Handling The Hard Stuff

Tag: Relationships

  • Build Toward YOUR Future

    It’s the end of the school year where I am and I find myself looking around at the circumstances my friends and I find ourselves in. Some of us have kids graduating and are processing transitioning into the parents of adult children. Some of us have littles and are juggling trying to be present parents…

  • Wellness Check

    I stumbled across this poem by Andrea Gibson the other day and I couldn’t ignore it. “In any moment, on any given day, I can measure my welness by this question: Is my attention on loving, or is my attention on who isn’t loving me?” This is so powerful to me because it is so…

  • Have the Hard Conversations

    Avoiding hard conversations in relationships just postpones difficulties. That anxiety and concern over the outcome of the conversations just festers and builds and ends up manifesting in more ways than you’d think. Studies have shown that avoiding difficult conversations forces us to focus on protection and survival instead of growth and adaptation. This ends up…

  • Electronic Leash

    I was reminded earlier about what life was like in my own childhood – we went outside and no one could contact us directly, no one got an answer from us to their immediate question, and people had to wait if they wanted to connect with us. We returned messages at our own discretion. We…

  • Calm your own Storm

    Venting is my love language. Agonizing to my village is a large component of my relationships. And vice versa. I’m the person people call when they need to rant. But how healthy is that really? Recently, one of my close friends had major drama and a scheduled “relationship discussion” phone call with another friend. We…

  • You Do Not Have to EARN Love

    Love is not contingent. Love is constant. Love comes without strings. You do not have to do chores or contribute to the household or slave to your partner to earn their love. You do those things because you are a partner, a team member, a co-pilot. But the love you receive should be entirely disconnected…

  • Who Is in Your Circle

    I saw a quote yesterday that said, “If you look at who is in your circle and you’re not inspired, you don’t have a circle, you have a cage.” It struck me and I started thinking about my circle – that is spot on for me. Even back to my childhood friends. My very first…

  • Honest Mistakes

    We screw up. Humans screw up. It happens and we all do it. How we respond to it, sets people apart. Certain people refuse to acknowledge their mistakes. They double down rather than admitting they were wrong. They reassert the shaky position rather than acknowledging they might have misunderstood or been incorrect. Invariably this position…

  • Effort Makes Us Happy

    We are constantly fed “hacks” and “get rich quick” schemes and “pro tips” that will make us bajillions of dollars with zero effort and continue this passive income making us millionaires over night. Where will that get us though? Don’t get me wrong – if I had a million dollars overnight with no effort, I’d…

  • Embrace the Opportunities of Boredom

    We aren’t bored anymore. Something came across my feed this morning that made me stop to ponder. Without phones and the internet at our fingertips, we were forced to find ways to kill time. If we had to wait in line or stop what we were doing we spent that time observing the world or…