The Three Great Loves Part Two: The Hard Love “There are all kinds of love in this world, but never the same love twice.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald I’ve always loved the idea that we experience three great loves in our lifetime. Whether it’s true for everyone, I don’t know. What I do know is that it has been true for me. The first love introduces you to what love feels like. The second love teaches you everything love should never be. And if you’re willing to survive it instead o

The hardest part of heartbreak isn’t always losing someone. Sometimes it’s accepting that the person you keep missing isn’t even the person they are anymore. Or maybe it’s accepting that the version of them you loved only existed during the good times. That part hurts. Because when you love somebody, your mind has a way of replaying the highlight reel. The laughs. The conversations. The trips. The good days. The way they made you feel when everything was right. And somehow yo

The Oxford Dictionary defines love as “an intense feeling of deep affection.” That may be grammatically correct, but anyone who has ever truly loved—or truly been loved—knows that definition barely scratches the surface. The easiest way to understand love is to first understand what it is not. Love is not pain. It is not late-night fights followed by early-morning apologies. It is not infidelity disguised as temptation. It is not lies wrapped in beautiful promises. It is not

People often ask if I remember the night I was shot. I do. Every second of it. But what they rarely ask is if I remember the woman I was before that night. Sometimes, losing her feels like the greatest tragedy of all. Trauma changes how we see our past. When something terrible happens, it becomes the dividing line in our lives. Everything is measured as either before or after that moment. For years, I thought of my life in two chapters: before the shooting and after the shoot

Looking back, the moments that once felt ordinary now stand out as precious memories. A simple morning coffee, a quick call to family just to say hello, laughing until your stomach hurts, making plans for the future without realizing how fragile that future was. These were the days I took for granted, unaware that everything could change in an instant. The Day Everything Changed I didn’t know it then, but my ordinary life was about to end. Others arrived with a gunshot, shatt

People always tell me I’m a survivor. They say it with admiration, sympathy, and sometimes disbelief. They see the scar, hear that I was shot in the back of the head, and somehow survived. Then they tell me I must have been saved for a reason. They’re right. I was saved. But surviving wasn’t the miracle. Learning to live afterward was. For years, I searched for the right words to describe that night. Attempted murder. Domestic violence. Trauma. None of them ever felt big enou