gave way to a wave of frustration, anger, and shame.

    As I was engulfed in deceit and embarrassment, I made a solemn decision to never again get rejected by a girl for being overly possessive, irrational, and intolerant.

    Such a momentous decision! I didn’t know if that was even possible and how I was ever going to reach such a lofty goal.

    That breakup and the three years spent self-examining taught me the big four lessons I am about to share with you.

    Are you in a relationship? Does your overbearingness prevent you from spending quality time with your partner? Are you ready to make changes?

    If you answered yes to all three questions, you are reading the right article. Hopefully, you won’t have to lose a partner and spend three years in self-introspection to find out you need to make changes.

    First thing first, love thyself.

    I know that sounds cliché, but I couldn’t find any fancier way to put it..

    Enjoying the company of your partner starts with you feeling good in your own skin. I’m guessing you would agree that one cannot love if they don’t possess it.

    A lack of self-love will cause you to center your entire being around the other person. And just like any host-parasite relationship, it will eventually fail. Your partner can’t let you feed off them indefinitely.

    Self-love is not selfishness. Loving yourself first doesn’t mean disparaging the other to elevate yourself. It’s acknowledging and embracing yourself while selflessly attuning to your partner’s needs and whims.

    Forget the “other half” mantras. Neither you nor your partner is a half, each of you possess their unique interests, weaknesses, strengths, and aspiration. It’s only when you both commit to each other, while staying true to your individuality, that genuine love happens.

    If I had espoused that idea then, I would never have considered suicide when my ex left me. I had based so much of my life on her I just couldn’t find meaning outsider of her.

    Learn to trust or you lose.

    Trust is the pillar of every human relationship, especially romantic ones.

    My lack of trust in my ex had nothing to do with her but rather with my deep sense of insecurity. I had the recurring thought that she would leave the minute she met someone better than me.

    Not only did my baseless fears cause me my peace of mind, they also created a wedge in our relationship.

    My trust issues caused her to lose all sense of vulnerability and safety around me. The only option she had was to confide in someone else.

    To learn to trust, I had to remind myself of this simple truth: We can’t control someone’s thoughts and actions. The best we can do is to give them the benefit of the doubt.

    Now, I choose to respect and trust my girlfriend unconditionally. Not only is she more willing to open up to me, I also enjoy a dramatic increase in self-esteem.

    Forgive and forget.

    Do you know those people who catastrophize and ruminate long after they got hurt? Well, that’s my past self!

    I did this every time my ex did something that displeased me. It didn’t matter if she apologized, I would internalize it and bring it up every time we were in an argument.

    For the last two years of our relationship, I made her life miserable. Imagine someone who never forgets even your most trivial mishap and uses it to attack you every time you’re wrong.

    Ironically, I learned to forgive and forget during the eighteen-day period while I was trying to get her back out of desperation.

    After flowers, long letters, and constant phone calls failed, I thought I could use religion to get her attention. That idea brought me to Google searching for “Buddha’s quote about forgiveness.”

    I came across this wisdom by Buddha: “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”

    As I copied and pasted the quote in a text message, I realized it was more relevant to me than her. I had an instant awakening.

    Instead of sending the quote to her, I decided to internalize it and use it for myself. How many times have I burnt myself by holding to anger? That was a genuine eye opener.

    When I started to remind myself of the danger anger poses to one’s mental health and peace of mind, not to mention its disastrous consequence on our relationships, I became more tolerant and accepting.

    Understand that nothing is guaranteed to last forever.

    I learned the hard way that no matter how well things are going between you and your partner, they may leave you at any time.

    When you accept the temporal nature of everything, you can stop clinging and worrying about the future and simply enjoy what you have in the moment.

    This means we must balance enjoying the company of our partner, while accepting the relationship might not last forever.

    Ironically, accepting that they could leave might decrease the odds of them leaving any time soon because people feel a lot happier when they don’t feel suffocated or controlled.

