Open Book

by Jessica Simpson

“Whatever you do, work at with all your heart, as for the Lord and not for men.”

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

How many times are women made to feel responsible for the actions of men?

I think sometimes we get so caught up in the vessel of the work rather than what matters: the spirit that fills it.

He would tell me that my true self was so much greater than the person I was settling on being. Like there was some great woman inside of me waiting to come out, and I had to hurry up and find her because he wanted to love that woman, not me.

He’d dump me, then come back saying he had discovered he loved me after all. I always saw it as him mercifully taking me in from the cold. Every time John returned, I thought it was a continuation of a love story, while my friends saw a guy coming back for sex with some foolish girl.

I had always prided myself on being smarter than everyone thought I was. For a long time, he took that from me. He made me feel dumb. I stopped understanding what was real and what was in my head.

But I also got to a point where I overintellectualized everything he said, because I felt I was not intellectual enough for him.

You can have people encourage you and talk to you all day long about your potential, but if you’re not there, ready and willing to be that for yourself, you’ll never be fulfilled.

“Sometimes we are all so afraid to be honest with ourselves because we know that honesty will lead to somewhere.” I wrote this ten years ago. “Can fear walk us to something better?”

I can say now that the answer is yes. I knew that then, too, but I still had to phrase it as a question because I wasn’t ready. I had to walk through my fear to be here writing to you about the painful moments of my life. “Pain is where all the tools are,” I said to my therapist the other day. If you’re someone who has a lot of tools, I’m sorry, but I am also hopeful for you. You have so much to work with.

I think it’s important, whatever your situation,...

We need to own our weakness, our hurt, our pain, and say it out loud so that we can name what is coming up and why.