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Category “love & relationships”

The Key to Beauty and Acceptance Is You

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“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

I read this quote the other day, and I have to say, nothing has shaken me to the core more.

I was diagnosed with a rare form of muscular dystrophy at the age of two, and ever since, I’ve struggled with loving myself and with having self-confidence.

For the most part, you wouldn’t know I have a serious physical disability aside from my visible limp, my difficulty getting up and down stairs, and my tendency to …

How to Feel More Loved: 9 Tips for Deep Connection

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“It is astonishing how little one feels alone when one loves.” ~John Bulwer

If there’s one thing we all want, it’s to feel loved.

We want to feel deeply connected to other people, fully seen and appreciated by them, and secure in those relationships.

We can have a million and one acquaintances online, but if none of our connections feel intimate and meaningful, we will ultimately feel alone.

There’s actually some interesting research that shows we tend to value physical possessions less when we feel loved and accepted by others, because relationships can provide a sense of comfort, insurance, …

How to Love Without Losing Yourself

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“We love because it is the only true adventure.” ~Nikki Giovanni 

Last night I sat with an old friend who has recently broken up with his girlfriend. He’s sad. She’s sad.

I don’t think it was time for them to give up yet; he’s exhausted and disagrees. He says he thinks that he just loves to love. When you love to love, he says, it’s impossible to separate the act of loving from the person that you’re actually supposed to love.

He thinks that he’s too much in love with the idea of love to actually know what he wants. …

Sometimes There Is No Right Way

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“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche 

I was raised in a home where a very common phrase was, “There’s a right way and a wrong way.”

The right way was the way my parents wanted things done. There were a great many rules surrounding the right way for nearly everything, in an attempt to ensure that we got it right, and, when the rules weren’t enough to enforce the rightness of our behavior, there were punishments, harsh words, and sometimes …

The Difference Between Forgiving and Forgetting

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“Some people think it’s holding that makes one strong. Sometimes it’s letting go.” ~Unknown

I will never forget the moment my marriage ended.

My husband and I had fought the night before, about many of the same things we’d been fighting about for the entirety of our four-month marriage.

He was dissatisfied with our sex life and my lack of respect for him. I was struggling with bipolar disorder, changing medications, going back to school, and trying to please a man who seemed to find fault with everything I did.

During that fight, he choked me twice to prevent me …

Dealing with a Break Up and Learning from the Experience

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“Why worry about things you can’t control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?” ~Unknown

Relationships end, everyone knows that. The tough part is actually dealing with suffering, accepting, letting go, moving on, and processing a whole lot of other feelings at the same time.

Six months ago my ex-boyfriend decided to end our relationship because he couldn’t forgive me for a mistake I’d made.

During the first weeks of our breakup I decided that it would be best if I just gave him some time to think things out. I accepted the …

What You Do Matters

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“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I used to refer to myself as a white crayon in the coloring box of life.

Have you ever wondered what purpose a white crayon serves? There are all of these other beautiful colors to be put to good use, but the white crayon just kind of sits there and tends to get overlooked.

That’s exactly how I felt. I felt like I was just merely existing and not serving any kind of purpose. And at the time, …

Live Every Day Like You Travel: 4 Lessons from the Road

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“Our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as being able to remake ourselves.” ~ Gandhi

What if we lived the way we travel?

It’s been my experience that we let go of many things when we travel. I’d like to propose that those things—the things we loosen our grip on while travelling—are things that don’t need to be held quite so firmly.

1. Notice. Slow down. Reflect.

San Miguel de Allende is one of my favorite places on earth. I’ve visited nine or ten times. If asked to describe heaven, I’d say that it …

It’s Okay to Ask for Love

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“Human life runs its course in the metamorphosis between receiving and giving.” ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This past week I simultaneously experienced some of the strongest physical pain and immense joy I have ever experienced. While the former has everything to do with the six-inch incision in my abdomen, the latter revolves around a number of lessons about willfully receiving.

As I wrote last week, I had my myomectomy surgery on Tuesday to remove a soccer ball-sized growth in my uterus. On Monday, it occurred to me I’d appreciate reading uplifting notes from the community, but a part of …

No Act of Kindness is Too Small

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“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle, or you can live as if everything is a miracle.” ~Albert Einstein

One of the key ways to bring about greater harmony and peace in our lives is through understanding—looking at a situation and taking the time to put ourselves into the minds and hearts of others.

And the key to understanding begins with the seed of compassion. Sounds so simple, right? So why don’t we do it?

