Years ago, my girlfriends and I relished the quiet hours when we’d steal away from our male friends to sit beneath the stars with a drink and embark on deep and meaningful conversations.

It seems like a lifetime ago.

As eighteen-year-olds, we did this frequently. Girls need other girls. We need to talk and know someone hears us, and there is nothing like a girlfriend’s ear. We’re good at it, too. It’s like soul and heart therapy wrapped up in a special friendship bundle. Back then, it was boys and relationships that dominated the conversation, and sometimes, Michael Hutchence.

Star…

“Please, show me the way,” I ask the stars. As if their cryptic shine will magically unravel the path ahead of me.

Do the stars answer?

When you ask, the answers are always given. Only, listening to the signs of the universe isn’t as easy as picking up the phone and dialing up the 111-universe help hotline. It would be nice if that were the case but it’s not. And that means it can be easy to ignore the signs when the universe is attempting to collaborate with you.

The trick is that it takes intentional practice to work out…

“When a neighbor gets divorced everyone thinks of his own wife.”

~ Swiss Proverbs

Hmm.

The above quote can be taken two ways.

When a neighbor gets divorced:

a) A man thinks of his own wife and what new experiences may exist for him beyond his marriage, or,

b) A man thinks of his wife and the thought of facing his own divorce makes him shiver in his dirty boots.

Honestly, the latter option screams the truth here.

You know those lengths of sticky fly paper? They come in a box with the ribbons all neatly rolled up inside. Fresh…

A beautiful face will get you everywhere. Almost.

Beauty isn’t all that. We’re so conditioned by the “Halo Effect” that we are fast to assume that beautiful people are happier or that they’ve got it easier because of their above-average looks. How did we wind up so hyper-focused on youth and exterior beauty, anyway? As if being or possessing beauty makes the secret sauce for all of life’s pleasures. Maybe it isn’t fair that some of us come into the world with an advantage like perfect symmetrical features or a multi-million-dollar inheritance. …

“We think we meet someone with our eyes. But we actually meet them with our soul.”

― Mimi Novic

The reality of love is that it is difficult to articulate, define, measure, and rationalize. You might be able to feel it once it appears in your life, but you might not necessarily be able to put your feelings into words. Love is very subjective because the experience can vary from person to person, but its impact on our lives is astonishing nonetheless. Especially when meeting those profound souls destined to influence our life journey in a meaningful way. …

I often wonder why some men refer to women as birds. Could it be as the enlightened German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche suggests?

“Men have hitherto treated women like birds which have strayed down to them from the heights; as something more delicate, more fragile, more savage, stranger, sweeter, soulful — but as something which has to be caged up so that it shall not fly away.”

Interesting perspective.

Birds are small, fragile things. Yet, they chirrup and sing, flutter and nest, and are among the most enchanting creatures to grace the earth.

Birds are enigmas.

They do not attend chair…

When I first met my husband, we both had ex-partners floating around the sidelines of our lives. Having people on the sidelines is like moonlighting — they appear in your life as distractions or as leisurely pursuits with a mutual understanding that the relationship is on the fly.

That’s not to undervalue those people in any way.

Everything for a purpose, right?

My husband had enough moonlighting going on to fill a sin bin, so I can’t be overly confident that his sideliners fulfilled anything meaningful other than sex.

I couldn’t escape them. We managed to bump into some of…