Holding Out for Spiritual Partnership with Lisa Lewis-Cogswell
The path to genuine partnership can be rocky, full of potholes, and isn’t always well marked. It can be hard to hold onto hope and all too easy to pull over and settle for relationships that are okay enough. But! As we all know on this here podcast, settling is bullshit! And this episode offers […]
Escaping the Mire of Faux Feelings
Invalidated, unappreciated, disrespected, abandoned, unsupported, attacked, judged, invisible… any of these “feelings” tend to crop up for you? Do they come crashing in and wreck your mood, or your day, or your relationships? Invisible is a fan favorite of my inner kiddo, and, ooh boy, that one will fuck up my emotional tranquility real fast. […]
Taking “No” for an Answer
For a single-syllable, two-letter word, “no” can get pretty complicated for a lot of us. Sometimes it’s easy, straightforward, and no big deal. Sometimes it’s heartbreaking. Sometimes the prospect of hearing it is so terrifying that we don’t even ask for what we need. Regardless of whether we struggle with people-pleasing, both giving and receiving […]
Deciding People Mean Well
No matter how kind or compassionate or generous we may be, people are going to hurt us. That’s a reality of being in relation with other humans. People fuck up, and our feelings get hurt. We get angry. We sometimes retaliate, even when we don’t mean to. Everybody behaves like a jerk sometimes. Welcome to […]
Hope Isn’t a Feeling – It’s a Choice
While we often talk about “feeling” hopeful, that phrasing is a little misleading – because unlike sadness or joy or fear, hope isn’t actually a feeling. It’s a mental process that we can choose to engage in. It’s not an internal signal that naturally occurs. In other words, hope is something we do rather than […]
Choosing People Who Choose You
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that being in a relationship with people is actually a choice we make on a daily basis. We are constantly choosing to show up, to engage with the people in our lives – whether those relationships are friendship or romantic partnership or even familial. (Reminder: we can opt out of […]
What Do You Actually Need?
Identifying needs is probably one of the hardest things to do. It requires checking in with yourself in a deep and mindful way, which is a process that most of us never really had modeled. Instead, we get told – by society, by our family of origin, by our inner critic – that our needs are “too […]
Hearing It Once (Probably) Isn’t Enough
74 GB. That’s how much information, on average, our brain has to filter through on a daily basis. (Or did in 2017, when the article I got the stat from was published. It’s probably even more now). So, what’s actually surprising is that we somehow think that saying or hearing something once could ever be […]