Love means each person is free to follow his or her own heart.

When we don't ask for what we want and need, we discount ourselves.

I gave three years of my life to take care of my dying mother who had Alzheimer's disease. Being there for her every need for three years might have looked codependent but it wasn't because it was what I wanted to do.

No - simple to pronounce, hard to say.

I didn't have to scramble up and down the ladder from despair to euphoria anymore, trying to convince myself that life was either painful and terrible or joyous and wonderful. The simple truth was that life was both. p 214

Codependents are reactionaries. They overreact. They under-react. But rarely do they act. They react to the problems, pains, lives, and behaviors of others. They react to their own problems, pains, and behaviors.

God, help me let go of my need to be afraid. I welcome peace, trust, acceptance, and safety into my life. I will make a point of listening to my healthy, rational fears, and will relinquish all the others.