One night over drinks, a friend said something that has been circling in my head ever since. We were talking about golf, about mechanics and consistency, and how improvement only comes if you’re willing to practice, learn the fundamentals, and repeat the same motion over and over again, but what we were really talking about was doing the work.
She works in healthcare, which means she has a front row seat to what happens when people neglect themselves for years and then act surprised when they end up on an operating table. She said sometimes it feels like people must hate themselves, the way they treat their bodies. That the slow violence of bad nutrition, unmanaged stress, and avoidance looks less like ignorance and more like giving up.
Then she said, “Vangie, people don’t actually want to be better. They don’t want to put in the work. They just want an easy fix. And you know who suffers for it? We do.”
I didn’t like hearing that. Mostly because I recognized myself in it, not in the avoidance, but in the opposite. I have always been willing to do the work, perhaps to a fault.
At 51, you would think I would have everything sorted out. In some ways, I do. In other ways, I am only now beginning to understand what I was doing wrong all along.
I have been the problem in many of my relationships.
Not because the women I dated were cruel or incapable of love. Many of them were good. Thoughtful. Smart. Ready for something real. The common denominator in the ending of several genuinely decent relationships was me. And not because I didn’t care. I cared deeply. Sometimes too deeply.
The problem was that I was still trying to unlearn what love meant. If you ask me, I have loved every woman I have been with. That was never the issue.
However, I grew up in a house that was materially stable and emotionally unpredictable. My father told me never to let anyone see me cry because it showed weakness. And weakness, in his worldview, was dangerous. It opened you up to vulnerability. His moods could shift from protective to disappointed to rage without warning, and so I became very skilled at reading a room, adjusting my tone, anticipating shifts in temperature. I learned how to regulate other people before I ever learned how to regulate myself.
Emotional steadiness was not modeled. It was something I had to figure out later in therapy, in books, and in the patient correction of women who were far more emotionally literate than I was in my twenties.
A therapist once told me that I did not know how to express sadness; it presented as frustration and anger. That assessment was eye-opening. Mind blown. New skill unlocked. We were not raised with language for grief. We were raised to endure.
So when I began dating women, I brought intensity instead of steadiness. I understood longing. I understood desire. I understood the rush of being chosen and the equally intoxicating rush of choosing someone. What I did not understand was the quiet discipline of staying regulated when things became uncomfortable.
My friend Kimi likes to joke that my dating strategy in my twenties was, “Let me seduce you with my awkwardness.” To this day she is baffled by how much I dated. I am too, if I am honest. Intensity can look like passion. Earnestness can be mistaken for depth. Emotional avoidance can look like seduction.
Looking back, I can see how often what I called chemistry was really just two people’s unhealed wounds recognizing one another.
And because I am apparently quite coachable, I attracted partners who felt comfortable offering detailed feedback on how I might improve. I took it seriously. I adjusted. I softened here. I hardened there. I tried to be the version of myself that would make the relationship work. And somewhere in that slow process of refinement, I began to disappear.
They were happier.
I was becoming unhappier.
When I eventually ended things, there was shock. Anger. Accusations of betrayal. But the ending had not been sudden for me. It had been months in the making. A quiet realization that compromise had slid into self-abandonment and that I could not continue to contort myself without losing something essential.
It has taken me decades to understand the difference between growth and shrinking.
Growth expands you. It challenges you but leaves you more yourself. Self-abandonment, by contrast, feels like a narrowing. A dimming. A slow erasure in the name of harmony.
There were moments when I chose to leave not because the other person was dangerous or unworthy, but because if I stayed, I would eventually no longer like the person looking back in the mirror. In that sense, yes, sometimes I chose the bear. Not out of fear of intimacy, but out of a desire to remain intact.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Søren Kierkegaard
When I was 25 I hadn't lived enough life to really get what Kierkegaard meant. It means we must make decisions and act in the present without knowing the future, and only later, through reflection on past experiences, can we understand their true meaning and purpose.
At 51, I get it. I can see now what I could not see then the projections, the unrealistic expectations, the ways in which I was reenacting old dynamics while insisting I was chasing epic love.
Lent, for me, is not about punishing the younger version of myself. It is about refusing to repeat old patterns.
A coworker asked me recently whether I am single by choice. I said yes. Dating was never the difficult part. Remaining in something healthy was. I have, on more than one occasion, had to stop mid-story and calculate how many exes ago a particular woman was. That part is almost comical.
What is less amusing is remembering how blunt I used to be and mistaking that bluntness for “keeping it real.” “You don’t look hideous in that,” is not me being honest, it's me being a jerk.
