Quotes from Mira Kirshenbaum

If there's something your partner does that makes your relationship too bad to stay in, and he acknowledges it, but he's in fact unwilling to do anything about it, and if his unwillingness has been clear for at least six months, you'll be happier if you leave.

People do the same thing with problem partners. If you've waited a year for your partner to change, you're almost magically drawn into waiting another year. And then how can you not wait two more years after waiting the first two years?

But you can only give so much of yourself away before you lose yourself.

It was always to free up some part of themselves that never would've come to light. Now they could burst free. And this part of themselves that was freed pointed directly toward where they would feel at home in the world.

There are many paths you can follow to forgiveness. that was one: Understand that your present is different from your past. Here's another: Focus on how it's hurt you not to forgive yourself and on what you need to be safe.

Now here's the good part. It was the part where Monica told me was the reason her life had seemed to collapse. It was to give her what she needed so she'd didn't feel incomplete and unfulfilled anymore.

What many Christians focus on is a view of the world as full of opportunities for grace.

classic psychological technique of dissociation, where they distance themselves from their own emotions as a way of coping with the bad things that are happening to them. They train themselves to stop feeling what they're feeling.

Discovering a hidden talent is actually a very big deal. It can save your life, as it did for my mother. It can save your emotional life, giving you the hope and energy to go on, as it did for Josie. It can save the life of the real you, the part of you that's special.

Knowing there's a reason for what happens also saves us from being filled with blame.

put up an inner barrier that allowed him to not seem to experience the feelings his partner's putdowns must have been stimulating in him.

If you see someone struggling with sadness, anxiety, and negativity, listen to his story. You'll soon see he's living in a world where all he sees are things to blame because he lives without positive meanings for what happened to him. Then only cure is to restore the sense that there is a good reason for everything that happens.