“My dad always told me that things would get better. I guess he was a liar.”

A person I was texting with on Crisis Text Line recently told me this. She had a nightmare childhood and her life kept getting worse as an adult, so she shared this devastating insight with me. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.

We always get told that things will get better. That the darkness won’t last. That the pain won’t linger. That for every valley, a mountaintop is coming.

And perhaps we even tell others these things. I know I’ve used such sentiments hundreds of times.

We say these things because we know that people need hope to keep living.

Plus, for many of us, things do get better with time. We have experienced it ourselves. We uncovered healing after abuse, we learned how to cope with disappointment, we found new medicine or new jobs or new lovers.

But I don’t think that’s everyone’s story. For so many folks I text with, things keep getting worse.

And so what do you do if that’s your story? [Read more…]

When I was in high school, I discovered I love to write. Throughout college and the years after, I wanted to make a career out of writing.

I knew it was hard, and it would take connections, and the right niche, and the right voice, and a lot of effort. Everyone told me that few people make it, but I thought I could be one of the people who made it.

But lately, I’ve been feeling this dream slip away. [Read more…]

There’s a park down the street from us that sits on top of a hill overlooking the Rocky Mountains. When you catch the sunset from there, you can finally understand what purple and blue and orange and pink mountain majesty means.

And there’s a place near nothing but 14,000-feet-above-sea-level peaks where you climb and climb and after breaking through the tree line, you enter into an alpine meadow full of wildflowers and meandering streams and you finally know the feeling of being undone by glory.

And there’s this thin, dry air all around us here that when you breathe it in, you don’t feel any ghosts, and you don’t feel any fear, and you don’t feel any limits.

And all this we are leaving. [Read more…]

It’s ok to be fake.

It’s ok to put on a smiling face.

It’s ok not to be totally honest.

At least sometimes.

Because sometimes the grocery store or a party or the awkward greeting time at church is not the best time to answer the “how are you?” question honestly. [Read more…]