My daughters tease me because I cry pretty easily at movies. I think a lot of times it’s the cueing of the sad music, but sometimes I can’t explain why. A few years ago, I famously cried at the trailer for the remake of Pete’s Dragon. That’s just embarrassing. Last night, I took my two […]
If you are from the southwest or San Francisco, you are used to hippy-dippy, new-age spiritualism and will not laugh when I tell you what kinds of referrals I got. Everyone else, know this: ask for therapy here, and you get referrals to: reflexology, aromatherapy, crystal therapy, hot stone therapy, sweat therapy, neuro-linguistic programming, massage, scare therapy, rebirthing and on and on. I was really asking for talk therapy, but I figured, what the heck, I should be open to anything that might open my heart again to a man for whom I’d lost all respect. Marriage was forever, and maybe there was a magic therapy I could sign up for?
The conundrum of being a strong girl is that often the people who are attracted to you are weak. It’s like the law of attraction coming back around to kick your butt. If you manage hard situations well, you gain competence and strength and that in turn brings people to you who need you to figure out their problems, to fix them. And a good girl always helps others out. It’s what makes her good.
At least in high school, my peers and I all had the commonality of believing that everything sucked. College, by contrast, was a world of people talking about how great college life was,.
I would never have predicted that the person who would understand best what was going on in my marriage would be a celibate priest.
I might suffer impostor syndrome in my career, but I have never doubted that I am the best person to be raising my children.
The reality is that I’m still angry and I suck at pretending. Women coming out of bad marriages need to find their strength, and that strength might only come by hanging onto some anger.
I had long ago bought into the idea that smart choices would lead to a happy, fulfilling life. Turns out it was all bullshit.
I thought somehow that rules were made by wise people who knew best, and didn’t realize until way late that most of them are just a form of mob rule.
