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When Helping Becomes Controlling: What I Learned About Fear and Love

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“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” ~Carl Rogers

There is a part of me that really, really loves vitamins.

Like…a lot.

I have always been endlessly fascinated by health, which means I can spend a wildly unreasonable amount of time talking about inflammation, mitochondria, blood sugar, nervous systems, magnesium, and all the other things that make most people’s eyes glaze over while my little heart lights right up.

So the vitamin-loving part is real.

Very me.

And, as I recently discovered while sitting beside my swollen-faced fiancé in urgent …

How You Feel in the Middle of Transition

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Why I Always Thought Other People Were Upset with Me

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“Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you.” ~Don Miguel Ruiz

I used to walk into a room and check everyone else’s emotional temperature before I noticed my own.

A tightened jaw meant I should get quieter. A distracted answer meant I’d done something wrong. If my partner sighed while unloading the dishwasher, I’d go back through the last hour looking for the mistake that caused it.

I called this empathy. It felt like attentiveness, and honestly, I was proud of it, because I noticed things other people missed.

What I didn’t see was that I wasn’t …

Dogs Seem to Understand What We Often Forget

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The Highest Form of Love

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People Who Love You Don’t Critique Your Survival

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Not Knowing What Happens Next

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The Kindest Thing We Can Do

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The Tattoo That Marks 13 Years of Healing After Abuse

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“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” ~Maya Angelou

In June 2011, I got a Facebook friend request from a guy I vaguely knew from college. We’d never dated, never even been close, but I knew him by reputation. Charming. Vain. The kind of guy who always had someone.

He’d just been hired to teach at my school, where I was about to start my fifth year as a counselor. He framed the request as wanting to connect as colleagues, so I accepted.

When school started that August, he made it a point to show …

The Truth About My Marriage I Finally Had to Face

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“You don’t have to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.” ~Unknown

Tomorrow, a court will grant me a divorce after eleven years of marriage. I’ve spent the last several months rereading a decade of my own life like evidence in a case, trying to understand how I got here. What I found surprised me: not one dramatic betrayal, but hundreds of small moments where I chose to make myself smaller so the relationship could stay intact.

I met my husband when we were teenagers, through a mutual friend, and fell for him the way you fall for …

Insecurity Doesn’t Always Sound Like…

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One of the Purest Forms of Empathy

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Why We Keep Accepting the Same Painful Relationship Patterns

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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” ~George Santayana

I was gone about two hours.

I’d gone to see my stepbrother, who lived nearby. My girlfriend didn’t want to come, so I told her to rest, and I’d be back soon.

When I got back to my father’s property, where we lived in the camper we’d bought together, it was gone. So was she.

She’d packed my clothes into a bag and left them on my father’s porch on her way out. That told me everything I needed to know. The camper was the only place …

Tell Your People You Love Them

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From Hyper-Independent to Human: Learning How to Accept Help

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“Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome.” ~Brené Brown

It happened on a regular Tuesday night over the smallest thing. I was cooking dinner after a really long, exhausting day at my job. I spent the whole day fixing problems for everyone else, and I was completely drained.

I reached into the cupboard to grab a heavy glass jar of pasta sauce. It slipped right out of my fingers and smashed all over the hard floor.

Red sauce splashed across the white cabinets, …

Maturity Has Taught Me

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Grief Teaches You to Notice the Magic

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Wear Your Beautiful Clothes

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One of the Purest Forms of Kindness

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When Doing More Is Really an Attempt to Control the Outcome

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“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.” ~John Allen Paulos

I refreshed the analytics page even though I had checked it only a few minutes earlier. The number had not changed, so I opened the project, reread the opening line, tested a button, and returned to the dashboard. My shoulders were tight and my eyes felt dry, but I kept moving between the same pages as though one of them might suddenly tell me what to do next.

The work was finished for the evening. Everything important was functioning, …