nsana

“When your parter confides in you about a problem they’ve faced, and your first response is to try to fix it, what this says to your partner is not that you care enough to help, but that you don’t believe they’re capable of figuring out a solution by themselves. This is one of the most common ways to miss your partner because you bypassed empathy when that’s the only thing they were looking for. When your partner confides in you, resist problem solving. If they want solutions, they’ll ask for your input, but what they most likely want is connection, which looks like asking questions, empathizing, and never siding with the enemy. All they want is to be heard, to know they’re not alone, and to feel that you’re on their side.”

“You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in.”

I think there is a certain age, for women, when you become fearless. It may be a different age for every woman, I don’t know. It’s not that you stop fearing things: I’m still afraid of heights, for example. Or rather, of falling — heights aren’t the problem. But you stop fearing life itself. It’s when you become fearless in that way that you decide to live. Perhaps it’s when you come to the realization that the point of life isn’t to be rich, or secure, or even to be loved — to be any of the things that people usually think is the point. The point of life is to live as deeply as possible, to experience fully. And that can be done in so many ways.

Kindness begins with understanding we all struggle.