"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless." — Mother Teresa
My friends love giving me dating advice because, let’s be honest, I’m not great at it. You’d think after as much dating as I’ve done, I’d be better at it.
One time, I told a friend how terrible I am at giving compliments. I tend to assume that if I’m dating someone, they already know I find them beautiful, hot, sexy, whatever. I mean… I wouldn’t be with them if I thought they were hideous, right?
Apparently, that logic does not translate well in romantic situations.
Looks aren’t everything, though. Real attraction comes from the inside out.
Kindness? Hot.
Compassion? Sexy.
A great sense of humor? Irresistible.
You can be stunning on the outside, but if you’re mean and cruel? Hard pass.
The problem is that I’m blunt. Sometimes painfully honest. And I hate tired, overused lines. My delivery could use… improvement.
A friend once asked me for an example of how I give compliments.
Me: “You look good.”
Them: “No, I don’t, Vangie. I don’t even have makeup on.”
Me: “Well, at least you don’t look like sh*t.”
Them: “Another classic Vangie compliment.”
Me: “You could’ve just said thank you.”
End scene.
Another classic moment:
Friend: “Do these pants make my butt look big?”
Me: “Blame it on the pants.”
Friend: “Blame it on the pants?”
Me: “No?”
Look, I try.
My friends are convinced I need help.
And honestly, they are not wrong.
You know those five love languages? Well, words of affirmation is not at the top of my list. Words of criticism might actually describe me better, at least toward myself.
If someone says to me, “Vangie, I see your effort. I know you can do better,” I usually will. Because that tells me you see me trying. You see me doing my best. And that means you care.
But criticizing just to criticize? Go away with that.
A lot of the dating and romance self-help advice floating around out there is part research, part speculation, and part anecdotal storytelling. Like most things in life, there’s usually a grain of truth somewhere in the mix.
People love differently. What they need from each other can look very different.
It took me a long time to understand that just because I show up, do the things someone asks of me, and give my best effort, that isn’t always how another person experiences love.
My primary love language is acts of service. That probably isn’t surprising.
I also believe time is one of the most valuable things we have. When someone takes time out of their day and their life to be with you, that means something. That means you matter.
There are people who have taken up a lot of my time that I will never get back. And there are people I spend time with where I wish we had more of it.
When I care about someone, whether they are friends or partners, I try to do all the things. I show up when I’m supposed to. I do the things that are expected. I say words of appreciation. I give gifts. I hold someone when they need to be held.
What I’ve learned over time is that loving people well often means meeting their love language where they are.
But let’s get back to words.
Because words matter more than we sometimes admit.
The funny thing is, the same conversations where we laugh about dating and terrible compliments often drift into much heavier territory.
One minute we’re talking about golf or relationships. The next minute we’re talking about jobs, finances, politics, and the general chaos of the world.
About how people are just trying to survive.
Trying to pay their bills.
Trying to keep their jobs.
Trying to hold on to whatever stability they can.
Meanwhile, the powerful keep protecting the wealthy while everyone else gets squeezed tighter and tighter. History keeps repeating itself because people refuse to learn from it.
Entire communities have carried generations of injustice that were never repaired or meaningfully acknowledged. And people wonder why the country feels like it’s unraveling. Sometimes it feels exhausting just fighting for the basic right to exist with dignity.
Which is why the conversations we have with each other matter so much. Because words aren’t just jokes and compliments.
They shape how people see themselves.
They shape how we understand the world.
They shape whether people feel valued or invisible.
Words can build someone up.
Or they can slowly grind someone down.
Lenten Reflection: Speaking Life Into People
The letter of Epistle to the Ephesians reminds us:
“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs.” (Ephesians 4:29)
That’s a deceptively simple instruction.
Speak words that build people up.
Not flattery.
Not empty politeness.
Not the kind of compliments we throw around without meaning them.
But words that actually strengthen the people around us.
