“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.” ~Carl Jung “You’re just like your mother.” I came across those words in a post recently, followed by a response that made me pause: “Actually, I’m my mother’s revenge. I’m the voice she didn’t have and the boundary she couldn’t set.” It…
I stopped drinking ten months ago. It’s the longest I’ve ever gone. I’ve been thinking a lot about what finally made me stop because the truth is, I loved drinking. I really did. Drinking was such a big part of my life. It was part of growing up, part of my Irish culture, part of friendships, celebrations, dinners, weddings,…
“Vulnerability minus boundaries is not vulnerability.” ~Brené Brown It’s ten at night, and I’m sprawled on the couch at the end of a long day, messaging an old friend from grad school. My wife is already in the slow process of heading to bed, the kids are asleep, and the house is quiet enough for a conversation to feel…
For most of my life, I had a second full-time job. Nobody hired me for it. Nobody paid me. But it ate more hours than anything else I did. The job was pretending to be normal. I am autistic. Growing up, I didn’t always have that word for it, but I knew one thing for sure: I was different,…
I know myself pretty well by now. I’ve had seven decades to work on the case, and I’m not exactly known for leaving a question alone. I know what matters to me. What gives me energy. What drains it. What I want more of. And what I have absolutely no intention of putting up with again. At seventy, I’ve…
“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.” ~Mary Oliver I’ve spent much of my life living in fear of countless imagined tragedies—especially the untimely death of those I love. Growing up, within the span of a few years, three…
“Children are not things to be molded, but people to be unfolded.” ~Jess Lair Growing up, I was often drawn to classmates who were soft-spoken and gentle. I admired how calm they seemed, because inside me was the opposite. I had a temper that flared at the smallest things. I always gravitated toward people and situations that gave me…
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” ~Albert Camus A little over a year ago, I went to a bookstore on a cold night to meet a friend at the café. It’s taken me this long to finally write about it. We had one of those conversations you need when…
“Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.” ~ Bessel van der Kolk For years, I thought my anxiety was a character flaw. I thought I could think my way through it. Reason with myself long enough, and I’d finally get to the other side of it. I never did. Every time I thought I had made peace with it, something small would happen, and I’d be right back…
“I once heard someone say that a sign of enlightenment was the ability to say (and mean it) ‘Well, this isn’t what I want, but it’s what I got, so okay.’” ~Sylvia Boorstein I once met a speed-cuber, one of those people who could solve a Rubik’s Cube in sixty seconds. Nice friendly young guy. I hated him. Not…