As people living in the west, we can sometimes be in too much of a rush to …

Now is the Time to Appreciate the People Who Have Helped You

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“No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.” -James Allen

Recently, my mom told me that my beloved piano teacher had passed on. She had reached a high age and died peacefully in her sleep. This news, delivered to me via Facebook, hit me harder than I could have prepared myself for.

Sitting there in front of my computer, I remembered the circumstances of my meeting her. Originally, it was because my sister wanted to learn how to play piano.

It was by pure chance that I decided to go with her for her first lesson and I …

How to Overcome Loneliness

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“Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it’s dark.” ~Zen Proverb

After my ex-girlfriend and I broke up several years ago, I never felt more alone in my life. I hung up the phone with tears streaming down my face as I stepped into my new reality.

I only had one friend in the world, who happened to live fairly far away, so most of my newfound singlehood was spent alone.

It was difficult for the first few weeks due to all the painful emotions that usually come with a breakup, but after a while the pain went …

Feeling Love Outside of a Relationship

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“There is no Love greater than Love with no object. For then you, yourself, have become love, itself.” ~Rumi

I have spent most of my life as a professional, half of that in Asia: managing a division of a company, doing long-term meditation retreats, and establishing cottage industries for impoverished refugees.

A long-term relationship was impossible since Asian men marry Asian women; European men had European wives and Asian lovers.

Along the way I thought I could give more value to the world by remaining single than being married with children.

I met a woman working at the UN who …

Reclaiming Valentine’s Day: 4 Real Expressions of Love

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“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.” ~Marianne Williamson

Valentine’s Day. Yes, that day—the much maligned, much cherished, much hated, and much misunderstood day of the year.

I remember being traumatized in adolescence. Not only were we supposed to, according to peer-reviewed social norms, like people and get liked back on this holiday, my school made us do Valentine’s day card/candy exchanges.

We exchanged, in class, little pre-packaged cards and those infamous heart-shaped candies stamped with subtle expressions like “be mine.”

Do you recall these candy hearts that I’m describing? They come in variety …

Book Giveaway and Interview: Rewire Your Brain for Love

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Update: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha for free daily or weekly emails and to learn about future giveaways!

The winners:

An old friend once told me that women frequently say all the men they’ve dated have been jerks; and men frequently say all the women they’ve dated have been crazy.

You could chalk this up to gender differences, men being from Mars, women being from Venus and all that. But maybe there’s more to it. Maybe it’s actually our biology that influences how we act and interact—and why we often …

Loving Ourselves and Each Other, Imperfections and All

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“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” ~Sam Keen

I heard this story the other day about the collection of homes called Favelas surrounding Rio De Janeiro.

If you aren’t familiar with them, they are a large collection of small run-down homes built on the side of the hills surrounding the city. They scatter and protrude across the landscape like paper litter in the tall grass along the highway.

The conditions can be poor, and unsanitary, often with raw sewage running down the side of the hill where …

9 Lessons on Loss, Forgiveness, and Healing

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“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” ~Paul Boese

I’m trying to meditate but I find myself overcome by sadness; I’m still grieving after all this time.

I’ve gone through phases of forgiveness recently that have shown me how to acknowledge the painful relationship I had with my mother, the anger and resentment we shared, and the loss of each other that we both went through the older we grew. Maybe it’s not as bad as that, but it feels like it.

My reflections have brought me closer to the woman who I never took …

Remember to Breathe: How to Feel Calm, Peaceful, and Loving

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“Our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as being able to remake ourselves.” ~Gandhi

At some point during 2005 I discovered the sense that I am connected to everything, that nothing exists outside of me. This realization came while surfing with a friend of mine. From that moment, surfing became a religion for me.

I sat on top a surf board about 100 yards off the sand, just a little north of the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant in San Clemente, California, for hours on end every single day.

At some point during each …

The Intimacy of Loss: Being Together in this Fleeting Moment

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“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” ~Kenji Miyazawa

I love my wife, so it stung the other day when she said, “Hmm … You’re going to have trouble letting me go, aren’t you?”

She’s not walking out on me. You see, she has multiple sclerosis (MS), and she’s referring to the day she can’t walk any more. She’s convinced herself that she can’t handle the guilt of ruining my life, and expects me to leave when she says so.

I knew Caroline had MS when I married her. I also knew I loved her.…

Everyone in Your Life Is You

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 “You validate people’s lives by your attention.” ~Unknown

When my husband and I lived in New Providence, the capital island of the Bahamas, we rented a charming wooden cottage with a sweeping vista of the ocean from a sweet, elderly man who was 88 years old.

Our landlord Leslie lived alone in an elegant house next door to our cottage and I made it a habit to visit him each day, after arriving home from teaching at a local high school.

Leslie was lonely and my heart would ache for him. Having lost his wife a few years earlier, he …