suffering
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I have lived on the margins twice in my life, and from the outside I know it looks the same. That’s the strange part. Same distance from the center, same refusal to live the way everyone tells you to live, same sense of standing slightly outside the flow of things, watching instead of participating. But…
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Modern psychology loves the term self-actualization. It sounds noble: becoming the best version of yourself, realizing your potential, living authentically. Maslow built his pyramid around it. Therapists sell it. Influencers turn it into morning routines and affirmations. But strip away the language, and you’ll see an old hunger dressed in new words, the same longing…
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Somewhere along the road, we were told that to matter, we had to harden. That softness was weakness. That to succeed, we had to compete like men, speak like men, perform like men. And in many ways, the world rewarded us when we did. But something sacred was lost. Womanhood is not a costume to…
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In the turbulent waters of my heroin addiction, I was a sailor lost, my vessel breaking against the jagged shores of despair. Every needle was a desperate row, an attempt to steer away from the wreckage I was becoming. My oars, stained with the shadows of self-destruction, fought against the currents that whispered of a…
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They always have a backstory, don’t they? Some excuse tucked into the folds of their history— a troubled childhood, a lonely adolescence, an addiction, a trauma (a trauma just like mine, funny how that works). And so the world wrings its hands. Poor man. He didn’t mean it. He was hurting. He needs help. They…
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I would love to hear from you! Sharing Saturday with you. A Jewel: I love John Eldridge of Wild at Heart ministry. I want to share one of his daily readings with you, “I love feeling happy. Absolutely love it. Who doesn’t? But my pursuit of it has sometimes gotten me into trouble. I’m pretty…
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In this land of polished smiles and hollow promises, we drape ourselves in the pretense of cherishing our children. We construct monuments of virtue, each brick laid with declarations of their importance. Yet, beneath this facade, our actions whisper truths too bitter to acknowledge. We parade our offspring as trophies, their achievements our own reflected…
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Childhood trauma is an inheritance no child asks for. A ghost sewn into the seams of small, trembling bodies. It lingers in the marrow, in the hush of a locked door, in the filth of hands that should have protected but instead desecrated. Incest—an unspoken horror—warps time, fractures identity, leaves a child stranded in a…
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I love this country. I always have. When I travel abroad, it is only a greater love I feel when I return. But, America, where is your courage? We may be the land of the brave but we have lost our courage. The words are used interchangeably, but they are not the same. Brave is…
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There was a time when I was nothing but smoke… a shapeless thing moving through my own life, consumed by the fire I set with my own hands. I burned through the nights, through the empty bottles, through the hollow applause of lovers who never knew my name. I lived as if the darkness was…