On Life and Words

I recently lost a friendship of four years. It wasn't over a minor issues. It was, perhaps, unavoidable. We both had differing ideas on what constituted "judging" and gentle, loving, honesty. She thought I was judging her for situations in her life, but was passing the same judgments she accused me of, onto my own life. I tried to be gentle and honest - without judgment of her or her choices - however, at the end of the day, we simply couldn't agree to disagree and move forward. The thing is, this friendship started four and a half years ago during an extremely traumatic and stressful time in my life and hers both, which left us with a friendship, but also left us with a "trauma bond." Although neither of our situations at the time were related, we'd bonded over the similarities. Sometimes, friendships formed in this way will last a lifetime. However, in many cases, they will simply end over time, once the time of crisis is over with. When you bond ...

Life is hard. Even when things are going pretty good, there will be occasional struggles or obstacles in your way. This is especially true if you've already dealt with any type of hardship in your life. If you're like me, and you've gone through multiple struggles in your life - mental, emotional, abusive relationships, poverty, homelessness, physical, etc - then dealing with basic, everyday life can sometimes feel like a struggle. This is why it's important to have a solid support system in place - whether you have good family and friends, a counselor and/or support group, online support groups, etc - everyone needs a support system. We all need people in our lives, even those of us who might claim to be "anti-social" or those who have "social anxiety." But what we don't need in our lives is toxic people and situations. If you have someone in your life who is toxic, if they bring more drama than you care to deal with, if they mentally or em...