I’ve learned over time that people receive love in different ways. Some people need acts of service. Some people need time and presence. Some people need physical closeness.
And some people really do need words.
Words that say, "I see you."
Words that say, "You matter."
Words that say, "You’re doing better than you think."
My instinct has always been to show love through action. I show up. I help. I do the things that need to be done.
But Lent has a way of inviting us to look a little closer at ourselves.
To ask where we could be more intentional.
More thoughtful.
More generous.
Because words carry weight.
They can build confidence.
They can heal wounds.
They can remind someone that they are not invisible in a world that often makes people feel that way.
So maybe part of this Lenten journey is learning to use our words with more care.
To speak truth.
To speak kindness.
To speak life into people whenever we can.
Even if it doesn’t always come naturally.
Even if sometimes our version of a compliment accidentally sounds like, “Well… at least you don’t look like sh*t.”
Progress, not perfection.
Take care of yourselves.
And take care of each other. 💜
Some posts don’t need to be rewritten. They just need to be shared again.
I wrote this last year when I was more or less face-down on the floor trying to pick myself back up. Trying to learn how to love myself again. Trying to figure out who I was and who I was becoming.
My time in the wilderness of KCMO and Kansas made me question just about every life choice I’ve ever made.
There were moments earlier in my life when I struggled with intrusive thoughts, especially when I was younger and trying to understand my sexuality. After one terrible breakup. Then another. The thirteenth one probably should have been my clue that maybe the problem wasn’t just a bad picker.
There were moments when I wondered whether my life still mattered. Whether staying was worth the pain I felt in my head, my heart, my soul, and sometimes my body.
So I understand something about the darkness that lives in people.
I understand the moment when someone decides, "Nope. I’m done. I’m out."
We don’t talk about that enough. Somewhere in some research study, someone decided that talking about suicide might give people ideas. But the truth is simpler than that, the people who are thinking about it have usually been thinking about it for a long time.
No one suddenly hands them the idea like a lightbulb moment.
Sometimes it’s a long quiet erosion.
Sometimes it’s an impulse.
Sometimes it’s a plan.
A permanent solution to what might have been a temporary storm.
So today, let’s talk about Robin Jorden. I think what people want to believe is that if everything is perfect, the perfect job, the perfect spouse, house, and dog, the perfect children, then you’ll be happy.
Maybe.
But no one is happy all the time.
Happiness is fleeting. And without sadness, you can’t truly appreciate happiness. Without tragedy, you can’t fully understand joy.
Life isn’t just a roller coaster.
It’s a freakin’ funhouse, a carnival, and one of those spinning rides that makes you want to puke. That’s what life feels like sometimes. A gosh darn carnival ride.
Mine certainly does.
This one is hard to talk about because I didn’t answer her last call. It was November 2013. Thanksgiving week.
Robin had called to talk about a movie she had just watched, "Blue Is the Warmest Color." It’s a movie about exploring sexuality, falling in love, and experiencing heartbreak... the kind that changes you.
She was trying to heal a broken heart and wanted to talk about it. The movie had made her think about everything she had been struggling with after that breakup.
Robin and I talked a lot when I lived in California. And we kept talking after I moved to Minnesota. She was one of the only friends who braved a Minnesota winter to come visit me. She knew, just from the sound of my voice on the phone, that I wasn’t doing well. That I was homesick. That I needed someone to show up.
And she showed up.
She loved tennis and went to the US Open every year.
She asked me to go with her that year.
I told her I’d see if it worked with my schedule.
It didn’t.
So I didn’t go.
She did. And that was the year she took her life.
I knew she wasn’t doing well. I could hear it in the way she spoke. In the silences between her words. But I was a thousand miles away and I didn’t know what I could do to help.
I listened.
I talked.
I tried my best to be there for her.
And yet…
It still wasn’t enough.
I saved the last message she left me. Sometimes I listen to it just to hear her voice again. I don’t talk about Robin enough.
Maybe because I still feel guilt.
