One of the most empowering messages of my life was actually an attempt to seduce me.
At the height of my quarterlife crisis, I was living in Shanghai, at a mouse-and-roach infested hostel, next to one of the most fetid wet markets I’ve ever smelled in my life. We’re talking offal and fish guts perennially rotting in the street outside my door. I was broke. Technically homeless. Roughly 8000 miles from everyone who loved me. Circumstances were not ideal. And this was when and where I met a great guy we’ll call “Alex.”
Alex was my neighbor, and from the night we met, people assumed we were an item, so palpable was our chemistry. I sensed…
A friend did this for me years ago, and it changed my life
Ten years ago, I was next-to-broke. I’d just quit a Ph.D. program and, with it, the stipend that had been my paycheck. My new plan was to move to East Asia to teach English sometime the following year. Problem was, I needed a job to survive on locally before I moved… and finding one was taking longer than I’d bargained for. That’s when my friend “Britney” (*name changed) made me an offer I couldn’t refuse:
“You can name your price. I’ll pay you $40 an hour minimum. I REFUSE to pay you any less than that.”
She wanted me to…
And cuts you off from your *real* source of power
There’s stuff I like about the law of attraction. I like that it encourages us to think outside the limitations of our current circumstances and give ourselves license to believe we deserve good things. I like the L.O.A.’s inherent reminder that optimism is a potent “tool” for setting us on a wavelength of opportunity. I like how it helps us remember to be mindful of the quality of our self-talk. I especially like that it encourages us to cultivate an attitude of gratitude.
All of this can be very healthy.
But the L.O.A. has also been a nightmare for my…
Gripping fears and compulsions made spirituality distressing for me — rather than uplifting — for a very long time
Guilt is fundamental to Catholicism. Weekly worship services kick off with a collective mea culpa about all the ways everyone has sinned — not just in their actions, but also in their inactions AND their mere thoughts. Then there’s the notion of original sin, which holds that we’re all born fundamentally bad and need purifying rituals to escape eternal suffering. And let’s not forget the whole central concept of a God who essentially required something of a human sacrifice in order to forgive our imperfections.
Some people are able to take all that guilt, put it into proper perspective, and…
His relationship with money helped me see what I was ignoring about his character
A few weeks before I graduated from college, my university offered me a full-time teaching contract. The salary wasn’t high, but for a 22-year-old from a blue-collar background, I was in a good financial place. I had low-maintenance wants and took satisfaction each month in investing for my retirement, paying my credit card in full (using it just to accumulate perks), putting extra on my loans… and helping to support my boyfriend.
Gonzalo (*names changed) was already saddled with hefty debt from a luxury vehicle he’d purchased during college, and he was struggling to find enough work to support himself…
Could the universe be trying to tell me something?
Last Thursday, as I dragged my unwilling body toward the couch to crack open my laptop and resume my work — some dissertation or other because I was, at the time, committed to two dissertations at once — I groaned aloud to no one in particular:
“I don’t even want to do this anymore.”
This as in, my whole job.
And somebody out there in the invisible must’ve heard me.
At age 26, when my inner creative, inner mystic, and inner nomad all decided to flee the ivory tower, academic editing was just supposed to pay the rent while I…
What NOT to say if you want to console, validate, or empower your friends
In younger years, I was operating on a lot of misconceptions about what makes relationships work. It took me until my 30s, years of therapy, and writing a master’s thesis on relationship abuse before I finally deprogrammed myself from the misguided beliefs I’d internalized and found myself in a genuinely healthy, mutually respectful and rewarding intimate relationship.
On the bright side, at least I learned a lot from the connections that didn’t work out — including what not to say to a vulnerable friend when they come seeking guidance in their quest for romantic happiness. …
And why I love this kind of ritual
I believe places have spirits we can commune with. By this, I don’t mean that spirits inhabit places. (Although I think this too…) Rather, places themselves often seem to have a soul. Spirits of ocean, of mountain, of hearth-and-home. Landscapes wrought as cosmic love-children, born of the meld between Earth’s tectonic might and meteorological beauty. Special structures shaped by human hands, and nestled — with the landscape’s permission — into their current locales. I think some settings were long-ago destined to serve as epic hosts in the grand Story of Souls that would play out on this planet — and…
Residence Life said that if we weren’t roommates, it would be a stalking situation
At age 18, when I received the contact info for my randomly-assigned roommate, I thought I’d hit the jackpot. Let’s call her (not her real name) Kersti. I was a water sign, she was a water sign. I loved Shakira, she loved Shakira. I’d be studying Portuguese, she wanted to study Portuguese. We’d chat online for hours, excited for the day we’d finally meet. I couldn’t believe the university matched me with someone so fun to talk to and so similar in terms of interests.
Little did I know that just two weeks after move-in, I’d be sitting in my…
I can travel for weeks without a single checked bag. Here’s how.
For my first big overseas vacation, I brought a full-sized suitcase. Possibly two. Aaaand, knowing myself, likely also a giant purse. I almost cringe now to think of lugging a caravan’s worth of belongings around and cluttering up my hotel/hostel rooms with stuff. Was the burden of over-preparedness really better than the possibility of being under-packed? No way. Unfortunately, that was the only way I knew.
Fast-forward a few years, though, and I found myself hopping around Spain and Portugal for 3 weeks without a single checked bag — just a flimsy €5 backpack and a purse. …
