Like many people my age, I have divorced parents.
They split up when I was in the sixth grade, and to be completely honest, when I was put on the spot the other day, I couldn’t really recall much of their relationship before that. The whole process was treacherous and heartbreaking and something I had chosen to forget.
Read MoreHave you ever done that thing, where you see someone cute from across a room and before you’ve so much as exchanged names, you’ve pictured all the ways they’ll make you fall in love with them before they eventually break your heart, and then all of a sudden they’ve picked up their coffee and left the building before you even said hi? I am a master of that game.
Read MoreMake one mistake and your words tremble. You instantly become self-conscious of your every motion and movement. You criticize the way you said something, the sound of your voice, the hand gestures you made. Your imperfections grow into monsters.
Read MoreI rub her back and take a deep breath in and out, motioning her to do the same--slow breath in, slow breath out. She sits, eyes closed, and I sit too, silent. We don’t share the same language, so what can I say to ease her anxiety? But I know her feelings of panic, the way you mind spins and everything seems out of control and it’s all you can do to just sit still and be. And all I can do, all I can offer her in this moment is to sit and just be there with her.
Read Morefor Lent this year i’ve decided to toughen up.
i’m giving up my delicacy to learn how to be strong,
like i was once sketched.
I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize my own face. It looked somber, angry, incapable of ever smiling again.
Since the time college had ended and my had life become a whirlwind of whatever luck would bring me, I had been a little depressed and angry at God. It seemed like every door I knocked on didn’t want to open, and I had been knocking for quite a while now with still no open doors for me.
Read MoreThere are things about myself I wish I could change. Not in a dramatic, self-hatred kind of way: largely, I’m pretty happy. But there are habits and tendencies that I wish I could just shake off. I wish I was more disciplined, stuck at things when they’re hard. I wish I trusted my voice more. I wish I was more compassionate, went out of my way more to love people. I wish I went outside more and watched Netflix less.
Read MoreI am always fighting this conundrum: If I am too busy, I get stressed out, and if I’m not busy enough… I get stressed out. What used to be a three-month issue during the summer now occurs on a weekly basis. I try to find ways to be more productive in my free time while constantly battling my desire to nap away my free hours. On the rare occasion when I stay awake, I have found a few ways to keep my mind occupied and my time productive.
Read MoreBut March is only month 3 of 12, so I can’t let a lack of goal success over a two-month period dictate the rest of my year. I’d like to offer three things I’m learning about setting yourself up to meet your goals. (Plus I have a giveaway to announce!)
Read MoreI was two months into senior year, when I should have been living it up. Instead, I was panicking about what I was going to do with my life. I was wondering why I hadn’t been on a date in three years. I was worried that my depression and anxiety was going to be noticed by someone I didn’t tell myself. I needed something fast to push me forward, to say that the way I was feeling was okay, and that I could start over and be stronger for it. And maybe in a subconscious effort to regain that freshness I felt getting that jacket in high school (or just to have someone tell me my eyes looked nice) I bought the green bomber, zipped it snugly, and pushed through the mess for a few more months, feeling stronger than I had the day before.
Read MoreI don’t know when we decided that places of education are just holding pens, or that anything you’ve done prior to reaching one or more of the milestones that caused the “well wishers” around you to feel that they were finally crossing over into adulthood, was just pretend. I imagine this mentality stems from our dismissal of the experiences of children and youth as lesser than those of battle-hardened adults who know better, and as the period of adolescence has extended over time, so have the opportunities for everyone older than someone else to throw back a cocktail of disdain and nostalgia and vomit it back up disguised as appropriate greeting card messages.
Read MoreThen a week passes, then two, and then I realize I haven't cracked open to Bible study book, and I've double-booked my calendar more than once, and I'm wiped from waking up early but not adjusting my bedtime. Almost without my noticing, all of the balls in my court have dropped and rolled far, far away.
Suddenly—or not so suddenly—I just want to shirk it all and sleep.
Read MoreRecently on an errand for work I was walking down Fifth Avenue. I was having a nice walk around 5 pm as the day crawls toward its eventual end when a man walked past me carrying a coffee table over his shoulder.
I say this casually, but yes it was a big wooden coffee table, like, for magazines, beverages, resting feet on, you know, a coffee table.
Read MoreI'm currently working 10-hour days. Factor in travel and sleep time, and I have approximately five hours to myself during the week. All of which is spent getting ready for work, getting ready for bed… or watching Netflix (a girl has got to decompress, okay?). But the way I’ve been living leaves no room to focus on things in my own life.
Read MoreI’m a believer in constant growth. But so often I feel stagnant and stuck, and it’s only in the looking back that I can see how even the hard, lonely and boring seasons were working things out in me, niggling through me with their magic to reveal truths later, like bluebells nestled under the earth, waiting out winter. I’ve been thinking about what I’ve been learning in the last 12 months; things that hit me brand new, or simply realised with a new depth that hadn’t sunk in before. So here’s a list.
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