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Category “love & relationships”

When You Can’t Take Away Their Pain: Just Being There Is Enough

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“Just being there for someone can sometimes bring hope when all else feels hopeless.” ~Dave G. Llewellyn

Parents, if I were to ask you what your worst nightmare is, what would you say?

I daresay it probably falls somewhere under the category of “safety and health,” and the negative version thereof.

Death. Illness. Suffering.

It could largely summed up as “to watch or know my child is suffering,” an extension of that being “… and to not be able to do anything to help or take it away.”

If you’re not a parent, I’m guessing you’re felt this same …

How Casual Dating Opened My Heart to Love

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“Hopping from one relationship to another is not the way to find love. Slow down and give love a chance to find you.” ~Unknown

When I was younger, I was a serial monogamist.

I did the math recently and it turns out that once I started dating, I didn’t spend more than two weeks single at any point.

Then, after the end of my most serious relationship ever, I had a moment that changed everything.

My boyfriend and I hadn’t even been together a whole year, but I really thought he was the one, my soul mate. We had so …

What My Parents Did to Me and Why I Cut Them Out of My Life

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I wrote this letter to my extended family years after I chose to become estranged from my parents because many of them cut me out of their lives instead of reaching out to hear my side of the story.

It pains me that I have lost contact with some of them because they refuse to see the full picture, and at times I feel as though I have lost a part of myself. Yet, at the same time, I am free.

The letter you are about to read comes from a place of acceptance and longing. I have chosen to …

How to Accept That It’s Time to Break Up

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“Sometimes things fall apart so that better things can fall together.” ~Marilyn Monroe

I knew it was over and yet I stayed.

In my eyes, my relationship had run its course. I was fed up, tired, and emotionally drained, but I couldn’t get myself to pull the trigger. I didn’t know how to go through with it.

Because this was my first serious relationship, everything was new to me, including breaking up. He was my first love. We lived together, built a life together, and now I was throwing a wrench into all of our bright plans for the …

How to Make Vulnerability Your New Superpower

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“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” ~Leonard Cohen

We human beings are social creatures. For the most part, we like to be with people, and we want people to like to be with us. The trouble is that we get all tied up in trying to communicate a version of ourselves that we think people will find attractive.

We want to appear successful, interesting, in control—and a winner! To keep up this image we work hard to hide away the parts …

How to Heal a Broken Heart Using Mindful Self-Compassion

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“It’s not your job to like me—it’s mine.” Byron Katie

Why are breakups so painful? Whether we are the dumper or the dumpee, the range of emotions we feel is universal: devastation, sadness, and anger. Oh, and there’s the acute pain, as if your heart had been gouged from your chest, stabbed a dozen times with a butter knife, and booted to the curb.

Am I right?

Of course I am. I’ve been there. We all have. I intimately experienced a broken heart and its rippling effects when my partner and I ended our seven-year relationship. I admit that I …

Knowing When to Let Go of Relationships: 3 Signs It’s Time to Move On

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“Letting go doesn’t mean that you don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.” ~Deborah Reber

Thanks to the Internet, our lives are full of people. We’re connected literally all the time.

And yet, despite our ceaseless connection, we feel disconnected.

As the pace of life becomes ever more frenetic, we’re like charged atoms, bumping into each other more and more, pinballs in the machine. We come into contact (and conflict), but we don’t commune so much.

As real relationships of depth and quality become harder-won in this busy …

Two Types of Boundaries That Can Help You Take Good Care of Yourself

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“Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.” ~Brené Brown

Do you have the courage to love yourself and set the boundaries you need?

For years I didn’t, and wondered why my life didn’t work. I didn’t really understand what boundaries were or why I needed them.

My severe lack of boundaries allowed me to give away my energy, time, power, and love to others, leaving virtually nothing for myself.

For years I lived in a perpetual state of lack, feeling like I wasn’t enough. Looking back, it makes sense …

Before You Send That Message to Your Ex, Consider This

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“If the hurt comes so will the happiness. Be patient.” ~Rupi Kaur

What if I said instead of messaging our ex, we had a different choice, a choice that will be even more fulfilling than acting on the urge to share whatever we’re feeling right now?

It’s been over a year since I last spoke with my ex. While I’ve thought about him and missed him, I’ve known that getting in contact wasn’t the right thing, and so I haven’t taken any action to reconnect.

For the past few weeks, however, my thoughts have been seeping in, focusing on …

Why Compliments Made Me Cringe and How I’ve Learned to Accept Praise

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“Even when the sea is stirred up by the winds of self-doubt, we can find our way home.” ~Tara Brach

What is it about praise that’s so hard to hear sometimes?

You know the drill. You do something noteworthy, like cooking a meal for your friends, or getting on stage to do a talk. Assuming things go okay, your friends or colleagues tell you a bunch of nice, encouraging things afterward:

“This meal is delicious!”

“You did great up there!”

And suddenly you feel uncomfortable.

Maybe you deflect those nice, encouraging words (“Oh it was nothing, really”). Or …

Why We Close Ourselves Off to Friendships and How to Open Up

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“If you accept a limiting belief, then it will become a truth for you.” ~Louise Hay

Picking the flimsy gold lock on my groovy denim-covered childhood diary, I’m instantly transported back to my ten-year-old life.

