Tag: abuse

Chosen

Kristine Binder

My therapist asked me a question recently that stopped me in my tracks. “What if you started seeing yourself through the eyes of the people who appreciate you, rather than through the eyes of the people whose approval you’ve been trying to win?”
Well, damn…..
Because if I’m being truthful, I have spent a good portion of my life trying to be enough for people who don’t always see me that way. And nowhere has that been more complicated than in motherhood.
I have five adult children. Five people I love more than I could ever adequately put into words. Five people I spent decades raising, worrying about, advocating for, celebrating, and occasionally wanting to sell to the circus.
And now they’re adults. Which, by the way, nobody really prepares you for. We spend years learning how to be mothers. We read the books, make the appointments, pack the lunches, remember the birthdays, and sit through the games, concerts, conferences, and performances. We lose sleep over fevers, friendships, heartbreaks, and decisions that aren’t ours to make. We become experts in anticipating what everyone needs, sometimes before they even know they need it. And somewhere along the way, we forget to ask ourselves what WE need.
Then one day, the children grow up. They build lives, find partners, establish traditions and routines that don’t necessarily include us, and make decisions without asking our opinions. Which is exactly what we raised them to do. And we are proud. So incredibly proud. But there’s a strange grief that comes with raising independent adults. You spend years being essential to someone’s everyday life, and suddenly you’re optional. Nobody tells you how to navigate that. Nobody tells you how to stop measuring your worth by how often the phone rings, how often you get a text, whether you’re invited, or whether someone chooses to spend time with you. And nobody tells you how much it can hurt to realize that the people you would choose first every single time might not always choose you at all.
I’ve had this conversation with so many women, often in hushed tones, as though we’re confessing some terrible maternal sin. We talk about feeling left out, unappreciated, or unsure of where we fit in our adult children’s lives. We admit that sometimes we’re lonely, sometimes we’re hurt, and sometimes we’d just like someone to text or, god forbid….. make a phone call…… because they actually WANT to talk to us, not because they need the family Netflix password. And then, almost inevitably, we feel guilty for saying any of it. Because somewhere along the way, women were handed the ridiculous expectation that good mothers should be endlessly giving, endlessly available, and endlessly grateful for whatever scraps of attention come our way. We’re supposed to be thrilled that our children are independent, never mind that independence occasionally feels like we’ve been laid off from a job we worked around the clock for decades. No severance package, no retirement party, and apparently no exit interview.
And heaven forbid we admit that we want something for ourselves…. that we want to be included, appreciated, or even chosen. Somehow, wanting a life outside of motherhood is still treated as selfish, while sacrificing every bit of ourselves is practically a competitive sport. We’ve been conditioned to believe that a good mother puts herself last. And after decades of doing exactly that, we’re supposed to magically know how to put ourselves first without feeling guilty. I’d love to know who came up with this arrangement because I’d like a word.
I have spent years examining my mistakes, apologizing for things I wish I had done differently, and trying to repair relationships complicated by divorce, changing family dynamics, and the simple fact that we’re all human. I believe in accountability and growth. I believe we can acknowledge the ways we’ve hurt people without allowing those mistakes to become our entire identity. But I’m beginning to understand that there is a difference between taking responsibility for your past and spending the rest of your life apologizing and trying to earn forgiveness. There is an enormous difference between loving someone and needing their approval to feel worthy of love. And at some point, continuing to audition for a role you’ve already spent decades playing becomes exhausting.
I think that’s where I find myself these days. Trying to figure out how to be the mother of adults without losing myself in the process. Learning when to reach out and when to give space, when to offer advice and when to keep my mouth shut. (That last one remains a work in progress!) And perhaps most importantly, trying to understand that their choices are not necessarily a reflection of my worth. I can know all of this intellectually and still feel hurt when I’m not included or when my efforts seem to go unnoticed/unacknowledged. Knowing something and actually living it are two very different things. Apparently, at sixty, there are still plenty of lessons left to learn.