    —

    Today, I understand my ex breaking up with me was a blessing in disguise.

    Would I change things if I could go back in time? Not for the world! I grew more in the three years following our breakup than I had in the twenty-one years before that. Why would anyone trade that?

    Exactly three years after that breakup, I got into a new a relationship that’s been going strong for almost two years now. I know when to invest in myself and when to give my girlfriend my undivided attention. I respect, trust, and give her all the affection she deserves.

    I don’t know what the future holds, but I don’t worry. I seize the day, prepare for the worst, and hope for best.

    Did I reach my lofty goal to never again get rejected for being overly possessive? Geez, I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. All I know is that if my girlfriend leaves me tomorrow, it won’t be because I was being intolerant, overbearing, and bossy.

  • You Were Never Hard to Love

    You Were Never Hard to Love

  • How I Stopped Making Men My Everything and Losing Myself in Love

    How I Stopped Making Men My Everything and Losing Myself in Love

    “Yes, love is all about sacrifice and compromise, but it’s important also to establish a limit. You shouldn’t have to throw your whole life away to make a relationship work. If you have to lose yourself to please your partner, you’re with the wrong person.” ~Beau Taplin

    When I was twenty, I fell in love with a man who became my everything. My close friends watched me becoming someone else because I found myself trying to ceaselessly knead myself into someone who would perfectly fit into this man’s world, even if it meant betraying myself in the process.

    I changed my worldviews to fit in with his. I changed my dreams and ambitions to better align with his. I gave up friendships I valued that he wasn’t comfortable with me having. There was nothing I wouldn’t have sacrificed for this relationship and its survival.

    The relationship was only ten months long, but in that very short space of time, it became the center of my universe. When the relationship ended, to me, it almost signaled the end of my life. I did not see any life beyond that man or the relationship I had with him.

    At the end of that relationship I was forced to go into the hard journey of self-discovery. By the time I turned twenty-two, I realized that I would be in grave danger if I continued defining myself and centering my life on men and romantic relationships.

    The end of that relationship and the devastation that came with it made me vividly aware of my tendency toward engulfment. I found myself being someone who allowed romantic relationships to over consume her and take up her whole life.

    And now, eight years later, my idea of what a loving partnership looks like is so different and much more freeing. These are the truths that I had to learn the hard way that have allowed me to love my partners without losing important parts of myself in them.

    1. A relationship or partner will never meet all your needs, so stop expecting them to.

    My relationship broke because I placed a heavy burden on it to be my everything.

    Many of us give our partners a god-like status and expect them to satisfy our every whim and need.

    I looked to my partner to be for me what I had never learned to be for myself, thus putting on to him a responsibility that was always mine to carry.

    I now firmly believe that whatever our partners give us should merely be a drop into what we are already overflowing with because we did the work of nourishing our lives first before looking to a partner to do that for us.

    One is bound to lose themselves in partners that give them things that they don’t know how to give to themselves—like love, validation, and confirmation of their worth.

    2. Controlling your partner is a sure-fire way to lose the love you fear losing.

    I feared abandonment so much that there’s nothing about my partner I didn’t try to control. I wanted his obsession with the relationship to match mine. That was my twisted way of trying to put on a leash his love and affection for me.

    The downside of losing ourselves in love is that when our partners don’t lose themselves in the relationship like we do, we quickly equate it to lack of love, rather than having healthy boundaries necessary for the thriving of any healthy relationship.

    In retrospect, I cannot imagine how suffocated my then-partner felt about my misplaced efforts. The thing I feared most ended up happening because he could no longer take the extreme lengths I would go to in order to have his love.

    3. A healthy relationship will not change you, but encourage you to be more of who you are.

    It’s hard to maintain a strong sense of self in relationships when you don’t know who that self is. If you don’t know who you are, people can easily scrunch you up into versions of who they desire you to be. It’s so much easier to resist a relationship changing you into someone you know you are not when you have a clear sense of yourself.

