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What’s the legacy you want to pass on? We can’t choose what our ancestors did, or what was done to
them. But we get to create the recipe that’s handed down. Write a recipe for a life well-lived. Take the good things from your family’s past and add your own ingredients. Give the next generation something delicious and nourishing to build on.
We never know what’s ahead. Hope isn’t the white paint we use to mask our suffering. It’s an investment in curiosity. A recognition that if we give up now, we’ll never get to see what happens next.
All of it has taught me how much I have, and how to celebrate each precious moment, without waiting for someone else’s permission or approval. I am reminded again and again: to choose hope is to choose life.
The next time you hear yourself using the language of minimization, delusion, or denial, try replacing the words with: “It hurts. And it’s temporary.” Remind yourself, “I’ve survived pain before.”
Forgiveness isn’t something we do for the person who’s hurt us. It’s something we do for ourselves, so we’re no longer victims or prisoners of the past, so we can stop carrying a burden that harbors nothing but pain.
It’s about letting go.
But your life doesn’t depend on what you get or don’t get from someone else. Your life is your own.
What comes out of our body doesn’t make us ill. What stays in there does. Forgiveness is release, and I couldn’t let go until I gave myself permission to feel and express my rage. I finally asked my therapist to sit on me, to hold me down so I had a force to push against, so I could release a primal scream.
Silent rage is self-destructive. If you’re not actively, consciously, intentionally releasing it, you’re holding on to it. And that’s not going to do you any good.
Neither is venting anger. That’s when you blow your top. It might feel cathartic in the moment, but others foot the bill. And it can become addictive. You’re not really releasing anythi...
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The best thing to do with anger is to learn to channel it, an...
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(That’s how a perfectionist suffers. Silently!)
Anger is a secondary emotion, a defense, armor we put up around the primary feeling underneath. We burn through anger so we can get to what’s underneath: fear or grief. Only then can we begin the hardest work of all. Forgiving ourselves.
I have life to live and work to do and love to share. I don’t have time to hold on to the fear or anger or shame anymore, to give anything else to two people who already stole something from me. I won’t give them another inch. I won’t hand my power away.
Life—even with its inevitable trauma, pain, grief, misery, and death—is a gift. A gift we sabotage when we imprison ourselves in our fears of punishment, failure, and abandonment; in our need for approval; in shame and blame; in superiority and inferiority; in our need for power and control. To celebrate the gift of life is to find the gift in everything that happens, even the parts that are difficult, that we’re not sure we can survive. To celebrate life, period. To live with joy, love, and passion.