Because here’s the thing. There are people in my life who genuinely enjoy my company. People who invite me places, laugh at my ridiculous stories, appreciate my kindness, my humor, my occasionally inappropriate commentary, and my ability to show up with snacks, flowers, or whatever else might make someone’s day a little better. There are friends who choose me, colleagues who appreciate me, and former students who remember me. People who see the good in me without requiring a dissertation on everything I’ve ever done wrong. And yet, how often do I overlook all of that because I’m focused on the approval I haven’t received? How many wonderful moments have I diminished because I was thinking about who wasn’t there? Too many, I’m afraid.
Maybe that’s the lesson I’m supposed to be learning in this season. Not how to make people choose me, but how to stop abandoning myself while waiting for them. For nearly sixty years, I’ve been somebody’s daughter, sister, wife, mother, teacher, friend, caregiver, and problem solver. I’ve spent a lifetime making sure everyone else had what they needed, often at the expense of figuring out what I needed. And now, with my children grown, no partner and both of my parents gone, I’m finding myself in a place I never anticipated. For the first time in my adult life, there isn’t someone who depends on me in quite the same way. There is freedom in that, certainly, but there is also a loneliness that I don’t think we talk about nearly enough.
I’m learning to ask myself questions that once seemed almost selfish. What do I want to do today? Where do I want to go? What would make ME happy? Not what would make me useful, or what would make someone proud of me, or what might earn me an invitation or a little more affection. Just what would bring me joy. Maybe it’s taking a long walk with no particular destination. Maybe it’s eating exactly what I want without worrying about anyone else’s preferences. Maybe it’s spending an entire afternoon reading, needlepointing, or doing absolutely nothing productive. Imagine that. A woman who spent decades taking care of everyone else deciding that her own happiness deserves a place on the calendar. Revolutionary stuff, right?
And none of this means I love my children any less. I will always be their mother. I will always celebrate their successes, worry when life gets hard, and hope they know there’s always a safe place to land with me. But I also want relationships with them that grow because we enjoy each other, not because I am constantly trying to prove that I deserve a place. I want to know them as adults, and I want them to know me as a person, not simply as the woman who raised them. I want to laugh with them, share experiences, make new memories, and build something different from the relationships we had when they were little. And I want to leave room for those relationships to evolve, even when that evolution doesn’t happen on my timeline ……which, for the record, would probably be yesterday.
I’m beginning to realize that I can love them fiercely without chasing them. I can leave the door open without standing in the doorway waiting. I can acknowledge the hurt without making it the center of my life. And I can be proud of the mother I’ve been while still becoming the woman I want to be. Maybe that’s what this next chapter is really about. Learning that I don’t have to audition for a place in anyone’s life. Learning that being needed and being loved are not the same thing. Learning that my worth didn’t disappear when my children stopped needing me to manage their everyday lives. And learning to look at myself through the eyes of the people who already see something wonderful in me, including, eventually, my own.
I’m still figuring it out. Some days are easier than others. Some days the hurt gets the better of me, and I find myself wondering what I could do differently to be more lovable, more appreciated, more included. I can recognize that I have a full and beautiful life and still wish certain people were more present in it. Those feelings can coexist. Grief and joy have been sharing space in my life for a while now, and apparently they’re making room for a few more complicated emotions. But I’m getting better at recognizing when I’m allowing someone else’s choices to determine how I feel about myself. And I’m reminding myself that I am allowed to have a beautiful, full, joyful life even when some of the relationships I treasure aren’t what I wish they were.
Perhaps the most important thing I’m learning is that I don’t have to stop loving anyone to start loving myself. I don’t have to become harder, colder, or less available. I can remain the person who loves deeply, shows up, remembers the little things, and believes in the importance of family. But I can also extend some of that same tenderness, patience, and generosity to myself. After all, I’ve spent a lifetime teaching my children that they are worthy of love simply because of who they are. Maybe it’s time I started believing that about myself.
