There’s a hard truth many of us learn only after we’ve been bruised by love: You cannot change someone by loving them harder. Maybe you’ve been there—giving all you had, hoping your unconditional love would be enough to soften their words, change their actions, or finally make them see your worth. You stayed quiet to…
Category: loving self
Dear Me,
Wow! Happy Birthday! Can you believe you’re fifty-five? Where do I start? Today marks a new beginning for you. Only time will tell how it’ll move forward, but it’s a step that you have to take. You deserve it. When you first moved here with no family around, you stepped courageously into the unknown. How…
What’s Your Love Language?
If you look up the meaning of love, it is defined as an intense feeling of deep affection. But what you do with that intense feeling of deep affection is what really shows love, at least in my humble opinion. Saying you love someone is easy. Showing that love is another story. My father’s love…
Our Kintsugi
Nowadays, we have all kinds of applications and filters to make everything look good, perfect, and unblemished. We have everything we can use to hide our flaws and everything else that we think of as imperfections. Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery with gold, highlighting the cracks rather than hiding them. It symbolizes…
Drained
I find myself looking for “drained” quotes to somehow find answers to how I am feeling the past several weeks. As I scroll through some famous quotes, I realized that none can define how I am feeling right now. Which proves that our situations vary and our feelings are our own. Perhaps, I have been…
Seasons
When I look up the meaning of seasons, the words that stand out aside from the obvious are: Results of the earth’s CHANGING position. To SEASON to taste. To make wood SUITABLE for use. To season wood. As you can see, no matter what it refers to, changes need to happen. The same goes with…
Your Oubaitori
Have you heard of the word Oubaitori? Oubaitori is an ancient Japanese idiom that comes from the kanji for the four trees (cherry blossoms, plum, peach and apricot) that blooms in spring. Each flower blooms in its own time and the meaning behind the idiom is that we all grow and bloom at our own…
Who Are You?
It’s 3 a.m. (3:12 to be exact). And just like as always, I try to make myself fall back to sleep by scrolling through my social media account. Sometimes it works, at other times it doesn’t. While I was scrolling, I saw this article about motherhood. That of being a stay at home mother. The…
Don’t Do That
“Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.” Markus Zusak I feel like it’s been forever since I tried writing my thoughts down. For the past several years, I’ve been very open about my feelings. I have no qualms in showing my vulnerability to others. I…
{Brave}
“The only way to being at peace with yourself is to be accepting and loving of who you are.” Let me share you a story. Before I started blogging fourteen years ago, I was in a woman’s group and from there I became aware of this thing called blogging. And I told myself, Charina…you can…