    I still believe that love should always be transformational. But if love changes us, it should always be for the benefit of ourselves and our life purpose, not to please our partners or to meet their idealistic fantasies of what a perfect partner looks like. Love can only do its work in us when we allow ourselves to be fully seen, loved, and accepted for who we are.

    4. You should never neglect other areas of your life because of a relationship.

    There is nothing as thrilling as meeting a possible soulmate. It’s tempting to lose yourself in the new relationship and change your regular routine so that you can focus on this exciting new part of your life. This never turned out well for me.

    By the end of my relationship, I had enmeshed myself so deeply in this man’s world that I did not have my own world to go back to. My relationship became the most important thing, and I lost sight of every other beautiful thing I had going for me before I had him.

    A healthy relationship should never alienate us from our own lives but should be able to peacefully co-exist with all other parts of our lives.

    5. Your individuality should never be a threat in a relationship.

    I know we romanticize the idea of becoming one with our partners. We know the poems about becoming so intertwined with our lovers that we don’t know where we end and they begin. But love should never mean losing sense of who you are as an individual.

    We don’t have to be spitting images of our partners for love to mean something. When your partner first met you, they fell in love with your individuality, and it would cease to be love if you had to change the very things that drew them to you.

    Sacrificing ourselves for relationships will always be an act of self-betrayal. Loss of self is a cost of love I have sworn to never again pay. A healthy relationship is one where we can find a balance between being independent and interdependent.

    6. Be okay with loving in small doses.

    Love does not have to be all-consuming to be real.

    I struggled a lot with loving at a slow pace; I wanted everything, and I wanted it right now. I gave too much too soon hoping to get my partner hooked on to me. But now I understand that love takes time and it matures with time. It’s okay to keep certain parts of your love to enjoy and share later with your partner once the relationship has solidified and become more grounded.

    We want to stuff ourselves with love and affection and get shocked when we lose our balance in relationships. Love is much more satisfying when we savor it bit by bit, a day at a time.

    For me, surviving a relationship that was my everything, first and foremost, meant learning to develop my sense of self-worth (outside of my romantic relationships).

    It’s easy to lose yourself in a relationship. When you feel unlovable, you subconsciously believe that you need to give yourself up to avoid rejection. You can also find yourself obsessing over this one connection because, “Wow, someone finally loves me,” and you will do anything and everything to try and keep that connection.

    Life had to take me on a journey of learning that happiness can be found anywhere and not only through romantic relationships. When I discovered the idea of “multiple streams of happiness” centering myself, my life, and my joy on a romantic partner became close to impossible. Because now, in my late twenties, I have many beautiful things about my life that bring me great happiness, and should I fall in love again, it would merely be one of the many different streams that fill my life with joy.

    Now, on the other side of engulfment…

    I want my future relationships to be filled with freedom.

    I want a love where we can be apart while being beautifully together.

    I want my partner to have many other beautiful things about their life outside of me without feeling like I am not enough for them.

    I no longer want a love that I drown in but a love that will always let me come up for air; a love that puts me on steady ground, and never a love that I feel lost in.

    I want a love that reminds me that before we belong to each other, we will always first belong to ourselves.

  • How Meeting and Re-Parenting My Inner Child Helped Me Love Myself

    How Meeting and Re-Parenting My Inner Child Helped Me Love Myself

    “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” ~Oscar Wilde

    The journey to meeting, loving, and re-parenting my inner child was a long time coming.

    In 2018, I went through a devastating breakup. I’d been through breakups before. They suck, they hurt, some of them left me in deep abysses of sadness for a long time, but this one was something different.

    I can honestly say I felt levels of pain I did not know were survivable for a human being. Many days, I did not want to survive; I couldn’t imagine continuing to be in that level of pain for another moment. It is indeed a miracle I survived and came out on the other side thriving!

    So, what was the cause of so much pain?