And maybe it’s time we stopped treating mothers who want something for themselves as though they’ve violated some sacred oath of self-sacrifice. We chose to be mothers and raise humans, we did not sign up for a lifelong obligation to erase ourselves.
So I’m returning to that question. What if I started seeing myself through the eyes of the people who appreciate me instead of the people whose approval I’ve been trying to win? What if I stopped keeping score of the invitations I didn’t receive and started appreciating the ones I did? What if I stopped wondering why someone didn’t choose me and started paying attention to all the people who do? And what if, after all these years of putting everyone else first, I finally gave myself permission to build a life that I love, regardless of who decides to be part of it?
I don’t have all the answers. But I do know that motherhood doesn’t end when our children grow up. It evolves, and so must we. Maybe this next season isn’t about doing more, trying harder, or proving our worth. Maybe it’s about trusting that the love we’ve given matters, even when it isn’t acknowledged in the ways we’d hoped. Maybe it’s about finding joy in being a mother without allowing motherhood to be the only thing that defines us. And maybe, after all these years of choosing everyone else, it’s time to choose ourselves, too. Not instead of them, but alongside them. Because wanting to be loved, appreciated, and included doesn’t make us needy. It makes us human. And wanting a life of our own doesn’t make us selfish. It makes us women who finally understand that we matter, too.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Nine

Kristine Binder

It has been nine years since I signed the papers that officially ended my marriage. Eleven years since the whole process began. If you had shown the woman I was eleven years ago a picture of my life today and told her, This is where you’re going to end up, I would not have believed you. Actually, I probably would have laughed at you. And depending on what particular day of those eleven years you caught me on, I might have had a few other choice words for you too. But here we are.
Every year when this date rolls around, I think about what I have learned since signing those papers. You would think after nine years I would have this whole post-divorce, rebuilding-a-life thing figured out. Apparently, life did not get that memo. The list of things I continue to learn just keeps getting longer, and this year I think one of the biggest lessons has been that loss comes in so many more forms than I ever understood.
We tend to think about loss as death, and unfortunately I now understand that kind of loss far better than I ever wanted to. But there are so many other losses we don’t really talk about. There is the loss of a marriage and the family you thought you would always have. The loss of the dreams you had for yourself and others. The loss of relationships with people who are still very much alive. The loss of friendships, traditions, jobs, homes, plans, expectations and versions of ourselves we thought would be around forever. Sometimes there isn’t a funeral or a sympathy card or even an acknowledgment that something important has ended. You just wake up one day and realize that something you thought would always be there isn’t anymore.
And grief, as it turns out, is just as creative. Sometimes it arrives exactly when you expect it. Other times it sneaks up on you in the grocery store, on a walk, while driving, or because some song you have heard 847 times suddenly decides that today it is going to destroy you. Grief has absolutely no respect for schedules, plans or the fact that you just put mascara on. Rude.
Recently, I wrote about finally giving my grief a name. I call her Edith. Naming her has helped me understand that grief isn’t something I am going to conquer or eventually leave behind. Edith and I are apparently in this for the long haul, so we are learning how to live together. Some days she sits quietly in the corner and lets me get on with things. Other days she makes herself entirely too comfortable and acts like she owns the place. We didn’t choose each other, but if we’re going to be together, we’re learning to make the best of the arrangement. And maybe that’s another thing these nine years have taught me: not everything we carry has to disappear for us to keep moving forward.
Because loss comes in many forms, grief comes in many forms, but so does joy. So does happiness. And so does peace.
I think for a long time I expected happiness to look big. I thought rebuilding a life meant creating some shiny, fabulous new one that would prove everything had worked out. But some of the happiest parts of my life now are ridiculously ordinary. The sun on my face during a morning walk. Music in my ears. A really good book. Laughing with my kids. A conversation with a stranger I almost didn’t stop to have. Sitting in my own home and realizing how peaceful it feels. Going somewhere by myself and not thinking twice about it. Making plans because I want to make them and changing them because I want to change them.
