BLOG

Some SURVIVAL INSTINCTS news: It was a New York Post best book of the week!Here is a review from The Maine Edge, a Bangor, Maine newspaper. And here are a few more reviews:The Nerd DailyThe Parkersburg News & Sentinel It was also a book club pick for Bookspan’s Literary Guild, Mystery Guild and DoubleDay book

I have been struggling with so many unknowns recently, feeling so unsettled. I was just reading while my daughter napped, but not really able to focus because of these worries floating around in my head, so I opened my window shade. I saw a girl swinging in the yard next door out my bedroom window.

When I watched the first episode of Big Little Lies, I hated it. I thought it was silly, irrelevant, tacky. No one actually lives like this, I thought. I don’t care about these women and their fluffy, perfect lives. And then I watched the second episode. I’m not sure why I kept watching after such

Funny thing. I wrote this whole post and then had a bit of an epiphany and erased it and now I’m starting over. The gist of what I was writing before was the concept of doing battle with the two parts of you that now seemingly exist: the Before you and the After you. The

Love is. Love is. Love is.  What is the definition of love? I’m not so sure I know what love is, so I’ll start with what I know love is not.  Love is not: wanting to be chosen.  Love is not: always showing the best version of yourself.  Love is not: needing or being needed. 

I’m writing this as a follow-up to my last post, “Trusting Again.” This might not fall under the heading of “Inspirational” but I think it’s important to write about struggles and reality. When I wrote the last post, I was so proud of myself – I had gotten to a place where I felt like

“How will you ever be able to trust anyone again?” This is a question I get a lot. Even recently, I was being interviewed and, though I knew the question was coming, it momentarily rendered me speechless.  It would be so easy to decide that I simply will never trust again. It would be so

So many of you have written to me and shared your stories. A closing phrase I read time and time again is, “I can’t believe this is my life.” There is so much wrapped up in this one sentence. There is the fear and anxiety that you are experiencing on a moment-to-moment basis. There is

(I wrote this article for a fantastic website, X2X Community, that helps people navigate divorce and all that goes along with it.)  Going through a divorce can be heartbreaking, frustrating and flat-out devastating. Going through a divorce with a psychopath or narcissist can be all of the above plus a whole other level of hell

This is a scary post to write. Scary because I am about to share a lot of the “inner work” I had to do (and am still doing every day) after my relationship with my ex-psychopath. I want to preface this by saying that under no circumstances are you to “blame” for getting involved with

This will be a shorter post as there is something very simple, but important that I’d like to say. There were so many months, days, hours, minutes when I felt broken. Like something had actually broken inside of me. Like I was forever changed. Forever broken, missing a piece because of what had happened. It

I received this question from a man who is in the beginning stages of the “fall out” of a relationship with a woman who seems to be somewhere on the psychopathy spectrum. The question kind of jolted me because I remember wanting so, so badly for that sense of closure. I wanted a heartfelt, genuine

There is a special type of anxiety that you will experience during and after breaking the psychopathic bond. Perhaps “special” isn’t the right word. More like hellish, want-to-rip-through-your-skin-and-leave-your-body-behind type of anxiety. A year and a half ago I was in the depths of this anxiety. I had never been an anxious person before; I was

If you’re confused about the difference between the terms “sociopath” and “psychopath,” you’re not alone. Even folks within the psychiatric community have come to various and sometimes conflicting conclusions when discussing the differences between a sociopath and a psychopath. And then there are many who use the terms interchangeably. The most conclusive article I could

For months I obsessively tried to figure out what on earth the “other woman” was thinking – the one my ex-husband began an affair with as soon as our daughter was born. How could someone want to be with a married man with a newborn baby? Even if he was lying to her, didn’t the

This will be my first post on how to determine if someone is a psychopath. Please keep in mind that there are therapists, psychologists, PhD’s who have dedicated many years to studying psychopathy and still have trouble, when it comes down to it, “diagnosing” a psychopath. In fact, many of these professionals admit that some

A lot of women (and some men!) have written me asking exactly what to say to their children about a “bad” parent. First, let’s define “bad.” I wholeheartedly believe that, no matter the reason for the demise of the parent’s relationship, both parents focus should be on fostering a healthy relationship between each parent and