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“The heart that’s been through the most can sometimes mistake chaos for connection.” ~Unknown I remember the exact moment I knew something was wrong. We had been talking for three weeks. Every conversation left me either floating or deflated, never just… okay. Either he said something that made me feel like the most understood person…

I used to think I was just bad at coping with stress. Every Sunday evening, I felt anxious about the week ahead. My chest would tighten when certain emails appeared in my inbox. Before meetings, I’d rehearse what I wanted to say over and over, trying to avoid saying the wrong thing. At the time,…

“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.” ~François de La Rochefoucauld “So, in your relationship, do your partner’s needs always dictate how things go?” My therapist looked at me quizzically after I’d just shared with him that our dinner plans had suddenly changed the…

“A codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her and who is obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior.” ~Melody Beattie From a young age, I felt insecure in my own skin. I was a highly sensitive child and, subsequently, struggled with low self-worth for most of my life. Although…

There is a famous Latin phrase that I absolutely love: Carpe diem. It means “Seize the day.” Younger people might be more familiar with the phrase “You only live once,” or YOLO. Both phrases encourage people to live their lives to the fullest. I have struggled with depression and anxiety since my childhood, making it…

“Not until we are lost do we begin to find ourselves.” ~Henry David Thoreau I’ve spent most of my life feeling like I was standing just outside the circle. Not always, but whenever I stepped back and looked at the whole of my life, the thread running through has been a sense of being on…

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” ~E.E. Cummings When I was a little girl, I had the smallest bedroom in the house. It was tiny. Honestly, probably the size of a small walk-in closet. But it was mine. And for the first time, I got to choose what it…

“Peace is not the absence of resistance. It is learning to stop judging yourself for being human.” ~Unknown At the time of writing this, I am on vacation. My wife and I are parked beside a quiet lake in our RV, our small moving version of home. We’ve always loved that part of it: bringing…

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” ~J.R.R. Tolkien It was my son’s fifteenth birthday. His basketball game got canceled, so my wife,…

“Rule your mind or it will rule you.” ~Buddha Some mornings I wake before dawn and lie still, listening for signs that the house is awake. A cough down the hallway. The sound of a drawer opening. Water running softly in the kitchen sink. My mother is ninety-seven years old now, and before my feet…