There is a freedom in that which the woman from eleven years ago couldn’t possibly have understood. And I don’t just mean the freedom that came with signing those papers. That was one kind of freedom, certainly. But there is another kind that has taken me much longer to recognize.
There is a certain freedom that comes with the release of all the expectations attached to the people and relationships you lose along the way.
For much of my life, I carried a lot of ideas about who I was supposed to be. A wife should do this. A mother should do that. A daughter should be this. A friend should be that. This person expects this from me, that person needs that from me, and somewhere in all of those expectations was the person I thought everyone needed me to be. Some of those expectations were spoken. Plenty of them weren’t. And, if we’re being fair, more than a few of them were probably expectations I put on myself and then conveniently blamed on everyone else.
But when relationships change or end, something unexpected can happen. The expectations connected to them begin to fall away too. Sometimes painfully. Sometimes slowly. And sometimes with the surprising realization of, Wait. I don’t have to do that anymore.
There is grief in that. Absolutely. But there can also be freedom.
Freedom to decide what actually matters to me now. Freedom to change my mind. Freedom to stop explaining choices that don’t require an explanation. Freedom to discover who I am when I am no longer trying to fulfill a role someone else assigned me… or one I assigned myself thirty years ago and somehow forgot I was allowed to resign from if I had the wherewithal.
Turns out, there was no exit interview required.
Peace has surprised me even more. I used to think peace came when everything was resolved. When all the questions had answers, all the relationships were repaired, everyone understood one another, apologies were given and received, and all the loose ends were tied into a pretty little bow. Ya know….that big kumbaya moment. Bless my heart. That is not how any of this works.
Sometimes peace is accepting that something will never be resolved. Sometimes it is realizing you don’t need someone else to understand your side of the story. Sometimes it is loving someone from a distance. Sometimes it is finally understanding that closure isn’t something another person hands you. And sometimes peace is simply realizing that you don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to. That one? Well, it took me far too long to figure that out.
For years I also thought healing was a destination. Surely at some point I would arrive at this magical place called Healed, plant a little flag and be finished. Nine years later, I know better. Healing is messy and incredibly non-linear. It is learning and unlearning, losing and finding, grieving and laughing, moving forward and occasionally discovering that something you thought you dealt with five years ago has apparently been sitting quietly in the corner waiting for another turn. Again, rude.
That is probably why #forwardisapace means even more to me now than it did when I first started saying it. Forward hasn’t always looked impressive. Sometimes I ran. Sometimes I walked. Sometimes I crawled. There were plenty of times I was curled up on the bathroom floor because…well… it seemed safe. And there have been times when I had to go back and pick up a piece of myself I left somewhere along the way. I used to think that meant I was moving backward. Now I know better.
Nine years later, I have a lot more compassion for the woman who signed those papers. I don’t look back at her and wonder why she didn’t know more, do more or figure things out sooner. She knew what she knew at the time. She was doing the best she could with the information, strength and courage she had. She couldn’t have known what the next nine years would bring. Frankly, if someone had handed her the complete itinerary, she might have politely declined the trip.
Because she couldn’t have known about the losses that were coming. But she also couldn’t have known about the joy.
She didn’t know how much she would laugh again. She didn’t know how comfortable she would become in her own company or how fiercely she would learn to protect her peace. She didn’t know how many wonderful people she hadn’t met yet, how many places she hadn’t been, how many things she hadn’t tried, or how many times she would discover that she was capable of something she once thought she couldn’t do. Most of all, she didn’t know that someday she wouldn’t just survive a life she never planned. She would actually LIVE it and LIKE it!
Maybe that is the lesson of nine.