I am still learning. More often than not, I am unlearning.
And now, when I consider what I want, it is no longer fiction. No longer cinematic longing or dramatic declarations. It is steadiness. It is a relationship in which I do not have to manage someone else’s volatility in order to feel safe. It is a space where I can remain fully myself and be loved not for how well I adapt, but for who I really am.
Which brings me back to my friend’s comment about doing the work.
When my doctor tells me my blood pressure is creeping up and that I need to adjust my diet, move more consistently, lower my cholesterol, I do not argue. I do not pretend it will fix itself. I try. Not always perfectly, but consistently. Because I would prefer to be alive and well in this body for as long as I am here.
It is not fun to eat the vegetable. It is not thrilling to lift heavy or go for a boring walk. It is not dramatic to sit in therapy and untangle your poor life choices. It is repetitive and, at times, dull. But it is good work. Necessary work.
And I am willing to do it. Over and over again.
I cannot control the state of the world. I cannot regulate global chaos. But I can refuse to abandon myself. I can refuse to repeat patterns simply because they are familiar. I can choose steadiness over chaos.
Life is understood backwards.
But it must be lived forwards.
And I intend to live the rest of mine doing the work.
Lenten Reflection
“Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest, if we do not give up.” — Galatians 6:9
Lent is not about grand gestures. It is about repetition. About choosing discipline over impulse. About doing the small, boring, necessary things that slowly reshape a life.
Faith, like love, is good in theory. Better in practice.
It is easy to talk about growth. Harder to stay when staying is uncomfortable. Easy to romanticize transformation. Harder to wake up and choose steadiness again.
The work of Lent is the work of becoming... not dramatic, not loud, but consistent.
And consistency, over time, changes everything.
Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.
I hate breakups.
And coming from someone who has endured more uncouplings than any reasonable person should have to experience, I feel like my character has been sufficiently built. I saw a meme once where instead of giving someone their soulmate, God gives them another toxic relationship for “character development.”
Respectfully, my character is overly developed. Let’s move on.
Since this is a Lent post, let’s go back to the desert of Kansas.
I had taken my LSAT. Applied to law school. I was standing at the edge of a life I was ready to launch, and the person beside me wasn’t standing there with me anymore.
Not because either of us were bad people.
Because we weren’t a good fit.
I had been honest from the beginning about where I was emotionally. About what I could give. About who I was and that I was still healing. And when I finally reached the point where I was ready to say, "yes, let’s build something real..." that was the moment it ended.
Timing is a strange and brutal teacher.
The breakup itself wasn’t great. Her response to me was more about her past relationships than it was about me. That’s the thing about projection. People hand you ghosts that don’t belong to you and expect you to carry them anyway. She made it sound like we had this awful relationship when, in reality, I had been honest from the start about my emotional capacity and my investment.
And when I finally said I was ready to make it work. Ready to become partners. Ready to build something while starting law school.
That was when she decided to leave.
They tell you in law school not to let major personal upheavals happen if you want to succeed. Because you don’t go to law school alone. Everyone in your life goes with you. Your relationships go with you. Your support system goes with you. It isn’t just a personal investment. It’s a community endeavor.
And when someone significant steps out of that circle, you feel it everywhere.
One of my friends told me recently I’ve aged really well, and that I’m a much better version of myself today than I was two years ago.
She’s right.
Back then, I was barely holding myself together.
The thing is, I will always have other things happening in my life. Law school. Work. Golf. Existing in this world as myself. Dating isn’t really about capacity. It’s about logistics. It’s about whether someone can stand beside you while your life is actively unfolding, not just when it’s convenient.
But destruction has a purpose.
Things fall apart so you stop living inside structures that were never meant to hold you long-term. And somewhere in that unraveling, I realized something that changed how I understand love completely.
An ex told me once she couldn’t fall in love with my potential. That was over twenty years ago. At the time, I didn’t even know how much potential I had. When I finally tapped into it, it didn’t unfold quietly.
It detonated.
And now I understand this.
I don’t want someone to choose me eventually.
I want someone who chooses me clearly.
Not after hesitation.
Not after comparison.
Not after emotional negotiations with themselves.
Clearly.
And I want to be that person too.
Because secure love isn’t waiting to be picked like the last kid in gym class. It’s mutual recognition. It’s two people standing firmly in their own lives, saying:
I see you.
I like who you are.
I choose this.
Not because you need each other.
Because you want each other.
