“Unforgettable Words: Discover the Heartwarming Secrets Behind 57 Life-Changing Conversations”
“What would make you feel safe right now?”
After I put them through hell and my own father ask them those same words they still heard my own pain and repeated them back to me. Not even my parents have asked me that before, it was something my father and mother were learning in therapy together when everything between me and that person went down and thought I truely was the villain, they still asked me, cared and wanted me to feel and be safe. They knew I was hurting and lashing out just as they do sometimes and though they never had to be involved in my hurt and I pulled them into it anyways they still loved me and offered safety to me. I will never forget that or them. It lives in my mind.
A couple of weeks ago, I was alone in a city i didn’t know, and I had my heart broken in a cafe. The waiter saw that i was upset and asked if I was ok I WEPT, she sat with me and talked to me while I had my coffees and I ordered something to eat. I went to pay and found out she had paid for all of it ( cried again ) it was nice to have someone to sit with.
Ive lost many friends and family in my life and a girl i was like on and off again with sent me this after my best friend of 32 years died tragically.
“but i really have always admired how strong and sweet of a person you are in every unfair situation like this. Its such a big part of your character i really love.”.
One night while in the newborn trenches with my son, I was struggling and crying. Just really emotional. I can’t remember exactly what I said, something about feeling ugly, and my husband who I had been with 10 years at that point told me “I have never been more attracted to you, watching you be a mom to our son is beautiful, you are beautiful “ and it plays in my head still on hard days.
Someone once told me “No one else is going to live your life for you, make the choices that YOU want because only YOU are going to live with those choices.” That is now a core value in my life. It resonates so deeply I can’t explain how much those simple words touched me.
This is stupid, but I stopped relaxing my hair like 17 years ago, at a time when you’d catch grief from all sides for doing so. Everyone is telling you that you’re only pretty/acceptable/presentable when your hair has been chemically straightened, and your job is telling you that your natural hair is “unprofessional” (I was enlisted). One day I was rocking a straight lion’s mane at this gas station in some small-town pocket of Arkansas, the kind where I could have been the only black woman within an hour of any direction. This burly, tatted up Hell’s Angel’s looking biker dude walked past me and very genuinely said, ‘damn sister, I like your hair!’ and I really appreciated it. Didn’t expect it coming from him, is all, especially since it was coming from nowhere else.
I was out with my kids at a restaurant on some daddy day care vibe.
Wife needed a break.
Kids were 1 and 3
We were just having fun like we normally do
Im running around feeding my daughter and son is helping.
Older lady comes up to the table and says “She needed a break huh”
I laughed and said yes
She put her hand on my shoulder and said “thank you “
I said for what
She said for reminding her what happiness looks like
That f****d me up.
I worked the front desk at a yoga studio/spa for a while. I loved it; interacting with all of the people that would come in gave me life. I didn’t realize how extroverted I actually was until I started working there. I got to know all the regulars, remembering everyone’s name and trying to make them all feel warm, welcome, and special. One day, one of the older regulars came in and handed me an envelope. He had typed me a letter that brought me to absolute tears, talking about how big my light was and how truly transformative my weekly welcome to him had been, as a person who had rarely felt welcome anywhere his whole life. At the time, I was struggling with a lot of my own darkness and the fact that I had any ounce of light was genuinely news to me. My heart needed that.
When I was a teenager, I was sent to military school. I’d always been a bit rough around the edges—kind of a troublemaker—but never a bad person at heart. I never finished high school because of some family issues, and later in life, I found out I had bipolar disorder type 2 and ADHD. I didn’t even realize it at the time, but my dad told me that my younger sister had been diagnosed with the same conditions, and he thought I should get evaluated too. He said she reminded him so much of me, and he wanted me to know because, being the old-school guy he is, he never really talked about emotions or apologized much.
Then he told me:
“Hey man, I’m sorry.
I didn’t know.
I thought you needed discipline.
You just needed my help.”
