Posts tagged with “Love”
A Most Difficult Lesson: People Are Just Doing Their Best
“People are doing the best that they can from their own level of consciousness.” ~Deepak Chopra
My father passed away suddenly and not so suddenly several weeks back.
He had been sick for a long time, but it was a gradually progressing illness and not what ultimately caused his passing. So, it did come as a shock, and the last few weeks have been filled with all the random things you need to do when someone dies—change the names on insurance policies and automobile titles, call social security, etc.
The list seems endless, but now that the tasks are …
How to Stop Arguing and Start Understanding
“Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” ~Rumi
One of the most common sources of conflict among people is in the way we communicate. Often times, conflicts arise because of the variety of our opinions and beliefs, and also from the way we express our thoughts and communicate disagreement.
A blaming, sometimes even aggressive tone of voice can seep into our language, which invites confrontation instead of collaboration, and conveys a closed “my way or no way” kind of approach.
Looking back on my past, I can recall myself during my childhood years, …
There’s Nothing Wrong With Being Single: Releasing the Shame and Stigma
“Single is no longer a lack of options, but a choice. A choice to refuse to let your life be defined by your relationship status but to live every day Happily and let your Ever After work itself out.” ~Mandy Hale
In our society, being single is still heavily stigmatized. Being single is often perceived as something out of the norm. It is more acceptable to be part of a couple (even a dysfunctional one!) than it is to be single. And it is even more acceptable to be divorced than it is to be single.
Unfortunately, our society makes …
What If We Listened and Opened Our Minds Instead of Shouting and Judging?
“If you can laugh with somebody and relate to somebody, it becomes harder to dehumanize them. I think that most of what we are constantly bombarded with in terms of media leads you to a creation of ‘the Other’ and a dehumanization of ‘the Other,’ and it’s very much an us-versus-them conversation.” ~Jehane Noujaim
People are really hard to hate up close.
In today’s acrimonious political climate, whole groups of people seem to be pitted against one another based on various political, ideological, class, geographic and racial classifications. And yet, spend a day with “the other” and it’s difficult to …
What to Do When You Want to Feel Closer to Your Partner
“By letting our deep longing for love and connectedness be exposed…[we are] opening up the channel through which love can enter.” ~John Welwood
When we feel disconnected from our romantic partner what we often want most is to genuinely feel their love again, to feel connected. And yet, it can be so difficult to simply share that longing.
So instead of explaining or asking for what we want in a loving way, we complain about what is wrong, about how our partner isn’t showing up for us. Or we simply withdraw.
This is especially true for sensitive souls like …
The 10 Most Important Things We Can Do for the People We Love
People. Life is all about people.
We don’t have to have a ton of relationships, but we all need people in our lives who get us. Who’ve seen our freak flag countless times and love when it comes out.
People who tag us on memes that capture our spirit, or Tasty videos they know we’d drool over. People who text us with random pictures of bumper stickers or book covers or bath mats or beard accessories with a note that reads “Saw this and thought of you.”
We all need these kind of close connections to feel a sense of …
3 Simple Ways to Make It a Happy New Year
“The most important thing is to enjoy your life—to be happy—it’s all that matters.” ~Audrey Hepburn
Happiness and its pursuit fascinate me.
Like most people, I’m curious why on some mornings I wake up and the world is a wonderful place—the sun is shining, happiness oozes out of my heart like warm honey, and the sound of bird song brings a smile to my face. I can only describe this as bliss.
On other mornings, it feels as if all color and wonder in world has drained away. My heart feels heavy in my chest. I’m indifferent to the sound …
Growing from Ghosting: 5 Things To Consider While Dealing with Silence
“The important thing to remember is that when someone ghosts you, it says nothing about you or your worthiness for love and everything about the person doing the ghosting. It shows he/she doesn’t have the courage to deal with the discomfort of their emotions or yours, and they either don’t understand the impact of their behavior or worse, don’t care.” ~Jennice Vilhauer
Let’s get this out of the way first: Ghosting is crappy etiquette. There’s no real, concrete excuse for it, except perhaps pure, unadulterated laziness with a touch of cruelty.