I’ve taken a long pause from dating. Law school. Healing. Rebuilding my entire life. But recently, I’ve been thinking about getting back out there, which feels both hopeful and mildly suspicious.
Because here’s what I know now.
Every relationship that ends raises my standards.
Not out of bitterness.
Out of clarity.
I don’t need a relationship to complete me. I already know I’m desirable. I already know I’m lovable. I’ve built a life I actually enjoy living.
But I do love loving someone.
I love having a person.
I love choosing someone.
I love waking up and deciding, again, that this is the person I want beside me.
And I am very good at it.
I show up. Even when I’m mad.
I stay in conversations that are uncomfortable.
If someone tells me something is hurting them and it makes sense, I try to adjust.
I once jokingly told a partner to put me on a Personal Improvement Plan. Which is objectively hilarious, but also not entirely a joke.
Because when I choose someone, I take it seriously. I mentally, emotionally, and spiritually invest.
You don’t stay just because someone chose you.
You stay because you choose each other.
For a long time, I confused being wanted with being loved. And I’ve watched so many incredible women do the same thing. Waiting. Hoping. Accepting emotional ambiguity because at least it meant they weren’t alone.
But you don’t have to wait to be chosen.
You get to choose, too.
You get to decide whose presence makes your nervous system feel calm instead of confused. You get to decide who earns access to your softness. You get to decide who gets to witness your life as it unfolds.
Because real love isn’t built on convincing someone to stay.
It’s built on mutual willingness.
It’s waking up and thinking,
I like this person.
I respect this person.
I feel safe with this person.
I want this person here.
And knowing they are choosing you back.
Not reluctantly.
Not eventually.
Not ambiguously.
Clearly.
Which brings me back to the bear.
Women don’t choose the bear because they hate men. They choose the bear because the bear is honest about what it is.
A bear is dangerous, yes. But it’s predictable. It doesn’t pretend to be safe while quietly becoming unsafe. It doesn’t charm you, gain your trust, and then disappear when you need it most. It doesn’t destabilize you emotionally and call it love.
A bear doesn’t text you good morning and then vanish for three days.
A bear doesn’t make you question your worth.
A bear doesn’t slowly erode your nervous system while telling you everything is fine.
A bear is regulated by instinct. It shows you exactly what it is.
Most women know how to read danger. We’ve had to.
What’s harder to read is inconsistency. Emotional unavailability disguised as interest. Someone who wants access to your softness but doesn’t want responsibility for your heart.
The bear doesn’t breadcrumb you.
The bear doesn’t keep you as an option.
The bear doesn’t ask you to shrink so it can feel bigger.
It either stays in its territory.
Or it leaves.
And what I’ve realized is I don’t want to spend my life trying to decode someone’s emotional weather patterns just to figure out if I’m safe there.
I want clarity.
I want consistency.
I want someone who is not afraid of themselves, and therefore not afraid of loving someone else.
Because real love should not feel like surviving a wilderness.
It should feel like coming home.
And at this point in my life, I’m not choosing the bear.
And neither is she.
She will choose me.
I will choose her.
Because safety, security, and predictability, that’s fucking sexy in your middle ages.
Lenten Reflection:
“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” — 1 Peter 4:8
Lent is a season where illusions fall away.
Not just about who God is.
About who we are.
About who we’ve loved.
About who stayed.
And who didn’t.
Scripture doesn’t promise love will be easy. It promises love will be honest.
Jesus didn’t force anyone to follow him. People walked beside him freely. Some stayed. Some left. Some betrayed him. He didn’t chase them down to convince them of his worth.
He simply remained himself. Present. Clear. Available.
That’s the part people don’t talk about.
Love is not convincing someone to choose you.
Love is recognizing who already has.
And having the courage to choose them back.
Lent asks us to release what is not aligned. The relationships built on confusion. The versions of ourselves that stayed out of fear. The belief that we must earn what should be freely given.
Because the holiest thing you can do is not sacrifice yourself to be loved.
It is to become someone who can stand fully in their life, fully in their truth, and say:
I am here.
I am not hiding.
I am capable of loving.
And I will not abandon myself to keep it.
The right people will recognize that.
And they will stay.
Take care of yourself.
Take care of each other.
When I moved to Overland Park, Kansas, I joined a women’s golf league because golf is my happy place, and it gave me an outlet while my life was emotionally, spiritually, and existentially unraveling.