A beautiful life does not have to look anything like the life you originally planned. Joy and grief can exist in the same day, sometimes in the same damn hour. Happiness doesn’t mean you have stopped missing what you lost. Peace doesn’t require every story to have the ending you wanted. Freedom can come from things you chose to leave and, strangely enough, from things you never wanted to lose. And being okay doesn’t mean everything is okay. It just means you have learned that you can carry more than one truth at a time.
Eleven years ago, I couldn’t imagine this life. Nine years ago, I signed my name and walked away from one chapter without having the slightest idea what the next one would look like. Today, I still don’t know exactly what comes next. The difference is that I no longer need to.
There will be more loss because that is the price of loving people and having a life full enough to love things worth losing. There will be more grief. Edith will make sure of that. But there will also be more joy, more laughter, more love, more ridiculous stories, more mornings with the sun on my face, more people I haven’t met yet, more places I haven’t been and more pieces of myself I haven’t discovered.
So today I celebrate nine. Not because everything turned out the way I wanted it to. Good Lord, no. I celebrate because I am here. I am upright and above ground. Because I kept going. Because somewhere along the way I stopped trying to rebuild the life I thought I was supposed to have and started living the one that was actually mine.
If you had told me eleven years ago that this is what my life would look like today, I wouldn’t have believed you.
But here we are.
And I think I’ll stay awhile.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Routes

Kristine Binder
I needed to remember that even though the people are gone, the stories are still here. The memories are still alive inside me.

There are some drives that are more than just getting from one place to another. Some roads carry memories in the pavement. Yesterday, without realizing it, I took one of those drives.
I don’t believe in coincidences. I never have. I think things show up when we need them, even if we don’t understand why at first.
Yesterday I had to take my fur-baby to the vet because he’s been limping again. The same vet who did his surgeries years ago. I had never been to this office which meant an hour drive each way, so I plugged the address into my navigation app and off we went.
What I didn’t expect was that the route would take me straight through pieces of my life I haven’t visited in years. Past the community college where I earned summer credits. Past the church where I got married. Past the YMCA where I took swimming lessons as a little girl.
Road after road that I hadn’t driven in forever somehow came back like muscle memory. Every turn familiar. Every landmark holding a story. And honestly? It was exactly what my heart needed.
At the vet, we waited for what felt like forever. Once everything was cleared and I was told it was age and arthritis….just like his momma….the vet and I were talking afterward, I could feel myself sitting right on the edge of tears the entire time. I told him I know my dog is getting older. I know that day will come someday. But not now. Please not now. And then I cried.
I told him how I recently lost both my parents and how strangely cathartic this drive had been for me. He asked where I grew up and I told him. Turns out he lives in that same small town now.
Ten years. I’ve been going to this vet for over ten years and I’m just finding this out now? Such a small world.
As I left, my GPS routed me home a different way and about a block from the vet was the marine store where my family spent so much time when I was growing up. Boats. Water skis. Snow skis. Equipment lined up everywhere. So many Saturdays with my dad walking through those aisles. So many summers built around the water. So many winters built around the snow.
And in that moment I wanted so badly to tell someone those stories. To laugh about them with someone who remembered. But the people who shared those memories with me are gone from my life now. Those memories belong only to me. That realization is both beautiful and heartbreaking.
As I drove, Grateful Dead playing through my speakers, I found myself smiling at every little thing I remembered. Each memory healing something in me. Tiny stitches closing up parts of a broken heart. It’s funny how grief works.
When your parents die, the good and the bad goes with them. They are the only people who really knew you from day one. The only people who knew every version of you. Every phase. Every family story. Every triumph and heartbreak and embarrassing moment and inside joke. And then suddenly that connection is gone. And sometimes when parents go, the connection to siblings and extended family changes too. The glue that held everyone together is gone. The person who softened tensions, organized holidays, insisted people stay connected, covered the cracks… they’re no longer here.
That grief is its own kind of loss too. The grieving of it all is layered. But like I said, I don’t believe in coincidences. I think those roads found me yesterday for a reason. I think my soul needed familiar places. Familiar turns. Familiar memories. I needed to remember that even though the people are gone, the stories are still here. The memories are still alive inside me. I carry the family lore now. I carry the history. I carry them.
