A Blog by Any Other Name Would Be So Sweet

Discover 50 medieval sayings about friendship, fortune, animals and everyday life, and learn what these strange and funny proverbs really mean.

I just wrote a line that I think is important.

Two things can be true at once. There were moments that were good, and the abuse was still abuse.

Abusers aren't necessarily abusive every moment. There may have been times you were happy with them. You may have laughed together, felt loved, or genuinely enjoyed being around them.

Those moments don't mean you were wrong to leave. They don't mean you're wrong to call what happened abuse. They don't cancel out the harm someone caused you.

Sometimes part of processing abuse is learning to hold both truths at once. There were good moments. And what they did to you was still not okay.

Discover ten sayings attributed to Odin in the Hávamál and what they reveal about wisdom, friendship and survival in the medieval Norse world.

You never needed to win a competition you didn't know you were competing in. Your pain was never required to reach some invisible threshold before it deserved compassion.

What happened to you mattered because it mattered to you. And that's enough.

Rare records from a medieval English village are offering new evidence about people who became ill during the Black Death but survived. The documents suggest that most needed three or four weeks before they were able to return to work.

Dark underground dungeons are closely associated with medieval castles, but historical evidence reveals a very different story about imprisonment in the Middle Ages.