Maybe because I still can’t believe she’s gone.
But I know she’s gone.
Because if she were here, we’d be on the phone right now talking about how completely messed up the world is. Goddess, I’ve had so much loss in my life that sometimes I don’t even know how I get through the day.
But I do.
I always do.
My world has not been the same since she left. It is still a struggle to make sense of the nonsense, but I persist. Sometimes I think I try to live a good life because that’s what she would want.
Maybe I’m just hoping to find some way to fill the void her friendship left behind. But it doesn’t work like that.
The void stays.
The missing stays.
You just learn how to live around it.
I want to believe that her essence, her spirit, her energy, her ancient universal dust, has moved on to the next life. The next dimension. Some corner of the universe where she is finally happy and no longer in pain.
I want to believe that.
But the pragmatist in me sometimes thinks it’s just emptiness. That she is gone and there is nothing where her life used to be except this strange quiet absence.
And still.
We carry on.
We carry the memories of the people we loved.
Their hearts.
Their names.
Their laughter.
I still catch myself looking at my phone, hoping her name will pop up.
I know it won’t.
I know it never will.
And yet the world keeps turning.
Round and round.
There is so much more I could say about Robin, and yet I struggle to say it. My feelings are tangled. My heart is heavy. Sometimes it feels like my grief is a dam holding back an entire river.
I don’t know if it’s a gift or a curse to love people so deeply when you know they will eventually leave.
But I do know this.
Loving her was worth it.
Our friendship was worth it.
And that is what I carry with me.
Lenten Reflection
Lent is a season that asks us to sit with difficult things, loss, grief, uncertainty. But it is also a season that reminds us we are not alone in those moments.
Psalm 34 tells us:
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
That verse doesn’t promise that heartbreak won’t happen. It promises that God is present when it does.
Grief is the weight of love that suddenly has nowhere to go. When someone dies, the love we had for them doesn’t disappear. It lingers. It searches for a place to live.
Sometimes it lives in memory.
Sometimes it lives in the way we care for other people.
Sometimes it lives in the quiet ways we keep someone’s story alive.
Robin is gone.
But love stays.
Her kindness.
Her laughter.
Her friendship.
They remain in every memory I carry forward.
Maybe that’s what faith really is.
Not certainty.
Not perfect answers.
Just the willingness to keep loving, keep remembering, and keep moving forward. Even when it hurts.
Life isn’t about flawless filters, curated perfection, or pretending we’re fine when we’re not.
Life is about loving people while they are here.
And honoring them after they are gone.
I honor Robin by remembering her.
By living a life that still has room for joy.
By carrying her love forward.
She loved mint chocolate chip ice cream.
On her birthday, April 4th, I’ll eat some in her honor.
You should, too.
Love stays.
Always. 💙
Take care of yourselves.
Take care of each other.
Updated: Mar 18
For years, people have argued about whether Jack could have fit on that floating door with Rose in the movie Titanic.
Personally, I’m not convinced he could have. Physics aside, the door was already barely holding one freezing person above the water. Two probably would have sunk it. But that debate was never really the part of the movie that stuck with me.
The moment that always stayed with me is when Rose realizes the rescue boats are coming. She understands she might actually survive. And then she has to do something almost unbearable.
She gently pries Jack’s frozen fingers off the door and lets him drift into the dark water below. All the while she promises him, “I’ll never let go. I’ll never let go.”
Which of course sounds like a ridiculous contradiction.
Because she literally lets go.
And yet… she keeps the promise.
Rose survives. She builds a life. She has adventures, loves, children, and memories. She lives the kind of full, complicated life Jack believed she deserved. And at the end of the story, she drops that enormous diamond into the ocean.
People always ask why she did that.
Maybe it belonged with the memory of that moment.
Maybe it was her way of returning something sacred to the past.
Or maybe she just didn’t want treasure hunters and film directors fighting over it.
Who knows.
Jack and Rose aren’t real.