    Well, it wasn’t him, I’ll tell you that much. While I loved that man more deeply than I previously knew possible to love someone, and so it made sense for it to be more painful, it didn’t make sense for me to be crying non-stop for months. I felt like I was being ripped to shreds from the inside out. The pain was relentless and wasn’t lifting even a tiny bit as time went on.

    So, I sought help to get to the root issue. The real cause of my pain was the tremendous amount of unresolved trauma I was carrying, a complete inability to love myself—in fact, I had no real understanding of what it meant to love oneself—and a massively wounded and scared little girl running the show at my core.

    To sum up: I had a great amount of sexual trauma, abandonment trauma, complex PTSD, and low self-worth, and I only understood validation as coming from outside of me. This breakup unearthed all these issues in one violent movement, like ripping a Band-Aid off a scab.

    All this ugly, unhealed stuff was exposed and shot into my awareness like a volcanic eruption, and I had no means of escape. All I could do was deal and heal. So that’s what I did.

    There were a lot of things I did, and still do, to facilitate this healing. Therapies, somatic healing modalities, and spiritual methods. None are necessarily better than the other. They all worked together to weave a rich tapestry of healing approaches to choose from at any moment.

    But since this is about inner child work, that’s what I am going to talk about.

    I believe many of us have wounded inner children running the show. Everyone we meet has an inner child expressing themselves through adult bodies. To what degree that inner child is wounded ranges on a wide spectrum, mostly based on how well their needs were met by their caregivers.

    My therapist suggested I purchase The Abandonment Recovery Workbook by Susan Anderson and begin working through it on my own in between our sessions. I furiously raced through the chapters, hoping that once I finished, I could date and find someone to hopefully mitigate the unrelenting pain. However, as I worked through and neared the end of the book, it became clear to me that I was in no way ready for someone else yet.

    The workbook contains several exercises, but there were a few dedicated specifically to identifying, visualizing, or meeting your inner child—a younger, more tender, innocent version of yourself that just needed to be seen, heard, and accepted for who they are.

    It helped for me to find photographs of myself from three to five years of age to aid in visualizing this child. Looking at that little girl and imagining she still lived inside me, deep inside my being.

    Once adult me was able to see her, I had to learn how to hear her and how to communicate with her. Via meditation, I’d visualize her and ask her questions:

    What does she need right now?

    How can I make things better for her right now?

    What is she feeling about this situation?

    I’d have to sit until I received an answer from her. This came as a thought or a feeling, sometimes a visual image or memory. Oftentimes, all she wanted was to be held, so I’d visualize my adult-self holding this small girl and giving her the comfort and compassion she desperately needed.

    This is the re-parenting. The part where we respond to ourselves in the ways that we would have wanted or needed when we were small children. To be seen and heard, rather than molded to act or behave a certain way. To be truly responded to, based on the needs we were expressing.

    The dialogue exercises with my little girl continued daily, sometimes multiple times in a day. It just depended on how intensely my inner child needed something from me that day, or how intently I was listening at the time.

    Sometime after I’d begun this dialogue, I was at work and delivered a small thank-you token to a colleague for doing a quick project for my office. He kissed me on the forehead in return. It made me very uncomfortable, and I quickly exited his workspace.

    I walked out to the street to run an errand, and within me, my little girl was raging. It felt like there was an inferno of anger brewing within my gut. I recognized in that moment I was not listening to my inner child, and she wasn’t having it, now that we had begun communicating with each other.

    So, I stopped. I tuned in. I asked her what she needed.

    She told me this man had violated her space and she felt unsafe, and I’d promised, capital “P” promised, she said, stomping her feet as young children often do, that I would take care of her from now on, and I hadn’t when I allowed someone to violate my physical space without saying something. She would not be appeased until the matter was resolved.

    The inferno continued to rage inside my belly until I walked back down the street, back into his office, and told him, “I do not want to be kissed by my coworkers. I’m sure others may not be bothered by it, but this is a boundary for me.”