And somehow that feels both unbearably heavy and completely priceless at the same time.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Complicated

Kristine Binder

I recently found a necklace after my mom passed. I was drawn to its simplicity and felt comfort in wearing it, though I could not explain why it felt different or where it even came from. I put it on and have not taken it off since. Lately, I catch myself reaching for it when I am anxious, twisting it between my fingers without even thinking, and I did not really understand why.
Today, on Mother’s Day, I was looking through old photos and found one of my mom and me on my First Communion day. And there it was. The necklace. I do not remember the necklace at all, but I remember the dress vividly because my mom made it for me. I remember how proud I was to wear something she created with her own hands. Proud that my mom made it just for me. Funny that I found that photo today. Mother’s Day. 
Mother’s Day has never been an easy day for me. Not as a daughter. Not as a mother. And now, especially not without my mom here. I think there is this expectation that Mother’s Day is supposed to feel soft and warm and easy. Beautiful cards. Perfect brunches. Matching smiles in photos. Everyone calling their mom their “best friend.” And if that is your story, I genuinely love that for you. But it has never quite been mine.
I did not have the quintessential mother-daughter relationship. My relationship with my mom was complicated. Layered. Heavy at times. Beautiful at times too. I loved my mother deeply. Fiercely. I admired her more than I can even explain. She was brilliant, accomplished, talented, respected, and capable of making absolutely anything feel elegant and intentional. She taught me to notice beauty. To appreciate history. To understand that there is value in tradition, in details, in doing things well. But being her daughter was not easy.
Her expectations were always high. Sometimes impossibly high. It took me years to understand that no matter what I achieved, accomplished, fixed, managed, or became, I would never fully make her happy in the way I desperately wanted to. That realization is painful to admit out loud because I know she loved me. She did. Absolutely. But love is complicated sometimes. People love from the places they know, and sometimes the way someone loves you is not the way you need to receive love. That has been one of the hardest lessons of my life.
Still, she shaped me into the woman I am today. Both because of her love and in spite of it. Because of her expectations and despite the weight of them. I carry so much of her in me. The good. The hard. The beautiful. The impossible.
Mother’s Day itself was never really about me. It was about honoring the mothers and women in the family first and foremost. The expectation of making the day special was always there. The planning. The pressure. The responsibility of making everyone feel celebrated and cared for. It was never about me. Ever. And honestly? I know how heavy that can feel. Thus I never want my own children to carry that kind of emotional obligation for me. I do not want them to feel responsible for my happiness. It took me years of therapy to figure out that I am responsible for my own happiness. I do not want my kids to spend their lives trying to earn love or approval or peace from me. That cycle ends here if I can help it.
And the truth is, I have not been a perfect mother. Not even close. There are moments I wish I could redo. Seasons I wish I had handled differently. Choices I made from fear, overwhelm, anger, survival mode, trauma, exhaustion. None of those are excuses. They are simply truths. I have apologized to my children, and I will continue to apologize when I get it wrong because I think mothers should. I think accountability matters.
I have always done the best I could with who I was at the time. And sometimes that version of me was struggling more than anyone realized. The reality is that each of my children got a different version of me as their mother because I was a different person while raising each one of them. Youthful. Older. Wiser. More wounded. More healed. More patient. Less patient. More financially secure. More emotionally exhausted. Every child enters a different chapter of our lives, and motherhood evolves whether we want it to or not. That does not mean the love was different. It means I was. And maybe that is the part nobody talks about enough.
Mothers are not perfect humans. They are simply human beings trying to carry the enormous responsibility of loving and shaping other human beings while often still healing themselves. We are flawed and fabulous all wrapped into one complicated package.
