When you mix Sodium (Na) and water (H2O) together you will get an explosive chemical reaction. The same thing happens when you mix different personality types together with a dash of conflict.

When I was a young girl, there was a TV show called Fame that aired in the 80’s. It was about the experiences of young people studying at a school of fine arts. What was so memorable to me was a speech by Phylicia Rashad that occurred in the opening sequence of each episode. It went something like this, “You’ve got big dreams? You want fame? Well fame costs and right here is where you start paying – with sweat.”

We’ve been talking a lot about finances over the last few weeks and that’s because it’s a very important aspect of autonomy and your well-being. I’ve always said that when you don’t need anyone, you’re able to make better, healthier choices.

My best friend and I were preparing dinner for her mother this weekend for Mother’s Day and we got on the topic of relationships, finances and trust. Do people still share bank accounts? Are people still going all in, in their relationships or do they protect themselves?

Ingrid Roekke once said, “A child that is being abused doesn’t stop loving it’s parents, it stops loving itself.” A lack of self-love is the number one cause of toxic adult relationships. When something isn’t important to us we neglect it, we don’t treat it well and we don’t think much of it. But what happens when that thing is us?

Just follow your heart or the heart wants what it wants are phrases that get tossed around a lot, and it’s almost exclusively used to defend dysfunctional or toxic relationships. Selena Gomez had a hit song out entitled, The Heart Wants What it Wants. Halsey has a song out called, Bad at Love, where she describe the toxic relationship choices she’s made – as if love is to blame.

We have heard the phrase “love yourself first” ad nauseum and many of us can believe that we’re living this precept only to find weeds growing in our lives because the reality is, self love isn’t part of the equation at all.

Self Love has many shades and definitions, but the constant in its measurement can be found in the portrait which is our life – the living breathing canvas of all the decisions we make day to day that result in either a living life of integrity and meaning or having evidence of a life that will live and die by the ego.