    Of course, he apologized profusely, and we have never had any inappropriate run-ins again. But more importantly, immediately upon taking care of myself and my little girl, the inferno subsided.

    I took care of her and made her feel safe and secure. I continue to do so in my day-to-day life now.

    The above example was an extreme one. She is not always so easily heard. Sometimes I ask her what she needs, and it’s just to move the body, go for a walk. Other times it’s a cookie she wants. Often, it’s just to be acknowledged. Validated. To be told, “I hear you, I see you, your feelings matter.”

    As with any relationship, the needs, communication, and dynamics are ever-evolving.

    But I can say without a doubt, the connection between my adult-self and my inner child is the most valuable relationship I have, and today the amount of love I have for myself, due to inner child work, is above and beyond anything I could have ever imagined.

    I used to feel, most of the time, that I was not enough. Since doing this healing work, I now know I am enough, in all situations and places.

    Where there was typically a sense of impending doom and danger, there is now a lightness and delight and a true, deep happiness that has nothing to do with outside circumstances—just the pure joy of an inner wholeness I never even could have dreamed of.

    That’s what happens when we truly see and hear our inner child and respond to their needs without judgment. We feel love and safety like we’ve never known, and we finally realize we deserve nothing less.

  • What It Really Means to Have a Supportive Partner

    What It Really Means to Have a Supportive Partner

    “The best possible thing you can get out of a relationship is that you’re with someone who encourages you to be the best version of yourself every day.” ~Nishan Panwar

    Let me ask you a question. When was the last time you felt supported? When was the last time you felt safe, at home, encouraged, and able to be 100% yourself?

    If your partner creates a safe space for you to do this, then you are truly blessed. If not, have you ever wondered why you don’t feel safe, supported, and loved?

    Two years ago my best friend told me he’d loved me for many years. It was an unforgettable day once I got over my initial shock, because for many years I’d felt the same way about him.

    It took me a while to get my head around how the most beautiful man I knew, not to mention one of my best friends, wanted me over anyone else.

    In the beginning of our relationship I idolized him. I had an image of him in my head as my friend, and it was one of unrealistic perfection, non-stop humor and happiness, and a loving boyfriend who would walk on hot coals for me, just as I’d watched him do for other girls.

    I wanted to support him any way I could and would do anything for him, but when we got together—a difficult and confusing time for me, for many reasons—I was the one who needed supporting.

    When I didn’t get what I thought I deserved, things began to look very different than I had originally imagined. Maybe he wasn’t the guy I thought he was going to be as a partner. Maybe I’d set his pedestal just a little too high.

    Had going from friends to lovers been a terrible idea? But what was actually happening at the time was that I was leaning on him way too much for support, and I hadn’t even stopped to consider that the person I needed to sort out and support, first and foremost, was me.

    You see, when we’re lost and confused, we often look to external influences to make us happy. We’re all guilty of it.

    My experiments in how to find happiness have varied over the years—shoe shopping, drinking, drugs, yoga, meditation, and other people.

    But we can’t solely rely on anything or anyone to make us happy. We have to create the happiness part for ourselves.

    One major thing I realized at the beginning of our relationship was that I was asking for the world from a guy who I was placing way too many expectations and assumptions on.

    I assumed just because he was finally in flow with his career that it meant that our coming together was doomed and that I’d be cast aside in favor of a new job.

    I also assumed that because he wasn’t running around after me and spending every penny he had on me, as he’d done with previous overly demanding girlfriends, that I meant less to him than anyone else that had come before.

    However, had he acted the way I had expected him to when I was at my lowest ebb, I would have quickly labelled him clingy, over-bearing, and annoying, and that would have been the end of that.

    The truth was, he was being everything I needed him to be for where I was at that time.

    I didn’t need someone who would wallow in self-pity and negativity with me, as previous partners of mine had done. I needed someone who would inspire me to be the best person I could be and show me that if I picked myself up, everything would work out just fine.

