recovery

Until we’re treating ourselves with dignity when we are struggling, we’re not healing.

Forgiveness performed from obligation does two things: it excuses the behavior of others, and it reduces our ability to be conscious and present with the pain we truly feel.

When we rush to forgiveness, we lose our connection to our original wounds.

There's an idea I think I picked up from Robert Kegan, the idea of an "evolutionary balance" in your personality structure. Or maybe it was “evolutionary truce.” The idea, as I remember it, is that your personality is made of many different dynamic forces, all pulling and pushing in different ways. For most of your life, those forces find an equili... See more

One of the central myths of American romance right now is this notion that you and your partner should be able to tell each other anything and everything

I am begging you not to do this

There are so many things about you that are just for you, for your soul, as well as a whole other category of things that are only for your therapist or priest to kno... See more

Humans aren’t meant to excavate their inner feelings until they find their “true self.” We become ourselves in relation, not through introspection.

This line from David Foster Wallace still haunts me:

“The next suitable person you’re in light conversation with, you stop suddenly in the middle of the conversation and look at the person closely and say, “What’s wrong?” You say it in a concerned way. He’ll say, “What do you mean?” You say, “Something’s wrong. I can tell. What is it?”

And he’ll loo

... See more

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.

― James Baldwin