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Category “love & relationships”

How I Found the Gift in My Pain and Let Go of Resentment

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“Change is inevitable, growth is intentional.” ~Glenda Cloud

How much time slips by when you’re living in the pain of resentment? Do you ever question if your bitterness has held you back from living your true destiny? Is blaming everyone else sabotaging your life and future?

It’s only now that I can admit to the years I wasted pointing the finger at everyone else. It was easier for me to say it was their fault than accept responsibility for my own decisions. For me, attaining perfection was validation to my success. If it wasn’t achievable, then it was obviously …

How Yoga Gave Me the Courage to Stop People-Pleasing

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“Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.”  ~The Bhagavad Gita

Growing up, I couldn’t have been further from my ‘self.’ Early childhood experiences taught me to focus all of my energy externally. To put everyone around me first and to be insatiably attentive to their needs. This kind of thinking instills you with an incredibly low sense of self-worth, disconnects you from your own feelings and desires, and ultimately leaves your happiness pinned to other people.

When you have low self-worth, you mostly want to contract away from the world like a turtle. …

How Holding On to Unrequited Love Keeps You Alone and Stuck

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“Let no one who loves be unhappy, even love unreturned has its rainbow.” ~James M. Barrie

My first experience with unrequited love took place when I was a little kid at swimming lessons.

I developed a huge crush on one of the instructors. I don’t remember his name, but I remember the excruciating feeling of absolutely adoring someone who didn’t even know I existed. I wish I could say that this was a one-time experience, but it wasn’t.

Sadly, this pattern continued for many years. I seemed to have a radar device installed in my heart that would automatically fixate …

Why You Have to Share What You Really Feel and Want in Relationships

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“Any relationship that could be ‘ruined’ by having a conversation about feelings, standards, or expectations wasn’t really firm enough anyway, so there isn’t much to ruin.” ~Unknown

So many of us believe that not expressing ourselves is a noble thing to do. We get to feel stoic and in control. Others get emotional and overwhelmed while we can keep it together. The idea that we are strong because we don’t express our feelings is also socially reinforced, so we keep doing it because it’s the right thing to do, right?

Not quite.

In my previous blog post “The Negative …

20 Powerful Quotes to Help Minimize Conflict and Drama

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The holidays can be a lot of fun, but let’s face it, they can sometimes be stressful, particularly if you spend them with family. Surrounded by multiple generations of people, many with different perspectives and beliefs, it’s easy to feel triggered or annoyed.

Then there are the challenges associated with going home, whether that means visiting a physical location or returning to the (possibly unhealthy) mental space you occupied as a kid.

And if you do fall into old landmines, it’s all the more frustrating because holidays come but once a year, and they’re supposed to be joyful, right?…

The Boundaries That Helped Me Stop Being a Doormat

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“Boundaries are a part of self-care. They are healthy, normal, and necessary.” ~Doreen Virtue

I’m really nice. Too nice actually. I’ve even been something of a doormat in my life.

But what can I say? I was trained that way.

There weren’t a lot of boundaries in our home when I was growing up. Instead, my addict mom was either checked out, partying, or raising hell, so I became the adult in the room. I was at her service most of the time.

By age six, I was regularly talking my parents through their fights. I’d moved on to career …

When Your Partner Isn’t Sure They Want a Future with You

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“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much and forgetting that you are special too.” ~Ernest Hemingway

At Eagle Point Elementary, where I went for third grade, there was one very cute boy. Jason was the object of affection for seemingly every third-grade girl. He would make a list each day of the five girls he thought were the cutest. The list changed every day. Whoever took the top spot for the day was the girl Jason decided he was “going with.” (Was “going with” a thing in everyone’s elementary school or …

Honoring The Death of a Loved One

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“Death is indeed a fearful piece of brutality; there is no sense pretending otherwise. It is brutal not only as a physical event, but far more so psychically: a human being is torn away from us, and what remains is the icy stillness of death. There no longer exists any hope of a relationship, for all the bridges have been smashed at one blow.” ~Carl Jung

I’m at a dinner party with friends when I begin an engaging conversation with a woman I haven’t met before.

Music plays softly in the background as our conversation touches on many different topics. …

How My Fear of the Unknown Sabotages Relationships

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“Let go of the need to control the outcome. Trust the process. Trust your intuition. Trust yourself.” ~Unknown

I was talking with a friend one day at work, and we were discussing dating and the rejection that comes with that and the sense of failure and disappointment.

We were talking about how we struggle to even get close to dating someone because we get in our own way, and our thoughts stop us from moving forward because we’re scared. We’re scared, so we blow the situation up with our inability to sit with the uneasiness of not knowing what the …

How to Love an Addict (Who Doesn’t Love Themselves)

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I grew up in a family of high-functioning addicts. We looked like the perfect family, but as we all know, looks can be deceiving. No one was addicted to drugs, so that obviously meant that we had no problems. Cigarettes, alcohol, food, and work don’t count, right?

I have come to realize that what we are addicted to is nowhere near as important as the admission that we’re addicted to something. When we try to make ourselves feel better by telling ourselves that gambling or porn or beer is nowhere near as bad as crack or heroin, we are …

Healing from the Trauma of Narcissistic Abuse

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“Don’t blame a clown for acting like a clown. Ask yourself why you keep going to the circus.” ~Unknown

When I first experienced narcissistic abuse as an adult, it was a at a time when the term “narcissistic abuse” was not so heard of or understood.

