Chelsea Leigh Trescott

When we do not admire ourselves, we do not seek a partner who we can admire. And so, we wind up forfeiting admiration for what is comfortable.

I want to have love for what is real and actual, not for the perfect me, but love for the natural me, for the whole me.

Harboring disappointment in ourselves can often feel like the one constant in life. It’s always something, you know?

That’s the kind of women we’ve been. We’ve made a romance out of our own differences, out of our own disillusionment and denial.

if you can understand your feelings, you can be prepared to defend yourself against them ever overwhelming you again.

“Maybe there is no way for love to fail, because the eventual result of all love is New Life.”

Maybe I have been rejected. But maybe I’ve also been let go. Maybe I’ve also been freed.

They are solid. These men are consistent in character. They are loyal to themselves. To their word. They are transparent with themselves

The pain I’ve endured is part of our story. Why would I forget that? Why would I need to forgive it either?

In a roundabout way, he was just saying help. I didn’t want to.

Some of us can’t—won’t—because the feelings we are able to have, we have because we are finally away from the person who breaks us down, from the past which cannot contain our passion and potential and satisfy our hunger.

We’re afraid the ultimate attainment won’t be enough to quiet our nerves and settle us into ourselves.

You will never be prepared for heartache. You just have to plunge in and figure out how to breakthrough.

It was the summer I expected would break my heart but which instead insisted on me to mend myself, to feel at home with myself again.

Every story about one human heart grasping for another’s has left me aspiring to do a greater job at taking hold of the heart which is my own.

Our relationships are sustained and empowered by truth. If you are interested in someone and convey that interest, you won’t look boring, you will look interested.

He just doesn’t know how to show up fully—vulnerably and not self-consciously—and he doesn’t know how to do that for anyone yet. That’s what we are witnessing: someone who is missing a sense of self but can’t say why or when they will have it.

These crumbs act as “feelers” – texts that suggest interest or offer interaction but which require the receiver to meet them half-way and do the real leg work.