It was very different from my Rochester women's league. In Rochester, we absolutely drink Bloody Marys at 7 AM and take Fireball shots after birdies like that’s part of the official rules of golf. Overland Park was quieter. Tee times were at 7 in the morning, and it felt less Gucci to be getting your buzz on before the sun rose. Wine spritzers after noon seemed more appropriate. These were retired women. Women of means. Women who looked like their lives were put together as well as their golf fits were.
I got a summer job at the clubhouse restaurant so I could golf for free. Which honestly felt like thriving.
But sometimes you’re not thriving. You’re still you, just in a different location.
And sometimes you’re also the problem.
At least one of my organs was.
I was exhausted all the time. Not normal tired. Bone tired. I thought it was depression. Or grief. Or growing older. Or maybe I was just giving up on life altogether. I was in a city where no one knew who I was or what I’d spent the last fifteen years doing. I assumed the stomach aches and back pain were just part of becoming irrelevant.
Then one morning, finishing the 18th hole at ladies league, a shooting pain hit my back so hard it almost dropped me to my knees.
And instead of thinking, this could be serious, I thought,
“Oh cool. My back is going out again.”
So I finished the round.
Went home. Took Advil. And went to bed.
Because that’s what you do when pain becomes normal. You stop asking questions. You just survive it.
Also, Kansas did not offer poor people healthcare. So there was that.
Months later, after I moved back to Rochester, my body decided it wasn't having it any more. My body was on strike.
I remember apologizing to my roommate for asking her to take me to the Emergency Department. That’s how deep the conditioning goes. You can be actively dying and still worry about being inconvenient.
After hours in the waiting room, bloodwork, and a CT scan, they put me in a hallway bed. Another busy day in the ED. The nurses were kind. My doctor poked around my abdomen and came back and said, “Your appendix is severely infected. We need to remove it immediately. Here are some options.”
Apparently it had been infected for a long time. Quietly poisoning me while I was out there pretending I was fine.
My appendix lasted 50 years in this body and then decided it was done. Just clocked out. No two weeks notice. No exit interview.
Honestly? Fair.
They took me into surgery that night. When I woke up, the pain was gone. Not better. Gone but now replaced with different pain. My body was healing itself kind of pain and the anesthesia was still wearing off, too. The exhaustion I’d been carrying for over a year lifted almost immediately.
It wasn’t burnout.
It wasn’t weakness.
It was dying. Literally.
And here’s the part that’s hard to sit with.
If I had stayed in Kansas, working part-time, no insurance, barely holding myself together, I might have waited too long. I might have gone into medical debt just to stay alive. I might have convinced myself it wasn’t serious. I might not be here writing this.
Moving back to Minnesota didn’t just reset my life.
It saved it.
Because Minnesota believes poor people deserve healthcare. Because someone ran the test. Because someone listened. Because someone cut the dying thing out of me before it took everything else with it.
Spiritually, I’ve always believed the Universe tries to guide you quietly at first.
A feeling.
A fatigue you can’t explain.
A sense that something isn’t right.
But if you ignore it, it gets louder.
More pain.
More disruption.
More loss.
Until eventually it hits you over the head with a brick.
Or in my case, a tiny useless organ tries to take down the entire operation.
Call it God.
Call it energy.
Call it instinct.
Call it survival.
But when it’s not your time, it’s not your time.
Sometimes the desert isn’t trying to destroy you. It’s trying to strip away everything that cannot come with you.
My appendix couldn’t come with me.
Neither could the version of me who believed I had to endure everything silently.
My body knew before I did.
I just had to listen.
Lenten Reflection:
“When I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy on me;
my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.”
— Psalm 32:3–4 (NIV)
Scripture understands something we try to outrun. Silence has consequences. Ignoring what is wrong does not make it disappear. It just buries it deeper, where it can do more damage.
My appendix lasted fifty years. Half a century of quiet service. And then, at some point, it decided it was done. It didn’t fail loudly at first. It whispered. Fatigue. Aches. A low-grade sense that something wasn’t right.
I ignored it.
Because that’s what many of us do. We override the signals. We push through pain. We ignore the trauma we are experiencing in our body.
Until the message stops being quiet.
Until it becomes pain you can’t rationalize.
Until the body, or your life, or your spirit picks up a brick and hits you over the head with it.
Lent is an invitation to stop pretending everything is fine.
To listen.
To the body.
To the grief.
To the exhaustion.
To the truth we’ve been trying to outrun.
Sometimes the thing that feels like it’s destroying you is actually saving you.
Sometimes losing something is what allows you to live.
My appendix is gone now.
So is the version of me that believed I had to silently endure everything.
Both served their purpose.
Both knew when it was time to let go.
Take care of yourself.
Take care of each other.