    I remember him saying to me one night when I was in tears, “I know that you’re going through a lot right now, but get really excited about the future and what’s coming next rather than being fearful of it, because everything is going to be okay.”

    Each time I remember those words, they mean more to me.

    Let me tell you something that I have learned about what it means to have a supportive partner.

    A supportive other half isn’t someone who will hang on your every word, do whatever you want, and follow you to the ends of the earth. That clinginess isn’t the “true love” that you’re searching for.

    When someone truly loves and supports you, they challenge you, stand beside you when you need them, and give you the space you need to roam free and grow as a person.

    They will never judge you or put constraints on your mind, your physical body, or any of your dreams. They will be a cheerleader for your cause without being a groupie. They’ll go to the other side of the world for you when you need them, but they won’t smother you.

    They might not be around all the time, but for the things that really matter, or for when you are sick or in the dark, they’ll be there at your side, without you even needing to ask.

    They might seem like the busiest person in the world or the least affectionate at times, but when it matters, they’ll drop everything for you.

    Most of all, they will see you. This person will see what other people can’t. They’ll see you in all your beauty and grace, as well as your darkness and faults.

    They will see you for the person you are now and the amazing one they know you are truly capable of becoming, even if you can’t quite see this yourself yet.

    And they’ll love you. Unconditionally. And that’s really all that matters in this life.

    Stop expecting things from your partner that they don’t intuitively know how to give you. You will learn and grow together, so long as you continue to communicate assertively and don’t put unreasonable demands on each other.

    But it’s also up to you to become responsible for your own feelings and your own happiness. Put this first and you’ll become more lovable to your other half without even trying.

    Keep supporting each other. Stop worrying that your other half is going to leave you or wrong you or let you down. Have some faith and, in return, they will have faith in you.

    Stay truthful to yourself and they will reflect this beautiful truth straight back to you. And keep showing all of your colors to them—your light and your darkness. Because if they truly love you and value you, as long as you do all of this, they’re not going anywhere.

  • Teach Your Child to Be a Good Friend Because…

    Teach Your Child to Be a Good Friend Because…

  • How I Stopped Putting Everyone Else’s Needs Above My Own

    How I Stopped Putting Everyone Else’s Needs Above My Own

    “Never feel sorry for choosing yourself.” ~Unknown

    I was eleven years old, possibly twelve, the day I first discovered my mother’s betrayal. I assume she didn’t hear me when I walked in the door after school. The distant voices in the finished basement room of our home drew me in. My mother’s voice was soft as she spoke to her friend. What was she hiding that she didn’t want me to hear?

    I leaned in a little bit closer to the opening of the stairs… She was talking about a man she’d met. Her voice changed when she spoke of him. The tone of dreamy wonder when you discover something that makes your heart race. She talked about the way they touched and how she felt being with him.

    I felt my body go weak. I could not tell if it was sorrow or rage. All I knew was, she had lied to me.

    Several months prior, my parents had announced their divorce. My mother told me the decision was my father’s choice. She told me he was the one breaking up our family. She told me she wanted nothing more than to stay with us and be together.

    And now I heard her revealing that was not true. She wanted to leave. She was not choosing me. She was choosing him.

    Since I was nine months old, my mother had been in and out of doctor’s offices, hospitals, psychiatrist’s and therapist’s offices trying to find the cure of her mental and emotional instability.

    When I was a young child, she began to share her frustrations and sorrows with me. I became her support and the keeper of her pain. She had nicknamed me her “little psychiatrist.” It was my job to help her. I had to. I needed her stable so I could survive.

    I don’t remember when or if she told us that she was seeing someone. I just remember she was gone a lot after that day. She spent her time with her new boyfriend out of the house. As the parentified child who she had inadvertently made her caretaker, it felt like she was betraying me. She left me for him.

    I was no longer the chosen one—he was.

