On Healthy Relationships

We were taught, many of us, that love means endurance. That to stay is to be strong, and to leave is to fail.

So we stayed in friendships that drained us, in romances that diminished us, in family dynamics that made us small. We called it loyalty. We called it culture. We did not call it what it was: fear dressed in virtue's clothing.

A healthy relationship does not ask you to disappear. It does not require that you shrink your voice, your needs, your truth, to make another person comfortable.

A healthy relationship is one where you are seen, not the performance of you, not the convenient version of you, but you, fully and without apology.

Begin there. Ask yourself: in this relationship, am I growing or am I managing? The answer will tell you everything.

All my love,

-DandelionPrecious from MANI