It’s a strange time to be alive. The political climate in the United States has divided people in ways I never remember experiencing before. Lines have been drawn through families, friendships, communities. Things that once felt like differences of opinion now feel like fundamental breaks in values. For a long time, I tried to tolerate that. I told myself that love meant making room. That family meant endurance. That disagreement didn’t have to be disqualifying. Until one day

For a long time, I believed I had failed to protect my boundaries in my marriage. That I had allowed too much. That I hadn’t spoken up clearly or firmly enough. That I had somehow participated in my own erasure. But that story doesn’t quite hold. Inside the relationship, I didn’t really have boundaries. Not because I didn’t enforce them — but because I had never learned they were allowed to exist. As a child, I had no privacy. None. My phone calls were listened to. My belongi

The first time someone asked me who I was outside of my marriage, I didn’t know how to answer. Not because I didn’t want to. Because the question didn’t make sense yet. By the time my marriage collapsed, I was in my fifties. I had lived an entire life inside that relationship. I had raised children. I had endured things. I had adapted, survived, functioned. The girl I had been before it all felt like a stranger. I was in therapy three times a week then. Not for growth. Not fo