On Life and Words

Sometimes in life, we come to a crossroads with people or situations. We are faced with the choice of either continuing to hold on or to try to let someone or something go. This is the first step in healing from trauma or abuse, and it can also just be something as simple as needing to clear your "emotional clutter" or remove complications from your life to be able to live your best life in as healthy a way as is possible. This might need to happen in a very direct and abrupt manner. You may need to make a conscious choice to get someone or something out of your life, choosing to go no-contact with an individual or choosing to drop a habit or something else. It can seem to come out of nowhere to the other person if it's an individual, they might even get angry with you for losing their access to you. In some cases, it's just a simple case of a friend or family member and yourself losing common ground and needing to go separate ways... there's nothing wrong with...

Childhood is hard. Adulthood is hard. Being a human being is hard. Being a DECENT human being is even harder.  It's impossible to go through life completely unscathed... no one can do it. Every single moment, every single experience we have... shapes the people that we become. This can be to the better or for the worse. I don't believe that people are born "bad"  or good either one... I think they are all born "neutral" and then their experiences and basic personalities shape them into the people they become. For most of us, we're just you're average, garden variety good person. In my case, I'm a pretty good person who got handed several bad hands in life. I ended up being abused most of my life and now have to deal with the aftermath of being abused, which includes PTSD, dissociative disorder due to Complex Trauma and a host of other mental and emotional issues. The average person walking past me on the street would never be able to see or gu...

Whenever you know that someone is abusive to someone else, that they are harming others, you are just as culpable in the abuse if you don't speak up or attempt to stop them. Yes, the blame for abuse should always lie with those that abuse... but those who know and attempt to do nothing, are just as responsible as those who are actively committing the abuse. Abuse of another person, in any shape or form, is a crime. If you don't speak up, if you simply ignore it or "don't want to get involved," you are choosing to allow the abuse to continue, and that is just as much a crime as the abuser is committing. Every single person on this planet deserves to live a life of peace and happiness, to live in safety and freedom. NO ONE deserves to be harmed or abused. We all have an ethical and moral responsibility to speak up and make attempts to stop abuse when we see it. For those that would argue that if someone is being abused, they should just "leave" ... ...

Life is hard. I mean, really hard. Often, we struggle through life, carrying our baggage with us and we simply muddle along until something makes us stop and set the baggage down and leave it behind. Some of us never set the baggage down, some carry that baggage through their entire lives - damaged, weighed down, causing damage to those that cross their paths. When you're living with trauma, it's really easy to simply accept that the pain is just a part of life and so you begin to not even question whether or not that pain is NECESSARY. We don't stop to ask ourselves if we HAVE to carry that pain around, because we've just accepted that it simply IS. But, what if that pain isn't necessary? What if you could live your life without carrying a lifetime's worth of pain with you? Sounds amazing, right? I am learning, after a lifetime of abuse and pain, that it's possible to let the pain go. But first, you have to be willing to let go of the things that hurt ...

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 ...

Love is hard. Loving people is harder. We all have a very normal human desire to both love and be loved. The word love is not a noun, it's a verb. This is where many people get so twisted up when dealing with their love for others. Our society tends to consider love a "thing," when it is an *ACTION.*  We often talk of "loving" things - ice cream, pizza, places, etc. That's not love, that is an intense LIKE of something. Love means we are going to do whatever we can possibly do to ensure another person's happiness or well-being. It is both an action and an emotion. When we love someone, we (hopefully) truly want what is best for them - we want them to be happy, safe, successful, etc. Many times, however, people are quick to use "love" for others as a way to receive love in their own lives. The word love is spoken in an attempt to get the other person to reciprocate. This isn't love. True love doesn't require that the other person ...