Dear Emma:

I am glad to read back from you, but sorry you feel so tired and tense. I read only the beginning and ending of your message but will read attentively tomorrow morning.. or later tonight. When I read “warmest hugs!”- I thought: I need cool hugs, very cool- it’s so hot here (and no air conditioning). Back to you later..

Coolest hugs!

Anita

Dear Alessa:

It’s so good to see you back—welcome! You’ve been missed this past week ❤️

Your post was thoughtful and full of insight. I really liked how you connected your son’s moment—trying to clean up the mess—to bigger ideas about how we grow and learn. It’s true: being a child means constantly learning rules we don’t know yet, and being watched while we figure things out. That can be hard.

What you said about the sense of self forming through other people really stood out to me. It’s sad but true—when we’re rejected as children, it doesn’t just hurt, it shapes how we see ourselves. That feeling of failure can sink deep.

I also loved this line: “Being alone is a story we tell ourselves so we can better understand others.” That’s such a gentle way to look at loneliness—not as something broken, but as something that helps us grow and connect.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. You brought a lot of warmth and wisdom to the conversation. I hope you keep posting—your voice adds something special here.

With care, Anita 🤍

Double posting above…

Dear Ada:

Your emotions are definitely valid.

You asked: “So if I don’t believe that he has romantic feelings for her, isn’t it my own selfishness that is preventing me from accepting him on this?… besides this issue with Sarah, our relationship has been emotionally vulnerable, honest, and loving… he doesn’t feel romantic feelings for her. So if I believe this about Sam, does it even matter that I consider it romantic? Am I the one who is not able to honor his feelings due to my own selfishness?”-

No, I don’t believe it’s selfishness. I think this is about what your heart needs in order to feel safe and deeply chosen. It’s about how wide your definition of love can stretch without losing you in the process.

I’ve struggled with this too. I’m emotionally conservative and traditional. Sharing someone I care deeply for—whether emotionally or otherwise—still hurts. Even in love, I find myself wishing I could be someone’s only emotional home.

But life keeps showing me: you can’t stamp your name on someone’s heart and expect exclusivity in every emotional corner. We’re all messy, layered beings. No one belongs entirely to another.

I know a man who is so very honest, full of integrity, more than anyone I know. He’s married and he loves his wife.. Yet I see that glitter in his eyes sometimes when he talks to an attractive woman who shows him affection.. (in a public setting where his wife is present). He can’t help his emotions. There is a longing that people have- often born in childhood- that no one person can satisfy every moment of the day or night.

What do you think, Ada, about what I wrote here?

With care, Anita 🤍

Dear Ada:

You wrote, “Sam, on the other hand, is much more keen on keeping in close contact with his friends. He has two male friends that he constantly messages on a daily basis… He moved to the US when he was 10 years old from Europe… They met in college… Soon out of college, he lived with Sarah and her roommates.”-

Reading that, I found myself wondering—what was life like for Sam in those early years? Moving countries at age 10, straddling cultures, possibly feeling othered… I imagine he might have felt quite alone. People who’ve known isolation early in life often carry a deep hunger—not just for connection, but for the kind that feels immersive, unconditional, and safe.

College, then, may have marked a turning point for him—a time when he finally felt chosen. And Sarah, present at that exact crossroads, might have come to symbolize emotional safety in a way that’s difficult to untangle, even now.

I say this not to diminish your pain, but to suggest that his closeness to Sarah may be about reliving and reclaiming the belonging he longed for in adolescence. I know that kind of hunger. I grew up lonely, and even decades later, I sometimes interact with others as if we’re all kids again—trying to create the friendships I never had. That hunger, capital-H Hunger, still lives in me. It’s a craving to feel chosen. To belong.

Even the moment you described—Sam accompanying Sarah during her abortion—while deeply painful for you, may have felt to him like an act of friendship at its most loyal, a way to be present for someone in pain—the way he might have wished someone had been present for him.

“HIM: My friendship with Sarah is important to me, but not as important as ours.”-

That line reminds me of a socially hungry teenager trying to balance loyalty and expansion—wanting to pour himself into a romantic connection, but struggling to cap the emotional outpouring elsewhere. The need to belong can be so expansive, it doesn’t always segment neatly.

Still—this doesn’t mean your boundaries aren’t valid. It only suggests Sam may be operating from a different emotional map.

What do you think, Ada?

With care, Anita 🤍

Hi Peter:

I want to reply more thoroughly in the morning, but for now (after reading only a bit of what you wrote):

If the ache is a whisper… what is it trying to say to you?

What is it trying to say to me?

I think that my ache says: “I didn’t disappear completely and I am reappearing now, every day!”

And that’s.. a Life Worth Living (the title of my thread): a reappearing act.

That blotch on the canvas is taking on shape and bright colors.

The lyric—“That’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight, losing my religion”, comes to mind.. 😊

Anita