But the truth the story is trying to tell absolutely is.
Life continues.
Even after loss.
Even after grief.
Even after the moment when you realize someone you loved is no longer walking beside you.
A few years ago I was golfing alone on a cold, windy day. The kind of Minnesota day where it’s about forty degrees and the wind is blowing thirty miles an hour. Most reasonable people stay home in that weather.
Minnesotan golfers do not, and apparently neither do I. Sometimes I have no good sense. If you love the game enough, you’ll play until the courses finally shut down for the season.
The course was mostly empty that afternoon. Just the sound of wind and the occasional thud of a golf ball.
Earlier that week I had seen a news story about something called a “wind phone.” Someone had mounted an old rotary phone to a tree so people could call loved ones who had died.
It sounded a little strange.
A little woo woo.
A little mystical.
But also… kind of beautiful.
I didn’t have a rotary phone on that golf course. But standing there alone in the wind, I thought about my friend Robin. Her death anniversary was coming up. This was in November.
I remembered our last conversation. She had asked if I wanted to go with her to see the U.S. Open in New York. It had become a tradition for her.
I told her I couldn’t make it that year. “Maybe next year,” I said.
Of course next year never came for her.
Standing there on that quiet golf course, I found myself talking into the wind.
I told her how much I missed her. I told her I thought we would have had so much fun golfing together. She played tennis in college before a hip injury ended it, but I always thought she would have loved golf too.
We would have had so many ridiculous golf outings.
Bad shots.
Good shots.
Laughing at each other’s terrible putting.
But then another realization hit me.
We will never make new memories together.
That’s the part of grief people don’t talk about enough.
The memories you already have become incredibly precious.
But the future you imagined together quietly disappears.
And my friend Kimi once said something that stuck with me.
“It’s really sad when you look at it that way.”
And it is.
Because grief only exists where love existed first.
You don’t mourn people who didn’t matter.
You mourn the ones who changed you.
Which brings me back to Lent.
Lent is often framed as a season of sacrifice or discipline. But at its heart it is also about learning how to live with loss. The entire Christian story moves toward the cross. Toward grief. Toward the moment when people who loved Jesus believe everything they hoped for has ended.
And yet the story doesn’t end there.
Life continues.
Love continues.
The people we lose never completely disappear from the story of our lives. They become part of the way we move through the world.
Part of the way we love other people.
Part of the courage we carry forward.
Rose let go of Jack’s hand. But she carried the life he believed she could live.
I think grief sometimes works the same way.
We let go.
But we don’t forget.
I don’t have many regrets. But the regrets I do have are the things I didn’t do. The choices and chances I didn’t take.
Tell your friends you love them.
Do the thing.
Go to the U.S. Open.
Because maybe that’s the last adventure you’ll get to have with that person.
Her birthday is in April, and like on that cold November day, I’ll walk a golf course alone and speak into the wind. I’ll have that familiar conversation with Robin. I’ll tell her all the ridiculous stories I have to tell her since we last spoke. I’ll tell her I miss her. I’ll tell her the world is on fire and that my world feels less bright without her.
I wish I had some uplifting thing to say.
I don’t.
Because grief is like that.
It’s about sitting in the sadness and experiencing the loss. Letting go isn’t just about moving on. It’s about accepting what is no longer there.
Lent Reflection:
The apostle Paul writes in Epistle to the Philippians 3:13–14:
“But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal…”
I don’t think Paul meant pretending the past didn’t matter. Paul carried a complicated past with him... loss, mistakes, persecution, and people he loved who were gone. “Forgetting what is behind” was not about erasing those things. It was about refusing to let them anchor him in place.
Grief, love, and memory travel with us. They become part of who we are. But they do not have to stop us from continuing the journey.
Faith, like life, keeps moving forward.
And sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is carry the love of the people we’ve lost and keep living the life they hoped we would have.
Take care of yourselves.
Take care of each other. 💛