We take for granted how much technology has changed …
5 Questions To Ask Yourself Before You Start Looking For Love
“Don’t rush into any kind of relationship. Work on yourself. Feel yourself, experience yourself and love yourself. Do this first and you will soon attract that special loving other.” ~Russ Von Hoelscher
Being in love is awesome. Sharing your life with someone special who gets you, adores you, and loves you for who you are is amazing. Sometimes, though, we need to work on ourselves before we are ready to attract a true love like that.
Rather than jumping into yet another romantic adventure without thinking, I encourage you to answer these few questions. I know, at the time of …
An Improbable Story of Healing and a Girl with a Wand
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ~Maya Angelou
It’s the worry, I think. The constant worry. Is she safe? Will she make the right choices? Will she find a young man that will cherish and support her? The worry is always there. It never leaves.
She recently visited Los Angeles for the first time. A business trip. She had a few hours to kill. What to do? The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter! The girl is not shy. Flying solo …
How to Move Let Go of the Fear of Judgment and Break the Silence of Shame
“If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.” ~Brené Brown
Every time I think I’ve unloaded most of the pain from my past, something surfaces that tells me I have more work to do.
A couple of weeks ago, my boyfriend and I were cuddling one morning. I’m not sure what the trigger was, but out of nowhere, my thoughts rolled down a hill and into a painful memory that I must have blocked out.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as my whole body curled up into the fetal position. He …
Highs and Lows Are Part of Growth and It All Makes Us Stronger
“Just like a muscle needs to tear to grow stronger, sometimes we need to wade into our own darkness to find a brighter light.” ~Lori Deschene
Sometimes we need to journey into the deepest, darkest, scariest, most painful places inside in order to reach the next level.
This is what happened to me earlier this year.
When I was younger, I was in an abusive relationship that created a lot of stories in my head. These stories became beliefs that I carried around for a long time. Beliefs like, “I’m not good enough,” “Relationships are painful,” “I don’t …
There Are Some People You Just Can’t Help
“Be there. Be open. Be honest. Be kind. Be willing to listen, understand, accept, support, and forgive. This is what it means to love.” ~Lori Deschene
A few months ago, I was totally freaked out.
I was having a cup of tea with a soul-sister friend, and we were in deep conversation. I was crying.
I was explaining, between hiccupping sobs, about how there was someone in my life who was suffering deeply.
Sitting at the café that day, I said to her, “There is this person in my life that I love so deeply, but he is suffering.”
I …
Why I Was Addicted to Attention, Lies, and Drama
I’ve done a lot of things for attention that I’m not proud of. I’ve created drama. I’ve bragged. I’ve exaggerated. I’ve hurt people. I’ve hurt myself. I’ve lied and lied and lied.
No one wants to be labeled as an “attention seeker.” When people say, “She’s just doing it for attention,” they don’t mean it as a compliment. I knew this. And I knew that people said these things about me.
And still, I couldn’t stop.
I spend a lot of time around animals, especially cats. It’s easy to see which ones have experienced starvation. They have constant anxiety about …
We All Make Mistakes, So Let’s Try to Remember the Good
Julius Caesar has long been my favorite work of William Shakespeare. I am drawn to the political intrigue, the betrayal, the powerful words of Marc Antony.
One line from the play has always remained lodged in my mind:
“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”
The line often pops into my head when I feel unjustly persecuted or blamed. Shakespeare understood hundreds of years ago that human nature causes us to feel self-centered and unjustly targeted.
While I recognize I am not now nor was I ever a perfect mother, I …
Self-Love Means Never Saying “You Complete Me”
“You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha
A popular topic in the glossy magazines, learning to “love yourself” always seemed to me to be a self-indulgent first-world pastime.
It seemed obvious that the commonly-repeated mantra “love yourself first” was just a sign of the times in a world where something like half of all marriages end in divorce. …
What Helped Me Move On After Being Cheated On
“Sometimes walking away is the only option because you finally respect yourself enough to know that you deserve better.” ~Unknown
When I was cheated on, I was hit by an ongoing blizzard of conflicting emotions.
There were the initial tears that I failed to hide from anyone. There was a cold ruthlessness as I told her that I couldn’t be with her after what she did. There was a wave of misery, there was a wave of anger, and all of it was dotted with periodic moments of calm and even gratitude that she was finally out of my life.…
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