    I hated him for it. When my mother moved in with him, I refused to meet him. I didn’t want to get to know or like this man she left me for.

    I saw them one day in the parking lot outside of a shopping plaza. I watched them walking together and hid behind a large concrete pillar so they wouldn’t see me. The friend I was with asked if I wanted to say hello. I scowled at the thought. I despised him.

    Within the same year, his own compromised mental health spiraled, and they broke up. He moved out of their apartment. I didn’t know why or what happened. I only knew my mother was sad. Shortly after their breakup, he took his own life. From what we heard, he had done so in a disturbingly torturous way. It was clear his self-loathing and pain was deep.

    My mother was devastated. She mourned the loss of her love and the traumatic way he exited. She stopped taking her medication, and her own mental health began to spiral. My father received a phone call that her car had been abandoned several states away. I’m unsure what she was doing there, but she had some issues and took a taxi back home.

    He later received a call stating that my mother had been arrested for playing her music too loud in her apartment. Perhaps to drown out the voices in her head. She was later taken to the hospital without her consent and was admitted due to her mental instability.

    After several days of attempting to rebalance her brain chemistry with medication, my mother began to sound grounded again. The family decided she would move in with her parents a few states away from us and live with them until she was stable again.

    A few days after Christmas she called me to tell me how sad she was. She grieved her dead boyfriend. I was short with her. I was still angry for her betrayal. I didn’t want to continue being used as her therapist. The imbalance in our relationship was significant, and my resentment was huge.

    I loved her, but I could not fall back into the role of being her support without any support back. It was life-sucking. And I didn’t care that he was dead. She chose him over me. I was fine with him being gone.

    I don’t recall feeling any guilt when I got off the phone that day. I felt good that I had chosen myself and put a boundary in place to not get sucked into her sorrow. I was fourteen years old, less than a week shy of fifteen. I just wanted to be a kid.

    The next day, my mother chose to make more decisions for me and for herself. These were more final. She told her parents she was taking a nap and intentionally overdosed on the medication meant to save her. She died quietly to relieve herself from her pain and left me forever.

    That choice—my own and hers—would change the course of my life.

    The day my mother freed herself from this world was the same day I learned to become imprisoned in mine. I was imprinted with a fear that would dictate my life. I became quietly terrified of hurting other people. I feared their discomfort and feeling it was my fault. From that day forward I would live with the silent fear of choosing myself.

    My rational mind told me it was not my fault. I did not open the bottle. I did not force her to swallow the pills. I did not end her life. But I also did not save it.

    I learned that day that creating a boundary to preserve myself not only was unsafe, it was dangerous. When I chose me, people not only could or would abandon me, they could die.

    Of course, I never saw this in my teenage mind. Nor did I see it in my twenties, thirties or the beginning of my forties. I only saw my big, loving heart give myself away over and over again at the cost of myself.

    I felt my body tighten up when I feared someone would be mad at me. I heard myself use words to make things okay in situations that were not okay. I said yes far too many times when my heart screamed no. All because I was afraid to choose myself.

    The pattern and fear only strengthened with time. I learned to squirm my way out of hurting others and discovered passive-aggressive and deceptive approaches to get my needs met. My body shook in situations where conflict seemed imminent, and I learned to avoid that too.

    What I didn’t see was that this avoidance had a high price. I was living a life where I was scared to be myself.

    On the outside I played the part. The woman who had it all together. Vocal, passionate, confident, and ambitious. But on the inside, I held in more secrets than I knew what to do with. I wasn’t living as me. My fear of being judged and rejected or not having my needs met was silently ruling my life.

    So many have developed this fear over time. Starting with our own insecurities of not feeling good enough and then having multiple experiences that solidified this belief. The experiences and memories differ, but the feelings accompanying them are very much the same.

    The fear of choosing ourselves, our desires, our truths, all deeply hidden under the masks of “I’m fine. It’s fine.” When in reality, we learn to give way more than we receive and wonder why we live unsatisfied, resentful, and with chronic disappointment. Nothing ever feels enough, and if it does, it’s short-lived.

