“I can’t say when you’ll get love or how you’ll find it or even promise that you will. I can only say you are worthy of it and that it’s never too much to ask for it and that it’s not crazy to fear you’ll never have it again, even though your fears are probably […]
“Remember, being happy doesn’t mean you have it all. It simply means you’re thankful for all you have.” ~Unknown For many years I was single. But I wasn’t just a regular single, I was a miserable one. Rather than enjoying a time in my life when I didn’t have to care about anyone else but […]
“Resilience is all about being able to overcome the unexpected. Sustainability is about survival. The goal of resilience is to thrive.” ~Jamais Cascio The pandemic has forced us to avoid people, self-isolate, and keep to ourselves. It might seem like you’re in a position where you don’t have many options. You can’t freely hang out […]
“Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.” ~David W. Augsburger The five love languages—a framework for how we give and receive affection created by psychologist Gary Chapman in 1992—include quality time, gifts, acts of service, words of affirmation, and physical touch. As much as I […]
Last year my uncle died shortly after someone I love went through a pretty traumatic breakup. I love all my family, but I wasn’t really close to my uncle and didn’t know him all that well, so I was more grieving for my mother and aunt than myself. As I bore witness to the deep […]
“Sometimes the only closure you need is the understanding that you deserve better.” ~Trent Shelton I’ll never forget the day we met. It was a classic San Francisco day. The sky was a perfect cerulean blue. The sun sparkled brightly. I ventured from my apartment in the Haight to Duboce Park to enjoy the Saturday. […]
“Do something today that your future self will thank you for.” ~Unknown My whole life has been filled with toxic and abusive relationships, starting with extreme physical and emotional abuse from my parents, right up to the last relationship that I left in 2013. Abuse—physical, sexual, emotional, and verbal—is all I’ve ever known. My entire […]
I’m gonna be honest here, I can honestly say that I’ve never had any cords of attachment to a person, place, or thing—that is, until recently. This cord crippled me and broke me down to a point where I questioned who I was and my own personal strength. I think before I tell my story […]
“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” ~Lewis B. Smedes When it came to my ex-girlfriend, I had difficulty letting go. She was a girl I’d had a big crush on for a couple of years. Funnily enough, once my crush on her began to fade, she suddenly […]
“The positive cannot exist without the negative.” ~Alan Watts My heart was empty. It had never felt that empty before. Sometimes I felt a gap gnawing at my chest making everything around me feel like half of a whole. I felt like a piece of me had died. I painted my childhood bedroom grey that […]
