Why only you can heal you (and why that’s fucking awesome)
Here’s how anxious attachment works: you grow up confusing the sensation of chasing attention with the feeling of love.
We adapted so well to unpredictable attention that it’s what we crave. Relationships that don’t involve chasing can feel boring…
Surviving divorce taught me how to survive a pandemic
When my 18-year partnership abruptly ended in late 2015, my life completely fell apart. It was a complete shitshow… kind of like this year. Here’s how surviving divorce taught me 9 lessons that are helping me survive 2020.
One woman answers the question: should I stay in a marriage without chemistry?
I wrote the Offbeat Home post I’m not attracted to my husband: Marriage without chemistry? in 2013. [One of the most popular posts on Offbeat Home & Life, of all time. -Ed] After 6 years of working on myself, finding myself, and trying to do absolutely everything I could to save the marriage… I finally had the strength to call it quits.
Resilience reading: Books to help with the bounce-back
When I was going through the shitshow of my post-divorce emotional recovery process, I read SO MANY BOOKS. With 50/50 custody, suddenly half my time was very very empty and I was adrift and confused and so I did what nerds have always done: I buried my feelings in words, and went searching for my redemption in books. These are the crisis and resilience books that helped me the most…
Individuation: stumbling toward emotional self-reliance
Maybe the most obvious way to talk about individuation is to say that, in the context of my marriage, if there was a bad feeling, I would look to my spouse to help me with it. Over the years, this mean that basically I held him at least partially responsible for my sense of well-being. Then, suddenly, my sense of well-being was very much my responsibility alone… and ultimately, it always was.
A reminder in difficult times: Love is an extraordinary and beautiful thing
Each person expresses and feels love in many ways. We love people in our lives with different kinds of love — the love for a child, a parent, friends, and lovers. Each love is defined and felt in personal ways depending on who receives it. I have loved many people in many ways in my lifetime. Loving someone is a selfless endeavor. To love someone is to bare your soul. To trust that person with the deepest parts of you. Love is gentle and selfless and kind.
Here’s a reminder about love in these difficult times…
The year I started dating god with a lowercase g
I think I’m in a polyamorous relationship with god.
This sounds insane in maybe 10 different ways, especially for ME to say, since for most of my life, my spirituality boiled down to don’t know, don’t care! … but it’s probably the most accurate description of happened for me this past year. Of course I’m talking about “god” lower case non-denominational, so maybe it’s a little less surprising than if the story here was “Offbeat Bride lady raised by hippies goes evangelical,” but still.
Diary of a divorcee: from grief to reflection to liberation
I’m also a hopeless romantic and always fantasized that my relationships would be like Ethan Embry and Jennifer Love Hewitt’s in Can’t Hardly Wait. Here I am at 31, a single divorcee — a feeling I truly haven’t experienced since before I was 19. And you know what? It’s liberating…