Blog
Living in the Spirit of Friendship
“Couples need to learn to be friends, to live with each other in a spirit of friendship, to take the quality of friendship as a guide through the tangles we have made of love.”
The Space, the Bridge, and the Encounter
Hedy Schleifer and the power of connection: “Our relationship lives in the space between us. It doesn’t live in me or in you or even in the dialogue between the two of us. It lives in the space that we live together.”
The Partner You Want to Be: Shifting Focus from Finding to Becoming
The most revolutionary thing you can do in dating is to stop asking "Are they right for me?" and start asking "Am I becoming the partner I want to be?" This shift in focus changes everything—not just how you show up in relationships, but the quality of connection you attract and create.
The Dating App Cycle: Why You Keep Deleting and Re-downloading
While it's easy to blame the apps themselves, the deeper issue often lies in how we approach dating altogether. Most of us download these apps seeking external validation and someone who understands us. We're focused entirely on finding rather than being.
Book Review: "It Takes One to Tango" by Winifred M. Reilly
If you've ever felt stuck in your relationship, wondering if change is possible when your partner seems unwilling or unable to meet you halfway, this book offers both hope and a practical roadmap forward. Winifred Reilly, a Marriage and Family Therapist with decades of experience treating couples, presents a refreshingly honest and empowering approach: you can transform your relationship by focusing on what you can control—yourself.
In Defense of Couples Therapy: Getting Help is a Sign of Strength, Not Failure
Seeking couples therapy isn't admitting defeat. It's declaring war on complacency.
Parts Work: A Gentle Approach to Your Inner World
Parts work recognizes that we all contain multiple perspectives, emotions, and needs within us — this is our fundamental nature. This approach views internal conflict as a conversation between different aspects of yourself, each with its own concerns and wisdom. Rather than trying to eliminate difficult emotions, parts work invites you to listen to all aspects of your experience with curiosity and care.
Navigating Pregnancy Loss as a Couple: When Grief Looks Different for Each Parent
When a couple experiences a pregnancy loss, each partner may experience and express their grief in profoundly different ways. Understanding how grief can manifest differently for each parent, and learning to navigate these differences together, can be crucial for both individual healing and relationship strength during this difficult time.
Disenfranchised Grief and Pregnancy Loss: Understanding Your Valid and Natural Response
The loss of a pregnancy—whether through miscarriage, stillbirth, or other circumstances—brings profound grief that can feel overwhelming and isolating. Understanding the concept of disenfranchised grief can help explain why this loss may feel particularly challenging to navigate in our society.
The Reality of Pet Loss Grief
The grief you feel when your animal companion dies is real, profound, and deserving of recognition—even if the world around you doesn't always understand.
When Your Grief Doesn't "Count": Understanding Disenfranchised Grief
Disenfranchised grief occurs when society doesn't acknowledge your right to grieve a particular loss. Your pain is real, your sense of loss profound, but the world around you may minimize it, ignore it, or expect you to "get over it" quickly.
Journaling, Part Three: Overcoming Obstacles and Making the Practice Your Own
If you want to try journaling but feel inhibited by that persistent voice insisting your journal should be aesthetically pleasing or filled with profound insights, I encourage you to keep experimenting. That voice is standing between you and a potentially transformative practice.
Journaling, Part Two: Tools, Methods, and Finding What Works for You
I have a strict policy against buying blank books that feel too expensive or precious; I simply don't want that kind of pressure. Journals are tools, not objects of reverence. A journal should be like a hammer or a spatula — you want a tool that fits the task at hand, not one so intimidating that you can't even begin to use it. The best journal is the one you’ll actually use.
Journaling, Part One: A 27-Year Love Affair
Journaling has been my most faithful companion through decades of life's twists and turns. During times of anxiety or grief, my journal offered refuge — a judgment-free space where my raw, unfiltered thoughts could live. I'll never forget the day I found an old black-and-white Composition Book during a painful breakup. As I flipped through the pages filled with my own handwriting, I was stunned. The relationship problems crushing me now were documented there in my own words — five years earlier, during our first months together. Finding that journal became more than an eye-opening moment. It created a through line, connecting present-me with past-me, reestablishing trust in my own inner knowing.
Untethering Shame Podcast: A Conversation on Aging
It was a great pleasure to talk about shame and aging with Kyira Wackett on her podcast, Untethering Shame. We discussed how our death discomfort makes aging even more scary, how our values of ourselves change as we age, and how to see our aging bodies with curiosity versus shame & judgment.