Each page duly describes what I what I ate for dinner that day as well as what my two best friends and I got up to. It was 1976 and we were obsessed with Charlie’s Angels, cruising around “undercover” on our bikes, solving fresh crimes around the neighborhood.

Every couple of weeks I’d report the latest drama amongst the three of us. Either my …

My Needs Matter Too: How I Started Speaking Up and Setting Boundaries

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“Setting boundaries is a way of caring for myself. It doesn’t make me mean, selfish, or uncaring just because I don’t do things your way. I care about me, too.” ~Christine Morgan

In my early twenties, I could shout into a megaphone at a political rally of thousands, but I couldn’t decline drinks from strangers at the bar. I could perform original music for an attentive audience, but I couldn’t tell my friends when I felt hurt by something they’d said. I could start a business, advocate for new laws at City Hall, and share deeply personal poetry on Facebook, …

Accepting My Autistic Self: Why I’m Done Trying to Fit In

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“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.” ~Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

A common misconception about autistic people is that we don’t care if we’re alone. Of course this varies with each person, but on the whole, it’s untrue. We want to feel included, it’s just not easy for us to fit in. There are other days when I feel autism has separated me so fully from other people that I am functioning on a different plane of existence, not just with a different …

How Getting Hit by a Bus Taught Me to Stop Worrying and Start Living

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“Sometimes it takes a good fall to really know where you stand.” – Hayley Williams

How often do you appreciate the pleasure of taking a deep breath? Have you stopped worrying about what the world can do to you, and instead focused on what you can do in the world? Do you actively appreciate your life, as a part of your daily routine?

Odds are you do not. I know I certainly didn’t, until it was nearly taken from me.

I’ve been riding bicycles around New York City since I was a child. While cycling in the city used to …

When Expectations Hurt: How I’ve Forgiven My Absentee Father and Healed

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“What will mess you up most in life is the picture in your head of how it’s supposed to be.” ~Unknown

I may have said a few words that hurt my father’s feelings, but…

See, here’s the backstory.

I’m thirty-four years old, and I started having a relationship with my biological father at age twenty-one. During my childhood years I would see him every now and then even though he lived less than three miles away from my home. I don’t have any memories of being with my dad for birthdays, holidays, family vacations, or even just hanging out watching …

Love Them Today, Before Their Tomorrow’s Taken Away

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“Before someone’s tomorrow has been taken away, cherish those you love, appreciate them today.” ~Michelle C. Ustaszeski

Last year, my grandfather passed away.

He had gone to the hospital many times before. Sometimes he went for a minor sickness, sometimes for a severe condition. Unfortunately, the last time he went, we found out that he didn’t have much time left. He was diagnosed with last stage bladder cancer.

It was a shock to our family. My grandfather had always been a survivor. He’d survived the war, the darkest moment of the country. We couldn’t imagine he would lose his life …

How to Avoid Petty Fights and Get What You Need in Your Relationship

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“It’s never overreacting to ask for what you want and need.” ~Amy Poehler

It was yet another stupid argument that escalated from nothing to a hundred miles an hour in seconds. I’d been there so many times before, entrenched in warfare with us both preparing our defenses and priming our attacks.

The intense emotions of the moment always took over, denying me the opportunity that hindsight would later afford me. Huge issues were, upon reflection, only minor disagreements about who had said what about the cooking, or where something had been left in the bathroom.

On this occasion, once …

Overcoming Intergenerational Trauma: We Can Break the Cycle of Abuse

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“Our ancestors knew that healing comes in cycles and circles. One generation carries the pain so that the next can live and heal. One cannot live without the other, each is the other’s hope, meaning and strength.” ~Gemma B. Benton

I thought I had no value, my opinion meaningless. My sense of self was decimated. Finally, I got angry and attacked.

“You can’t imagine the pain you’ve put me through!” I yelled. “You don’t even know who I am. You can’t see it. You’re refusing to take responsibility for the way you raised me! Not thinking is not an excuse! …

25 Things Introverts Want You to Understand About Them

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“Solitude matters, and for some people, it’s the air they breathe.” ~Susan Cain

We live in a culture that celebrates extroversion and sees introversion as a weakness or something to overcome.

If you’re an introvert, you may have grown up believing there was something wrong with you. You may not even have realized there’s a word for your personality type, that 26 to 50% of the population falls under that umbrella, and that our brains are actually wired differently than extroverts’ brains.

According to Scott Barry Kaufman, the Scientific Director of the Imagination Institute (which sounds like the coolest …

How I Learned to Like and Trust Myself When It Was Hard

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“Loving yourself starts with liking yourself, which starts with respecting yourself, which starts with thinking of yourself in positive ways.” ~Jerry Corsten

Useless. Hopeless. Broken.

This was how I saw myself.

I didn’t completely loathe myself, but I didn’t like myself either. At best, I tolerated myself.

I felt I had good reasons to.

I’d gotten myself into, as we say in England, a right old pickle.

If you’re not familiar with this charming expression, I had gotten myself into a big mess.

In my early twenties, over a painful period of about eighteen months, I’d gradually buried myself …