I had met a handsome, intelligent, charismatic, and charming man, and as is typical in abusive relationships, had been completely overwhelmed by the intensity and ‘love’-overload of the early stages.

Before I could catch my breath, though, the nitpicking started, and so did the heated arguments, the jealousy, the cutting contact, and disappearing for …

How to Reduce Holiday Stress by Setting Strong Boundaries

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I love the holidays. I eagerly anticipate the first snowfall, adore the scent of pine, and watch It’s A Wonderful Life every year without fail.

That said, even the merriest among us know that the holidays can be emotionally, physically, and psychologically taxing. In addition to buying gifts, negotiating travel plans, and shuttling from gathering to gathering, many of us spend extended time with our families—and every family, no matter how loving, has its fair share of challenges.

When these difficult family dynamics combine with holiday-season stress, we may find ourselves at a crossroads. Do we burn out, freak …

How to Break Unstable Relationship Patterns

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“Being willing to accept responsibility for the situation you’re in is the first step to a more fulfilling love life.” ~Renée Suzanne

Remember the haunting ballad “Foolish Games” by Jewel?

Jewel wrote the song when she was sixteen. She kept a serious journal, and said in an interview that a verse in the song was “about a relationship that I was dramatically involved in on paper.”

That pretty much sums up my first relationship, which was a dramatic pseudo-relationship in many ways. I was sixteen going on seventeen, hopelessly romantic yet shrewdly skeptical of love at the same time. …

How to Set Boundaries in Awkward Situations with Strangers

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“Boundaries aren’t about punishing. Boundaries are about creating safety for yourself.” ~Sheri Keffer

The person sitting beside you at the bar keeps talking to you despite your obvious disinterest. The flirty Uber driver mentions—three times—how beautiful you are. Your cousin’s new boyfriend gives you a too-long hug with wandering hands.

In awkward situations with strangers, we tend to hope that non-verbal cues will be sufficient to set a boundary. We use silence, crossed arms, uncomfortable laughter, and glares to communicate discomfort. But some folks cannot—or will not—take the hint.

Here, we find ourselves at a crossroads: We can either …

Do You Accept Your Partner’s Attempts to Repair?

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“I am not fully healed, I am not fully wise, I am still on my way. What matters is that I am moving forward.” ~Yung Pueblo

According to Dr. John Gottman, PhD, successful repair attempts are a “happy couple’s secret weapon.”

An attempt to repair is when our partner makes a mistake and then makes an attempt to fix it in their own way.

Their attempt may look very different than what we may want, and we may be tempted to react negatively, but we have a choice to catch ourselves and consciously choose a different response.

That’s part of …

7 Amazing Things That Happen When You Start Loving Yourself More

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“When I loved myself enough, I began leaving whatever wasn’t healthy. This meant people, jobs, my own beliefs and habits—anything that kept me small. My judgment called it disloyal. Now I see it as self-loving,” ~Kim McMillen

I started learning about self-love a long time ago.

In fact, I started learning about self-love so long ago that when, fifteen years later, a shaman in Peru I told me that self-love was the answer to all my questions, I got really pissed off!

I had struggled with depression as a teenager. For about two years, I lived a very sad life. …

How Letting Go of the Need to be Special Changed My Life

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“Our society has become a conspiracy against joy. It has put too much emphasis on the individuating part of our consciousness—individual reason—and too little emphasis on the bounding parts of our consciousness, the heart and soul.” ~David Brooks

When I was in elementary school, I avoided group projects like the plague. When given the choice to work alone or as part of a team, I always chose to work alone.

When I joined a new class, club, or sport, my parents inquired how I measured up against the rest.

“So what do you think, Hail?” Dad would ask me. “Are …

I Didn’t Know How to Let Love In… Until Now

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“You open your heart knowing there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible.” ~Bob Marley

A few months ago I was visited by my mother in a dream; my deceased mother who took her own life thirty years ago.

In my dream, I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom thinking about my teenage daughter, who is around the same age I was when my mother died. I felt like my daughter was in distress, and I wanted to help her.

As …

How Empaths Can Stop Sacrificing Their Needs for Other People

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“Sometimes you don’t realize you’re actually drowning when you’re trying to be everyone else’s anchor.” ~Unknown

Have you ever felt trapped?

No, actually, have you ever felt absolutely paralyzed? Like you’re fearful of making any choices at all? It feels like any step you take could end in utter catastrophe.

Five years ago, that was me.

I was living in a small, run-down house in Peru, in a city that I didn’t want to be in, far away from family and friends, and I was in a relationship that wasn’t working.

At the time I worried that any decision I …

When People Want to Help but Just Make Things Worse

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When I was fourteen years old, my family spent a week of vacation in the northwoods of Minnesota. We rode horses, sailed on the lake, sang songs around a campfire, and all the other things most teenagers tell their parents is lame. Even if they are having fun.

After this week of boring, according to me, my family loaded up into our van and began what should have been a five-hour drive home.

Except it wasn’t five hours.

Thirty minutes into the drive we were in a head-on car collision. Triaged and transported to different hospitals around the area, it …