    The memories and feelings become imprints in our bodies and in our minds that convince us we can’t trust ourselves. That we can’t trust others. That we must stay in control in order to keep us safe. We learn to manipulate situations and people to save ourselves from the opinions and judgments outside of us. We learn to protect ourselves by giving in, in order to not feel the pain of being left out.

    We shelter ourselves with lies that we are indifferent or it’s not a big deal in order to shield ourselves from the truth that we want more. We crave more, but we are too scared to ask for it. The repercussions feel too risky. The fear of loneliness too great.

    In the end, our fear of choosing ourselves even convinces us we can live with less. That we are meant to live with less, and we need to be grateful for whatever that is.

    Do we? Why?

    What if we learned to own our fear? What if we accepted that we were scared, and it was reasonable? What would happen if we acknowledged to our partners, families, friends, and even strangers that we, too, were scared of not being good enough? Of being discarded, rejected, and left behind.

    What would it be like if we shared our stories and exposed our insecurities to free them instead of locking them up to be hidden in the dark shadows of ourselves?

    I’m so curious.

    Where in your past can you see that choosing yourself left a mark? What silenced you, shamed you, discouraged you from choosing your needs over another’s? When were you rejected for not doing what someone else wanted you to do? And how has that fear dictated your life?

    Choosing ourselves starts with awareness. Looking at the ways you keep quiet out of fear or don’t make choices that include your needs. Seeing where this fear shows up in your life gives you the opportunity to change it. The more you see it, the more you can make another choice.

    Start with looking at the areas of life where you hold on to the most resentment and anger. Who or what situations frustrate you? Anger often indicates where imbalances lie or when a boundary has been crossed. It shows us where we feel powerless.

    Make a list of the situations that annoy you and then ask yourself, what’s in your control and what’s not? What can you directly address or ask for help with?

    Note the ways you may be manipulating others to get your needs met in those situations and how that feels. Note also what you may be avoiding and why.

    How would it feel to be more direct and assertive? What feelings or fears come up for you?

    Then start with one small thing you could do differently. Include who you could ask for help with this step, if anyone.

    As for me, I have found myself in situations where I lied or remained silent to avoid being judged, in an attempt to manipulate how others see me. I have felt my body cringe with sadness and shame each time. It doesn’t matter how big or small the lie, it assaults my body the same.

    I have learned that speaking my truth, no matter how seemingly small or insignificant, saves my body from feeling abused by the secrets it must keep. Choosing me is choosing self-honesty; identifying what is true for me and what is not based on the way my body responds. I am not in control of others’ judgments of me, but I am in control of the way I continue to set myself up to judge myself.

    I have also found myself agreeing to do things I didn’t want to do in order to win the approval of others, then becoming resentful toward them because I refused to speak up for myself.

    Choosing me in these scenarios is honoring the fact that I will still be scared to ask for what I need, as my fears are real and valid, but asking anyway, even when the stakes feel high. It’s scary to feel that someone may abandon us if we choose ourselves, but it’s scarier to lose ourselves to earn a love built on a brittle foundation of fear.

    l cannot control the past where I have left myself behind, but I can control today, the way I forgive myself for falling victim to my human fear, and the way I choose to love myself moving forward. When I choose me, I have more love to give to others. Today I can take a small step toward change.

    Taking these small steps and building on them will help us to show ourselves that we can make progress in bite size amounts and prove to ourselves we are going to be okay. The small bites are digestible and give us proof that we can do it. This helps us build our ability to do more over time, while also decreasing our fear.

    If we look at our past, we will see the majority of our big fears do not come to fruition, and if they did, we survived them and gained knowledge or strength in the process.

    It’s not the action holding us back, but the memory of the discomfort we still live with. The more we move through these fears, the more that discomfort will decrease, and the more we will trust that we will be okay no matter what.