So today, Mother’s Day holds all of it for me at once. Love. Grief. Joy. Sadness. Gratitude. Regret. Admiration. Anger. Compassion. Longing. And maybe that is okay. Maybe motherhood was never meant to fit neatly into greeting cards and social media captions. Maybe the most honest thing we can do is tell the truth about it.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Character

Kristine Binder
People always show you who they are.

There are seasons in life when we are barely holding ourselves together. Grief, illness, loss, divorce, heartbreak…. those moments when simply getting through the day feels like an accomplishment. They are the most fragile seasons of our lives. And in those moments, something becomes very clear: people reveal exactly who they are.
Just because people process grief differently does not give anyone permission to be cruel. Cruelty during someone’s most vulnerable moment isn’t a misunderstanding or a mistake. It’s a choice. And that choice tells you everything you will ever need to know about a person.
We are often told to be kind because we never know what someone else is going through. That is good advice. Kindness matters. Compassion matters. In life we are also often encouraged to assume positive intent, to start from a place of believing that people mean well.
And I do believe in starting there.
But life also teaches you that there are moments when positive intent becomes impossible to assume. There are people who take advantage of kindness, who see someone grieving or struggling and instead of protecting that fragile moment, they exploit it. They take advantage of your diminished capacity, your vulnerability, your exhaustion, your heartbreak. Not because they misunderstood, but because they could.
There are some things in life that should be sacred. Untouchable. Off limits. Someone’s darkest season should be one of them. When a person is sick, grieving, broken, or simply trying to keep their head above water, that is when the people around them are supposed to step closer. That is when compassion should show up. That is when kindness matters most.
But sometimes the opposite happens.
Sometimes people see vulnerability and they don’t feel empathy…. they see opportunity. They see someone who is too exhausted to fight back, too overwhelmed to defend themselves, too heartbroken to protect themselves. And they take advantage of that moment. They say things they would never say if you were strong. They behave in ways they would never dare if you were standing firmly on your feet.
That is not simply poor character. That is the absence of humanity.
The wounds from that kind of cruelty run deep because they happen at the exact moment you needed support the most. You were already drowning, and instead of throwing you a lifeline, they pushed your head further under. You were already shattered, and instead of helping you gather the pieces, they stepped on them, crushing them even smaller.
I know this not just in theory, but in lived experience. I saw it during my divorce, and I have seen it again in other seasons of loss. Something about grief and hardship has a way of revealing people. When life cracks open and everything feels fragile, the masks fall away. In those moments, people show you exactly who they are.
And over time, you learn that people are not judged by a single sentence they say or one moment they regret. People are known by their patterns. By their behavior over and over again. By how they treat others when things are going well, and when everything is falling apart. By how they treat people when there is nothing to gain and no audience watching. And by how they behave when they do have something to gain. I have seen the worst of humanity in people who were once very close to me. The kind of cruelty that shocks you because you never imagined it could come from them. But I have also seen the absolute best in people, those who quietly step closer when life gets hard, who show compassion without needing credit, who protect others when they are at their weakest. They sit with you and, often saying nothing, help you feel safe.
In loss, people reveal themselves.
And that is how you learn who to trust. I am not a vengeful person, but I do believe in karma. Not the dramatic kind people talk about, but the quieter kind. I know that karma may simply be that some people have to live with the person they chose to be. They have to sit with the choices they made and the way they treated someone who was already hurting. And in the end, that may be consequence enough.
I know that through those seasons I stayed in my lane. I did the best I could with the strength and clarity I had at the time. When I made mistakes, I owned them. I apologized. I worked to correct them.
But cruelty? That is different.
Cruelty is intentional. And when someone chooses cruelty toward a person who is already wounded, it is not something you forget—not because you are holding onto anger, but because you learned something important.
People always show you who they are.
And if you are paying attention, those moments help you see more clearly. They show you who is safe, who is kind, who will stand beside you when life gets hard. In the end, those lessons don’t just protect your heart….
they guide you toward the people who truly deserve a place in your life.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace