They were taken by ICE as they were on their way to a soccer game on August 16, 2026 and held at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas.

Liam and his family are among the countless victims of state-sponsored terror that is being funded with our taxpayer dollars. Our government is willfully and brazenly inflicting trauma on untold numbers of families like Liam’s. Trauma that will last for a lifetime.

Liam’s father has decided to return to Mexico with him rather than remain in detention. But that means Liam will be separated from his mother, which is something no five-year-old can ever be prepared for, or should ever be forced to do.

I wrote the following article on March 30, 2026, after another five-year-old named Liam (Liam Conejo Ramos) and his father were taken to the same facility as Liam Tadeo.

Five months later, I ask again,

How will we say No?

What is happening at our nation’s airports now has exposed a deep and unconscious denial of the highest magnitude.

It demonstrates our collective capacity to not see what we see, to not hear what we hear, and to not know what we know.

We have become active participants in a systematic and deliberate scheme created to desensitize us to our own healthy fear, inhumane cruelty, and violence.

To understand how and why I see what’s happening at our airports today the way I do, I share a personal story from 1967.

That’s the year I flew for the first time when I was six years old. I traveled from Houston to San Antonio out of William P. Hobby Airport, in my hometown of Houston, Texas. Bush Intercontinental, now the largest airport in Houston, wouldn’t exist for another two years.

I vividly remember this milestone because I flew solo, without my parents or any other adult I knew.

I was carefully and kindly looked after by the flight attendants, who were known in those days as stewardesses.

I was headed to San Antonio to visit my Aunt Dorothy and three cousins—Becky, Frank, and Phillip. There’s no doubt I was wearing a dress. In those days, traveling by air was such a special, big-time deal my mother was known to wear women’s dress gloves when she flew.

I have a vague recollection of being escorted down airstairs from the plane and getting into one of those open-air airport service cars with several flight attendants. I remember feeling excited and special, and maybe a little afraid as a 6-year-old traveling by herself for the first time would.

The memory of this flight came back to me a week ago today, which was a particularly bad day for airports and airport news.

That morning we learned that two young Air Canada pilots were killed, and dozens were injured at New York City’s La Guardia Airport after their plane struck a fire truck on the runway due to air traffic controller error.

It was the first fatal crash at La Guardia in 30 years.

Later that day, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents were deployed to several airports due to a shortage of TSA (Transportation Safety Administration) officers, caused by the government shutdown. One of these ICE deployments was at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.

Also on Monday, a story that had been circulating for a few days finally reached a wider audience.

Gillian Brockell, the journalist who broke the story, said that although she has tracked ICE flights around the world, it was the first time she had seen what’s called ICE Air, “charter airlines and military planes that transport captured migrants to detention centers and out of the country.” Brockell’s reporting was the result of the work of Nick Benson, a self-proclaimed aviation geek who lives in Minneapolis.

Benson had noticed that since December, despite seeing many planes leave the Minneapolis airport with passengers who were apparently detained (some had shackles around their ankles), he never saw children being boarded onto planes.

Benson filed an open records request for video at specific locations in the terminal during the time that 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father were reported to have been taken by plane from Minneapolis to Texas.

Video footage from the Minneapolis airport obtained by Benson’s open records request revealed that Liam and his father boarded a Delta Airlines flight to San Antonio.

ICE is using commercial airlines to transport children and adults to facilities we euphemistically and inaccurately refer to as detention centers.

Detention centers are facilities where people who have entered a country illegally are kept for a period of time, or where people who committed crimes are kept (as in juvenile detention centers).

The facilities where we are sending immigrant children and adults are not detention centers. The correct name for these facilities where thousands of men, women, and children are being warehoused without due process is concentration camp.

By definition, a concentration camp is a place where large numbers of people, usually refugees, members of an ethnic or religious minority, or political prisoners, are detained or confined under harsh conditions, without due process. They are used by governments for purposes it decides and controls, and largely without the knowledge or consent of the people.

When Liam and his father arrived in San Antonio, they were taken to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, 72 miles from San Antonio.

The true purpose of this facility and what happens inside its walls are concealed not only by its remote location and heavy security, but by carefully chosen words to name it—family and residential. Words intended to distract and deceive, allowing us to pretend that we don’t see what we see, or know what we know.

Two kids (one White, one Brown) flying to San Antonio. Sixty years and many worlds apart.

I imagine what would have happened if 5-year-old Liam and his father had been sitting across the aisle from me. Maybe one of us would have shyly struck up a conversation, or played a game together, or just smiled back and forth at each other.

Or maybe I would have noticed that he looked scared, and frozen.

I wonder, what would my 6-year-old self think and feel when she saw the scary-looking guys in the terminal dressed like soldiers, and carrying long guns?

I wonder, would my parents send 6-year-old me to San Antonio on a plane by myself today?

The next time you go to an airport and see a child in the terminal or on a flight, will you wonder why they’re there, where they’re going, and who’s accompanying them?

If ICE agents are in the terminal, how do you imagine you will feel? Will you look away out of fear or self-preservation? Will your mind autonomously flash back to images and scenes of masked and indiscriminate violence?

Or will you ignore everything you think and feel, telling yourself, “It’s no big deal.”

To succeed, oppression needs us to adjust and adapt to cruelty, hatred, and a low-level, ever-present fear. It needs us to not see what we see, to not hear what we hear, to not know what we know.

Oppression needs our denial.

Yet we have agency, and choice. We can override our healthy, natural outrage and fear, remaining complicit participants in a culture of willful indifference to human life. Or we can say No.

How will we say No?

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I knew as soon as I got the invitation I couldn’t accept it.

I couldn’t imagine what I would say.

I couldn’t imagine how I would talk about betrayal for an hour, or even thirty minutes. It was as if I’d been rendered speechless around betrayal.

It may be that I’ve said everything I need or want to say about the topic. But it’s more likely an internal response to the cataclysmic events of the past two years that have changed me in ways I’m only beginning to understand.

I had a choice when I was invited to speak. I could play the role of the former version of myself. Or I could be true to the immediate no that arose in me.

If I chose to play the role, that would be a betrayal. A betrayal of me. It also wouldn’t serve the community that asked me to speak.

Betrayal is a violation of a person’s trust or confidence. Betrayal happens when a person or an institution breaks an agreement or a promise.

Not all betrayals are created equal.

If your friend shows up thirty minutes late to lunch, you could call it a betrayal, but most people wouldn’t describe it that way.

If your partner has sex with a stranger or a sex worker and keeps it secret from you, that’s a betrayal. But if he has sex with your sister, that’s altogether a different kind of betrayal.

Deception and lies always accompany betrayal. Most people who’ve experienced betrayal will tell you that what hurts the most isn’t what the other person did, but the deception they employed to cover it up. The lies.

There are two facts about the experience of betrayal that I believe have the greatest power to move a person beyond betrayal and into a life of flourishing and empowerment.

The first is to know that betrayal is never about you. Ever.

The second is that self-betrayal is the worst betrayal, and the most common.

Betrayal is never about you.

I want you to memorize this statement and repeat it regularly until you firmly believe it. It may take a while. It may take a lifetime. But it’s the Truth, and you deserve to know the truth.

• Betrayal isn’t caused by something you did.

• Betrayal isn’t caused by something you didn’t do.

• Betrayal isn’t caused by the way you look.

Betrayal isn’t about you even if the person who betrayed you says, “It’s about you. You’re not enough of ____________ or too much of ___________. You made me do it.”

What they’re saying is that they’ve outsourced and abdicated their free will, responsibility, and their integrity to you. They’re saying you’re the decider of what they do and you’re responsible for it.

I hope you’re seeing how insane this reasoning is.

It’s exceedingly difficult to fully appreciate the Truth of the statement that what other people do is about them, and never about you. And that’s why you need to remind yourself of this fact. Often.

You’re responsible for what you say and do, and other people are responsible for what they say and do. It’s that simple.

The second thing I want you to know about betrayal is that the worst betrayal is self-betrayal. It’s also the most common kind.

Examples of self-betrayal:

• Saying yes when you mean no.

• Smiling when you’re not pleased.

• Laughing when you don’t think something is funny.

• Stopping yourself from doing what you want to do because you think it’s selfish or because you believe you’ll lose someone’s approval or love.

• Fulfilling perceived (or spoken) expectations other people have of you rather than acting on the guidance you get from your core, your center.

Self-betrayal is learned behavior. It’s not natural.

I learned self-betrayal from my family, a codependent culture, and every system I’ve ever been a part of or participated in (religious, governmental, educational, legal, etc.). Any system that favors thinking one thing over another, or demands that you believe a certain way, is a system that will encourage you to self-betray to maintain the system.

Stay alert to acts of self-betrayal.

Your partner, parents, friends, children, employers, and others may prefer the Who they knew you to be in the past. But that may not be who you are now. You’re not who you used to be.

When you’re true to your inner guidance, some people will like it. Some won’t. The people who don’t will self-select and move on. Those who resonate with who you are now will stay, and new people will show up.

No blame, just exactly the way the world moves. Exactly how it should be.

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Question:

“How to get others in your household to help.”

Who can’t feel this questioner’s pain?

Most people repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) try to get others to step up to the plate and do their fair share of work by deploying questions and statements like:

• Why don’t you ever help with _______________?

• Boy, it sure would be nice if someone would _______________.

• If I had some help around here, I could ________________.

• It must be nice to sit around and watch football all day!

These are all examples of the indirect, guilt and shame method for getting needs or wants met. This method is used with both adults and children, but for our purposes we’ll focus on adult-adult communications.

Like me, you’ve probably learned that while it’s possible to get short-term, guilt-induced results from the guilt and shame method, it rarely creates harmonious, long-term solutions.

There are two basic ways to get help: Request or Resign.

Before I talk about making requests or resigning, I want to be clear that neither of these options guarantee that you will get help. That’s probably not what you want to hear, but the clarity will save you time, frustration, and maybe even heartache.

Your request may be answered with a no. Resigning from the task(s) you want to offload in no way guarantees you’ll get help, beyond the simple fact that you helped yourself by not doing something you’d rather not do.

However, either option moves you from complaint mode into solution territory. Pursuing either option also increases the likelihood of releasing the built-up resentment that comes from wanting help, not receiving it, and doing nothing constructive to get what you want.

The direct and most effective route for getting help is to make a request, for the purpose of creating an agreement. (Keep in mind that a request could involve delegating the work to a third person, if delegating requires an agreement.)

Here are some best practices for crafting an effective request[1]:

1. Express your request in the form of a question. For example, “Would you be willing to load the dishwasher after dinner on weekdays?”

2. Make your request clear and specific. For example, “I would like the bed to be made every day. Would you be willing to make the bed on the weekends, and I’ll make it on weekdays?”

3. Avoid telling the other person what they should think, say, or do. For example, don’t say, “You need to clean up after yourself. Would you do that?” Telling another person what you think they should do prior to making a request may sabotage the request. No one wants to hear what they need to or should do. Also notice that the request to “clean up after yourself” is vague and open to perception and interpretation. One person’s clean space may be another person’s pigsty. That’s why this request isn’t specific enough to create a high-quality request or agreement.

The second option for getting help—often a last resort—is to resign. By resign, I mean you simply stop doing whatever it is you want help with.

For most people, this is exceedingly difficult for two reasons.

The first is that you’ve likely been doing the task you want help with because it’s important to you that it get done, or because you don’t think you could stay calm or peaceful if it didn’t get done.

For example, I know someone who absolutely must have a clean kitchen. To him, “clean kitchen” means no dishes in the sink or on the countertop. Everything is put away either in the dishwasher or the cabinets.

Resigning from this job would be nearly impossible for him because the turmoil of seeing dishes in the sink or on the counter would be too painful.

The second reason resigning may be difficult is that you unconsciously derive a benefit from continuing to do something you don’t want to do.

For example, if you’ve created an internal identity that you are a clean, helpful, or orderly person, when you act otherwise, your identity feels threatened.

In this case, I recommend spending some time exploring your reasons for persevering in the face of resentment, before taking action.

Eventually the balance between resentment and wanting a thing done will tip in favor of you surrendering and letting go of doing it yourself. The opportunity here is to leave something undone in the service of taking care of your simmering resentment.

Resigning means you stop doing what you’re doing and accept the outcome, whatever it is. Simple, but not easy.

This dilemma reminds me of a woman who had a dog whose nutritional needs required that he eat raw meet every day. The raw meet was stored in plastic containers in the freezer, and every time a container was emptied, her husband threw the plastic container in a corner of the garage, without rinsing it.

This habit annoyed her so much she started picking up the containers and washing them to be reused. Eventually she became so resentful she couldn’t do it any longer. Plus, her attempts at nagging her husband had yielded zero results. She resigned.

She let the unrinsed plastic containers pile up in the corner of the garage. The sight of the pile became nearly unbearable to her. Eventually, the pile of containers reached a critical mass, even to her husband, and he cleaned up the entire mess.

Even if you don’t get an outcome like this one, let this woman’s perseverance in the face of frustration and foul odor give you courage.

Resigning isn’t a promise of getting help. It’s not a clever manipulation to get your needs met.

But it can be The End of you doing something you don’t want to do.

Turning complaints into requests is one of my favorite relationship skills from the work of Terry Real, couples’ therapist and author. Turning a complaint into a request requires you to objectively examine what you’re complaining about and come up with a request that may transform the complaint into a solution. I highly recommend putting this tool in your relationship communication toolbox.[2]

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[1] You can find detailed information about making requests in my book, Personal Boundaries For Dummies (I searched my digital copy for the word request, and it appears 402 times.) Get the book at your favorite bookseller or at Bookshop.org here.

[2] Excerpt from Personal Boundaries For Dummies, Chapter 7, Knowing When You Need to Create a Boundary.

Question:

“Why do I know my truth and then begin to doubt myself?”

I love this question because it gives me an opportunity to tell you that I’ve struggled with my fair share of self-doubt over the years, and decades.

A vivid memory comes to mind of being at the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals’ (IITAP) annual conference in Arizona about 16 years ago.

Patrick Carnes was leading a closing ceremony where we were invited to write down on a slip of paper what we would like to shed or leave behind. Something that wasn’t serving us. I wrote on my slip of paper, self-doubt, walked to the front of the room, looked Dr. Carnes in the eye, and placed the slip of paper in a black box.

The experience felt so solemn and final that I halfway hoped I would walk out of that conference ballroom and never experience self-doubt again.

I wish I could tell you that putting a piece of paper in a box is all it takes to break up with self-doubt. But like most struggles in life, it’s not that easy, or simple.

When you say you know your truth but then begin to doubt yourself, I want to know, “What happens next?” Do you abandon your truth, or do you move forward in spite of your doubt?

If you move forward, then it doesn’t really matter that you doubt yourself. Your doubt isn’t stopping you.

But if you get stuck by the self-doubt, then I would want to know if you’re 100% sure that what you believe to be your truth is indeed your truth.

If you know something—really know it—you will either have no doubts, or what little doubt you have will be short-lived. If you seriously, painfully doubt yourself, go back to the truth you believed you knew and find out if you’re as committed to it as you thought you were. If you’re not, release it.

If you know in your gut it’s your truth, the next question is, “What is this truth asking of me? What will it require of me?”

For example, if your truth is that you need to leave a relationship, quit your job, set a boundary, or make a major change in your life, your self-doubt may be the simple fear of doing what you know you must do.

Change is difficult, sometimes excruciating. Inner truths often demand we do hard things.

Is it possible to follow your truth, even when you feel doubt?

Is it possible to allow truth and self-doubt to co-exist and move forward together?

I hear yes.

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This is the second in a series of posts where I’ll answer a select group of these questions.

Question:

“How, and is it possible, to ask a spouse for our wants in the relationship when they are selfish and controlling?”

I love this question because it gives me another opportunity to tell you:

You can ask anyone for ANYTHING!

Why? Because both you and the person you make the request of are free.

You’re free to ask for anything, and the other person is free to answer yes, no, or to negotiate with you an alternative agreement or arrangement.[1]

Whether the person you’re asking is a stranger or a spouse. Whether they’re sweet, selfish, generous, controlling, or a complete jerk—the same rule applies, no exceptions.

As easy as this sounds, I realize it can be exceedingly difficult to do.

I want to tell you a true story that I hope will inspire you to take your asks and requests to the next level.

This story was told to me by a male client who gave me permission to share it after I told him it was one of the best, most inspiring stories I’ve ever heard about the power of requests.

After a couple of months of dating a woman he met online, my client’s relationship with her came to an abrupt end one night over dinner when she asked him whether he was interested in dating another woman.

As he told the story to me, when she asked him the question, his facial expression gave away the answer. He admitted to her that, indeed, there was another woman he was interested in dating.

He had known the other woman for a while, but for various reasons—all having to do with her own issues around intimacy and attachment (my take on the matter)—they hadn’t dated or become closer.

His date, hearing this new information was deeply and profoundly devastated that he was interested in dating another woman. And that was the end of their dating relationship.

Not long after this meeting, the two of them were having a text exchange. The woman told him she thought she needed intensive treatment for love addiction. She asked him to pay for it.

Although he had some minor reservations about saying yes, he realized that it didn’t make sense (to himself) to say no even though he knew she could afford to pay the fee herself. He agreed to pay for her treatment and within a matter of days he paid the treatment center in full.

I tell you this story to inspire and encourage you, and to illustrate (again) that:

You can ask anyone for anything.

And they can say yes, no, or negotiate an alternative agreement with you.

Simple.

No exceptions.

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[1] You can find detailed information about making requests in my book, Personal Boundaries For Dummies (I searched my digital copy just now for the word request, and it appears 402 times.) Get the book at your favorite bookseller or at Bookshop.org here.

This is the first in a series of posts where I’ll answer a select group of these questions.

Question:

“What gets in the way of me is me. I think I need to learn how to love me no matter how dysfunctional I’ve become.”

Instead of asking a question, this questioner made two highly self-aware and insightful statements. Embedded in each statement is a solution to the problem she poses. Each statement invites several clarifying questions.

If I were sitting with her and her two statements, I would first ask her:

How do you get in your way?

I would ask her to make a list of all the ways she gets in her way, without censoring anything. I might ask her to write nonstop for five minutes. Timed writing helps bypass the part of the mind that wants to censor, edit, and critique.

Once the list of all the ways she gets in her way is complete, I would ask her to pick one item from her list and ask herself:

How would I like to do this differently? Or, what would I like to do instead?

Maybe one of the ways she gets in her way is by avoiding doing what she knows would help her feel better. Or maybe she procrastinates around taking action on something she wants to create by distracting herself with doomscrolling, Sudoku, or housework.

She could ask herself, “What is one thing I can do to limit (or eliminate) doomscrolling, Sudoku, or unnecessary housework?”

Once she has an answer, she can make a plan to experiment with her idea, testing it to see if it works for her. This may be just the first step of a long process, but it will get her started.

Her second statement (“I think I need to learn how to love me no matter how dysfunctional I’ve become.”), turned into a question might be:

How can I love myself no matter how dysfunctional I’ve become?

This is a powerful question to unpack.

I would start by asking her to define dysfunctional, or ask her, “When you’re acting in a dysfunctional way, what are you thinking, saying, or doing?”

Clarifying questions like this help you see yourself through the lens of your behavior or actions, rather than creating an identity based on a quality or characteristic you don’t want.

In other words, someone may act in dysfunctional ways, but they are not a dysfunctional human being. What you do is not who you are.

People tend to behave in ways that make sense, or are logical to them, even if the behavior is dysfunctional.

For example, I had a neighbor once who didn’t get to go to college after high school because her family’s rule was that only boys get financial support to go to college. Years later, every time the topic of college came up, she became angry, unpleasant, and defensive, even if the conversation had nothing to do with her. Her behavior made sense and was logical for her, because she had a deep well of unresolved pain and grief about not being supported or encouraged by her family.

When you ask yourself with sincere curiosity why your behavior makes sense, or is logical to you, you may effortlessly discover self-understanding where there was self-disapproval, or compassion where there was shame.

Finding out what is meant by dysfunctional could be all this questioner needs to experience the self-love she’s seeking.

Caring for and loving yourself no matter how dysfunctional you are is what a good mother or inner parent does.

One of the signs that the inner good enough parent is absent is when your self-talk is negative or critical. Pia Mellody, a pioneer in the field of family of origin trauma treatment, describes the three primary qualities of functional parenting as nurturing, affirming, and limit-setting (boundaries).

When you feel uncared for or unloved, find out which of these three qualities is most needed in the moment. Do you need to nurture yourself, to affirm yourself, or to set a limit? When you find the answer, give yourself what you need.

Here’s a possible reframe of the questioner’s original statements:

Sometimes I get in my own way, and that’s okay.

I love myself even when I’m less than functional.

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As I watched the miracle of technology as it transferred massive amounts of data from Google to . . . . . . (a top secret, undisclosed location), one file in particular grabbed my attention. The file name was KindnessRoughVideo.mov.

I had no idea what it was, but I was intrigued by the title.

When I clicked on the file it was a video of me, sitting on the sofa in my office alone, on June 21, 2023.

I was getting ready to record a podcast and I guess I decided to turn the camera on and talk to warm up my voice, but I think the true motive was to vent. I don’t recall ever doing this before, or since.

Watching the video made me laugh, and cry. And I want to share it with you.

It’s my raw response to being criticized online by someone I don’t know, and my unfolding-in-real-time self-reflection about why this particular criticism stung so deeply.

A lightly edited transcript from the video is below. But I recommend you listen to the spoken words. (Click the voiceover link at top of this page.) The spoken word can convey many things that black and white letters on a screen simply can’t.

It was pure grace that when the original recording was transcribed it included what are called audio events. So, around minute two, you’ll see “[clears throat],” in the transcript below. In that moment, I did indeed clear my throat.

You’re welcome, Ann Marie.

June 21, 2023:

“Hey friends. It’s been a very long time.

As some of you know, I’m getting ready to start a new podcast, and I thought it would be interesting to come on and kind of warm myself up. You know, get ready for the podcast.

Has anyone ever said something to you that . . . hurt? When you heard it, it made you wanna say, “Ouch?”

Or maybe it was cruel or mean or vengeful.

Has anyone ever said anything to you like that?

Well, it’s going to happen to all of us sooner than later, and something like that happened to me earlier today. It really got me to thinking about one of my favorite quotes, which is,

“Be kind. Be kind. Everyone is fighting a fierce battle,” or something like that.

Yeah. Everyone’s fighting a battle and that is so, so, so true.

So today, I was working on the outline for episode one and it’s not an easy episode to write an outline for. I need to say some things. I need to talk about some things, and I just know from experience that some people, they won’t like it.

They won’t.

It’s gonna terrify some of them.

It’s not my business, but [clears throat] I’m just telling you that’s what’s going to happen. I know that. That’s fine, but I have some things that I really believe I need to say and I’m going to say them.

But in doing that, I had actually not just created the outline, but I had also created a recording of the first episode because I was really curious to see how long is it going to take me to say what I need to say in this first episode.

The only way I could figure out how long the episode was, was to look at the megabytes of the recording I just made, compare it to one of the podcasts I did, one of the Beyond Bitchy podcast episodes. I found one that was almost exactly the same number of megabytes. It was episode number 36.

The only way I could figure out how long it was, I went to my website first. No luck. It didn’t tell me how long the episode was.

So, I decided to go to Apple Podcasts. I don’t wanna read what the person said to me again. I already read it. I don’t need to read it again, but you can go to Apple Podcasts and read it yourself.

So, I go on there to episode number 36 because I wanna see how long was this episode. And I find it and it was about 20, 22, 26 minutes. I don’t exactly remember how long it was, but it was about that long.

But in the course of doing that, the way Apple Podcasts is set up, some of the current reviews pop up. They’re right there on the screen.

I’ve made it a solid practice of mine; I don’t read reviews. I learned the hard way.

Have you ever done a podcast? Have you ever written a blog for, you know, eight years? Have you ever published a book?

Well, let me tell you, if you haven’t done any of those things, people are going to say things to you in public spaces over which you have no control that are . . . not kind, cruel, lies.

You really don’t have any control over that.

I know that. That’s why I never read reviews. I shouldn’t say never, but I’m not a person that routinely goes there to look at them. I don’t do that ‘cause I know better.

I know that if there are 100 reviews—Beyond Bitchy has about 400—if I read all 400 and four of them say something not nice, guess which ones I will remember?

My brain works just like your brain. I would remember the four that were negative, and the 396, I’d say, “Mm, yeah, that’s nice,” but those wouldn’t stay with me. There’s something about the human brain, right?

So today, the one that popped up on the Apple Podcast said, I think the heading was “Life-saving.”

So, what this listener was saying was this podcast is life-saving. And let me tell you, just as an aside, I’ve heard that so many times, I can’t even tell you. If you’ve never listened to Beyond Bitchy, you need to listen to it unless you already have a black belt in boundaries. Who does? I don’t know anyone who does. Anyway, listen to it. It’s life-saving, life-changing. I’ve heard it over, and over, and over.

So, this person’s so nice. She says, “life-saving,” and then she goes on to say a few things, and then at the end of the comment she said something to the effect of, “Well, you know, the only negative thing I could say is that I kinda wish she would clear her throat.”

“I kinda wish she would clear her throat.” Great.

I wish she would clear her throat, ‘cause, you know, I don’t know about your body, but sometimes my body produces, uh, mucus. Does your body produce mucus?

I learned this after I got COVID, that the body creates mucus to catch germs. To catch germs, to catch viruses, to catch bacteria. Is that not brilliant?

But Ann Marie, or whatever the f---- her name was, she wants me to clear my throat.

Okay.

And for some reason I could not let go of that.

And I really started to ponder what that was about for me. Why it was hard for me to let go of Ann Marie—who I don’t even know—telling me she “kinda wished” I would clear my throat?

Which takes me back to what I said earlier to you about everyone is fighting a great battle.

I’ve always joked that if I had known how many times I was gonna have to get up in front of a classroom and speak when I decided to go to graduate school, I probably wouldn’t have done it.” I was terrified of public speaking. Terrified.

I remember one time when I was doing a group consultation when I was getting a certification as a therapist, and we all had to do case consultation. That means you bring a case to somebody who has more experience than you, and you talk about your case and you get feedback.

I was so terrified to speak in front of my peers, in front of this therapist who was leading the consultation group. My voice would not work. It literally didn’t work. And that happened to me many, many, many times.

But it didn’t stop me from getting up in front of people in order to get my degree. And later on, I was invited to speak, sometimes to hundreds of people. It didn’t stop me from doing that.

I just didn’t think it was wise to allow this challenge that I had to stop me from saying what I needed and wanted and what actually people wanted to hear me say.

And Ann Marie wants me to clear my throat.

Now, the truth is that I have probably been as cruel . . .

No, I have been even more cruel than Ann.

It’s so interesting because Ann is my mother-in-law’s name. Wow. That’s a story for another day.

Okay, where was I?

Yeah, so she wants me to clear my throat.

I really went inside to ask myself, “Why can’t I let this go?” And I saw who I was. That I was a person who was really afraid for a long, long, long time, to the point that I totally forgot this story until now.

I forgot what grade I was in, but it had to be middle school, because Mr. Park was my history teacher at T.H. Rogers Middle School. I was really intimidated by Mr. Park.

He was the kind of teacher that loved to punish the bad actors, of which I became one. And he loved to elevate the good actors. And so, one of the things he would do is if you made a good grade, you got to sit in the back of the class and do whatever you do back there. But the people with the worst grades had to sit in the front. I was one of those people because I remember sitting close to the front in Mr. Park’s class.

He gave us an assignment to do some kind of a book report. I was so terrified of getting up in front of the class to do this that I didn’t do the assignment. I just didn’t do it.

Frankly, I don’t think I should have made it out of that class because I got a zero on the project which would have destroyed my whole grade point average. But somehow, I got out of Mr. Park’s class.

Later in 12th grade, I remember being in Miss Juban’s government class. I waited until the bitter end to raise my hand to do some kind of assignment where I had to get in front of the class and say something.

I was terrified. I waited so long that when I got up there, we ran out of time. I was so relieved. I didn’t even get through what I was supposed to say. And I suspect that Miss Juban knew how hard it was on me.

She was the only teacher, the only adult in my life when I was in high school who asked me, “Vicki, where are you going to school?” And I said, “I’m not going.” Because no one had ever asked me that question or even considered it a possible reality that I might go to college. I do believe Miss Juban cared about me, and I imagine she saw that I was terrified.

So, Ann, when you tell me to clear my throat, I have cleared my throat.

You have no idea how often I have cleared my throat.

And I’m here, and I am going to keep talking, and there may be some times when I need to clear my throat, and I may clear my throat, and I may choose not to clear my throat.

And whatever I choose to do, that’s for me.

It’s a free world. You can write as many reviews on Apple Podcasts as you want to. I will not read them.

Be kind.

Be kind.

I don’t care who it is.

Most of us, we are fighting a great battle.

And when you’re fighting a great battle, do you not want kindness?

Of course you do.”

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It demonstrates our collective capacity to not see what we see, to not hear what we hear, and to not know what we know.

We have become active participants in a systematic and deliberate scheme created to desensitize us to our own healthy fear, inhumane cruelty, and violence.

To understand how and why I see what’s happening at our airports today the way I do, I share a personal story from 1967.

That’s the year I flew for the first time when I was six years old. I traveled from Houston to San Antonio out of William P. Hobby Airport, in my hometown of Houston, Texas. Bush Intercontinental, now the largest airport in Houston, wouldn’t exist for another two years.

I vividly remember this milestone because I flew solo, without my parents or any other adult I knew.

I was carefully and kindly looked after by the flight attendants, who were known in those days as stewardesses.

I was headed to San Antonio to visit my Aunt Dorothy and three cousins—Becky, Frank, and Phillip. There’s no doubt I was wearing a dress. In those days, traveling by air was such a special, big-time deal my mother was known to wear women’s dress gloves when she flew.

I have a vague recollection of being escorted down airstairs from the plane and getting into one of those open-air airport service cars with several flight attendants. I remember feeling excited and special, and maybe a little afraid as a 6-year-old traveling by herself for the first time would.

The memory of this flight came back to me a week ago today, which was a particularly bad day for airports and airport news.

That morning we learned that two young Air Canada pilots were killed, and dozens were injured at New York City’s La Guardia Airport after their plane struck a fire truck on the runway due to air traffic controller error.

It was the first fatal crash at La Guardia in 30 years.

Later that day, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents were deployed to several airports due to a shortage of TSA (Transportation Safety Administration) officers, caused by the government shutdown. One of these ICE deployments was at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.

Also on Monday, a story that had been circulating for a few days finally reached a wider audience.

Gillian Brockell, the journalist who broke the story, said that although she has tracked ICE flights around the world, it was the first time she had seen what’s called ICE Air, “charter airlines and military planes that transport captured migrants to detention centers and out of the country.” Brockell’s reporting was the result of the work of Nick Benson, a self-proclaimed aviation geek who lives in Minneapolis.

Benson had noticed that since December, despite seeing many planes leave the Minneapolis airport with passengers who were apparently detained (some had shackles around their ankles), he never saw children being boarded onto planes.

Benson filed an open records request for video at specific locations in the terminal during the time that 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father were reported to have been taken by plane from Minneapolis to Texas.

Video footage from the Minneapolis airport obtained by Benson’s open records request revealed that Liam and his father boarded a Delta Airlines flight to San Antonio.

ICE is using commercial airlines to transport children and adults to facilities we euphemistically and inaccurately refer to as detention centers.

Detention centers are facilities where people who have entered a country illegally are kept for a period of time, or where people who committed crimes are kept (as in juvenile detention centers).

The facilities where we are sending immigrant children and adults are not detention centers. The correct name for these facilities where thousands of men, women, and children are being warehoused without due process is concentration camp.

By definition, a concentration camp is a place where large numbers of people, usually refugees, members of an ethnic or religious minority, or political prisoners, are detained or confined under harsh conditions, without due process. They are used by governments for purposes it decides and controls, and largely without the knowledge or consent of the people.

When Liam and his father arrived in San Antonio, they were taken to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, 72 miles from San Antonio.

The true purpose of this facility and what happens inside its walls are concealed not only by its remote location and heavy security, but by carefully chosen words to name it—family and residential. Words intended to distract and deceive, allowing us to pretend that we don’t see what we see, or know what we know.

Two kids flying to San Antonio. Sixty years and many worlds apart.

I imagine what would have happened if 5-year-old Liam and his father had been sitting across the aisle from me. Maybe one of us would have shyly struck up a conversation, or played a game together, or just smiled back and forth at each other.

Or maybe I would have noticed that he looked scared, and frozen.

I wonder, what would my 6-year-old self think and feel when she saw the scary-looking guys in the terminal dressed like soldiers, and carrying long guns?

I wonder, would my parents send 6-year-old me to San Antonio on a plane by myself today?

The next time you go to an airport and see a child in the terminal or on a flight, will you wonder why they’re there, where they’re going, and who’s accompanying them?

If ICE agents are in the terminal, how do you imagine you will feel? Will you look away out of fear or self-preservation? Will your mind autonomously flash back to images and scenes of masked and indiscriminate violence?

Or will you ignore everything you think and feel, telling yourself, “It’s no big deal.”

To succeed, oppression needs us to adjust and adapt to cruelty, hatred, and a low-level, ever-present fear. It needs us to not see what we see, to not hear what we hear, to not know what we know.

Oppression needs our denial.

Yet we have agency, and choice. We can override our healthy, natural outrage and fear, remaining complicit participants in a culture of willful indifference to human life. Or we can say No.

How will we say No?

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That is, until I happened to see a video post praising Pope Leo XIV for being flanked by two altar girls today as he celebrated mass.

For the record, I am not Catholic. But my husband is.

He once gifted me with a rosary given to him by someone who had visited the Vatican. This red rosary is draped around the neck of the Quan Yin statue on my altar, and I treasure it deeply.

But the image of the Pope flanked by two altar girls caused something inside me to snap.

I know the feeling. It’s the familiar feeling I’ve had for as long as I can remember when I see something glaring yet hiding in plain sight.

It also happens when I witness injustice. It’s a kind of sacred compulsion to speak because staying silent would be regrettable self-muzzling.

So I posted the following comment under the video of Pope Leo XIV:

MLK [Martin Luther King, Jr.] famously said “The arc of the moral universe is long . . .”

This gesture by a bold, courageous, emotionally intelligent and empathic Pope is beautiful, and at the same time painfully incremental.

Why are religious institutions so terrified of women that they must keep them subordinate and muzzled?

The arc is long, but it does bend toward justice.

Every person who has ever worked to create more justice and more equality knows you can’t look to those who unknowingly or intentionally perpetuate injustice and inequality for your emancipation or empowerment.

You must create it yourself.

I thought of the hundreds of women I’ve worked with over the past decades. I recalled stories of women trapped in marriages where they had no economic power or money of their own.

Some of them participated in their own subordination and objectification by giving their partner exactly what he wanted (or stayed silent), sacrificing their dignity, self-respect, and moral authority in the process.

Some of them told themselves they couldn’t leave because they had young children at home.

Creating justice for yourself requires two things. The first is simple. The second is simple, but will require a life’s work of deprogramming yourself from an overculture awash in covert misogyny.

If you have these two things, the likelihood that you’ll sacrifice yourself for anyone or anything diminishes significantly.

The first is that you must have financial independence.

Financial independence doesn’t necessarily mean having a job or having a big inheritance. It might mean creating an agreement with a partner that you have money controlled exclusively and only by you. It might mean you create a post-nup.

Ideally, the amount of money you have in your control gives you the freedom to leave at a moment’s notice and gives you a cushion to live on until you re-establish yourself.

If there’s no way to create a reserve of money for yourself, create a written agreement that the home you live in be transferred to your name. If you don’t own a home, start a “you” account and put a dollar in it every week.

If none of these are possible, identify two places you could go (including a domestic violence or other safe shelter) or two people who would welcome you if you must leave a situation that has become completely unworkable, or unsafe, for you.

Every woman reading these words can do at least one of these. If you say you can’t, you’re participating in your own disempowerment.

The second thing you must have is the knowledge that your worth is dependent on only one fact, and that is you’re breathing. You’re alive.

Your worth isn’t dependent on:

• Who loves or doesn’t love you

• What you look like

• How much money you make

• The measurements of your various body parts

• How many followers you have on Instagram

• The clothes and jewelry in your closet

• Who approves of you, and how much

• How your kids turned out

• Another person’s sexual desire for you

• The absence of wrinkles

What else would you add to your “my worth isn’t dependent on” list?

Neither money nor your unshakable belief in your worth may be easy for you to attain. But they matter. Deeply, and for all your days.

Virginia Woolf wrote in her 1929 essay, A Room of One’s Own, that there are two things women need.

The first is a room of her own, and the second is her own money. Intellectual and financial freedom. Woolf was specifically speaking of and to writers, but these directives apply to any woman even now, nearly 100 years later.

A room of your own (which could be a chair in a cozy corner) is the womb where you discover and create yourself. The womb that gives birth to an unshakable trust in your inner knowing, your feelings, and your worth.

Are you ready to do what’s in your power to create the conditions of your emancipation?

If your answer is yes, what is one step that will take you in that direction? The arc is slow, but your movement makes it bend faster.

May all women know their inherent worth.🩵

Cynthia was the technical editor for my second book, Personal Boundaries For Dummies. She trained extensively with Pia Mellody, and I’ve referred many people to her over the years. She’s a solid, grounded, and seasoned clinician.

Cynthia’s new book 100 Questions & Answers About Codependency For Dummies just released a few days ago.

Here’s an overview:

Everything You Want to Know About Codependency: A Q&A Guide

If you believe you may be in a codependent relationship or want to better recognize codependent patterns, 100 Questions & Answers About Codependency For Dummies is your go-to resource. This user-friendly guide helps you uncover the unhealthy pathways to codependency and teaches you how to break free from the cycle.

If you want to learn more about codependency, or find out how to break free from unhealthy patterns that are hurting you and your relationships, get Cynthia’s book.

You can get 100 Questions & Answers About Codependency For Dummies at your favorite bookseller, or at Amazon by clicking this link.

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In this singular life we accumulate many identities.

Some arise organically and spontaneously from the center of who you are. Other identities are cultivated for a purpose, like parenting or making a living.

When it’s time to shed an identity that comes naturally to you or one you cultivated for a good purpose, the shedding may be uncomfortable, but you’ll experience it as a necessary inconvenience on the journey to what’s next for you.

Some identities are chosen by the ego. These are the most dangerous because they’re based in fear.

Ego-chosen identities demand that nothing changes so that fear may be kept at bay.

Some people have huge success constructing and creating a chosen identity. But when that identity becomes sufficiently painful or is shattered by circumstances outside their control, the shedding is excruciating.

In the summer of 2024, my family experienced a cataclysmic, devastating event that permanently altered my life.1 Immediately and irrevocably, nearly everything that was once important to me no longer mattered.

Six weeks prior, Personal Boundaries For Dummies (my second book), had been released. For most authors the release of a book is a joyful, energetic time when you focus on promoting and getting the word out about your new book—the way a new parent announces and shows off their adorable new baby.

Despite the fact that the offer to write PBFD literally landed in my lap as if it were my destiny (which I still believe it was), the promotion of the book became one of many things that stopped mattering.

For the past 18+ months I’ve struggled to know what to say to people who’ve followed me and supported my work over the past decade. I’m not who I used to be.

I chose to remain (uncharacteristically) silent. There’s no blame, only observation and a knowing that I was doing my best in an impossible situation. Acquiring an identity you didn’t chose is the heroine’s/hero’s journey.

Identities are fleeting and fragile. In truth, they aren’t who you are at your core.

Now, there are words that want to be spoken.

There are rules that want to be challenged, and broken. Rules about what people with identities like mine should or shouldn’t speak of.

There are truths that want to be told.

What identities of yours need to shed?

What do you need to say good-bye to or no to so that you can become who you already are?

p.s. In the spirit of shedding identities, this publication has a new name: Words from Stillness.

The title of the book was a declaration of what I needed in that moment to navigate what was happening in my life. The woman who wrote it was not only a New York Times best-selling author but also had one of her books made into an Oscar-winning film.

A few days after I received the book and had some free time, I picked it up and started reading the introduction. As I tell you this story, part of me wishes—but not in a genuinely sincere way—that I hadn’t put the book in the firepit. I would have liked to tell you the exact number of times the author said mothereffer, just in the introduction.

I don’t know anything else about that book. I didn’t make it past the intro.

Without fail, every time I hear or read the word mothereffer (the real word, not this euphemistic one) I get an immediate, visceral, Big-Fat-NO body response.

The word mothereffer, along with what I’ll call (also euphemistically) its root word eff, has become so commonplace, so ubiquitous, so ordinary, you may have become numb to it.

If you doubt that you go unconscious when the eff word (or one of its many offspring) is spoken, try this:

Say the word either silently or out loud. Then sit quietly and notice how it lands. Notice how it reverberates in the tissues and cells of your body.

If you’re feeling peaceful, serene, or empowered after this brief exercise, then by all means go about your day. If you’re feeling something else, stay with me.

As a writer and author, I’m a lover of words and ideas. But friends, too many of the words that were once marginalized have become mainstream. And too many other words—and their corresponding qualities—that were once mainstream (and life-giving) have become quaint, even marginalized. Words like empathy, compassion, respect, and kindness are a few.

Some words delight; some words offend. Sometimes the same word offends one person yet delights another. That’s one reason among many I don’t endorse banning or cancelling words, in the same way I don’t endorse banning books.

Who gets to decide which words are delightful, or offensive? It’s a perceptions game. And in the perceptions game, everyone gets to win.

As a society, we’ve abandoned critical, conscious reflection about the words we use, along with the ability to listen with curiosity, respect, and humility. Artificial structures like creating safe spaces for discourse or practices like issuing trigger warnings before speaking don’t make us better communicators or listeners.

Relying on the latest communication rules or fads, with all their ambiguous meanings fools us into believing that other people are the ultimate source of our emotional safety. Emotional safety is an inside job. Always.

Even though I don’t endorse cancelling words, I’ve long been puzzled about why people, including many women, have wholeheartedly embraced the eff word and all its iterations—especially mothereffer.

If you look up eff in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, you’ll find two definitions. The first is described as “usually obscene”:

to engage in coitus with —sometimes used interjectionally with an object (such as personal or reflexive pronoun) to express anger, contempt, or disgust

The second definition is described as “usually vulgar”:

to deal with unfairly or harshly; to cheat, screw

Other definitions of eff pair sexual intercourse with emotion words like hostility, horror, surprise, and disdain. No dictionary uses a positive emotion word stronger than surprise to define eff.

Whether we’re conscious of it or not, what we’re saying when we say eff is some version of angry, contemptuous, hostile sex.

If this sounds over-the-top to you and you want to make the case that eff is equivalent to sexual intercourse without all the dark negativity, let’s substitute the term sexual intercourse for eff in the common expressions below:

1. Sexual intercourse off. (eff off)

2. Sexual intercourse you. (eff you)

3. Sexual intercourse it. (eff it)

4. Mother sexual intercourse-er (mothereffer)

5. What the sexual intercourse? (what the eff/wtf)

6. Get the sexual intercourse out of here! (get the eff out of here)

7. Get with the sexual intercourse program! (get with the effing program)

To be fair, a novelist or a movie director might say #6 as part of a creative edit. I can also imagine a sex therapist saying #7 to a client. Even so, the substitutions sound silly and ridiculous. Why?

Because the hostility, disgust, and rage have been scrubbed out. The strong negative emotions are the fuel that gives the eff word its meaning, and power.

I wondered what ChatGPT would say if I gave it the long form definition of eff (without using the word), and asked it to give me one word to describe the definition.

It began by telling me that there was no single widely accepted word in English to convey the meaning of the definition I gave it, but it offered a few “nuanced or literary” options:

• Ravishment

• Violation

• Defilement

• Brutal sex/Brutal coupling

• Profane union

Then it asked me if I was working on fiction, legal writing, or another context. When I told it I wanted a simple definition it said:

If you’re looking for a single word, “violation” or “assault” are often used to describe such acts, especially when non-consensual — but these terms are serious and typically refer to sexual violence or rape.

Yes, these are serious terms. Eff refers to sexual violence, or rape.

Unless you’re using the eff word to mean what it means—a hostile or violent sex act—or in the context of a safe, sane, consensual sexual encounter, what you’re really saying when you say eff is the equivalent of:

• Rape off (eff off)

• Rape you (eff you)

• Rape it (eff it)

• Mother-raper (Mothereffer)

Dissociated from its true meaning, eff has become entertainment and bad-assery. As entertainment and status symbol, eff laughs at and glorifies sexual violence.

The meaning of the words no longer registers because they’re spoken so often by so many. Mother + eff in particular defiles and debases the feminine, women as creator-nurturer-mothers, and planet Earth, our Mother.

That’s why I put the book in the firepit.

Am I telling you to stop saying the eff word? Never. In truth, it sometimes still comes out of my mouth, despite all the thoughts and emotions I have about it.

But I am inviting you to make words conscious again.
To go inside.
To get still, and quiet.
To notice how words land inside you.
To listen to what they want you to know.
To act on what they want you to do.

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My first boundaries podcast, Beyond Bitchy: Mastering the Art of Boundaries (2018-2021), reached more people and was far more successful than I could have ever imagined. I still receive emails almost every week from people who have just discovered the show, or want to tell me how it changed their life.

It’s true, healthy personal boundaries will change your life.

And that’s what motivated me to start the Boundaries Queen podcast. I (still) love talking about boundaries, and I wanted to share this life-changing information with even more people.

Then life happened.

Within 6 weeks of the publication of PBFD, a series of events unfolded in my life (and in my family) that were devastating and cataclysmic, including a breast cancer diagnosis in November 2024 (I’m healthy now, gratefully).

So I had to do what I encourage you to do in situations similar to what I've experienced over the last year. And that is to practice radical self-care. I stopped taking new clients, turned my attention to myself and my family, and pruned many activities and obligations from my schedule, including the new podcast.

What occurred in my life in late 2024 created a massive, permanent shift in my priorities—how I want to spend my time, energy, and resources.

I officially ended the Boundaries Queen podcast in May 2025. The show is no longer available on Apple Podcasts or other podcast platforms. But I wanted to make it available here for everyone who wants or needs the information.

Click here to get free access to the Boundaries Queen Podcast Archive (name and email sign up required)

I hope you enjoy the show.

May you experience the many hidden and surprising gifts of personal and relationship boundaries — especially peace, freedom, and spaciousness.

Over the years, I’ve witnessed over and over and over again in my work with clients that not having good personal boundaries or having a complete misunderstanding of how boundaries work causes debilitating distress and endless suffering.

To help make boundaries easier to understand and navigate, I created a step-by-step process to help you identify, create, and maintain healthy, effective personal boundaries.

The original name of this boundary-setting process was the 5-Step Boundary Solution. The companion eWorkbook was the 5-Step Boundary Solution Clarifier, which I presented and explained in detail in my first book, Moving Beyond Betrayal, and in my podcast, Beyond Bitchy: Mastering the Art of Boundaries (2018-2021).

Since the release of my latest book, Personal Boundaries For Dummies, I’ve heard from many of you who recently discovered Moving Beyond Betrayal, and are confused about the difference between the companion eWorkbooks presented in each of these books.

As I led workshops and worked with clients over the years using the original eWorkbook, I saw that to navigate the boundary-creation process well and with more ease, it was vital to get clear right from the start about the specific issue you think you may need to set a boundary around.

So when I wrote Personal Boundaries For Dummies, I decided to add a step right at the beginning of the process to help you get clear about the issue or problem you’re working on.

Step 1 of the new 6-Step Boundaries Clarifier eWorkbook is Know What Isn’t Working. The premise of this step is that in order to create a boundary, you need to know what’s not working for you in a given situation or relationship. You also need to ground your boundary work in a particular event or situation that involves what you experienced with your five senses—rather than something your mind manufactured and now believes is true :-) It’s okay, we’ve all done it!

The new 6-Step Boundaries Clarifier is essentially identical to the original 5-Step Boundary Solution Clarifier, with the addition of this one step at the very beginning.

That’s it!

I hope this clears up any confusion. And if you’ve got questions about how the process work, let me know in the comments. If you’d like your own copy of the 6-Step Boundaries Clarifier, click this link, and I’ll send you one right away.

May you experience the many hidden and surprising gifts of personal and relationship boundaries — especially peace, freedom, and spaciousness.

It’s a cliche, but there are truly no words to describe the impact Pia had on me—personally and professionally. Her name appears in the acknowledgements of both of my published books. She generously offered an endorsement of my first book, Moving Beyond Betrayal, which appeared on the cover, for which I was deeply honored.

As I searched for how to honor this wise, down-to-earth, funny, transparent, and deeply spiritual woman, I stumbled across a newsletter I wrote in 2015 that I want to reprint here to give a flavor of who she was:

If you’re not already familiar with Pia Mellody and her work, she is a pioneer in the recovery community. She has informed much of what we know today about love addiction, childhood trauma, and codependency. She's the author of Facing Codependence, Facing Love Addiction and The Intimacy Factor.

In 2012 I had the privilege of attending Pia's 70th birthday party in Sedona, Arizona. The dinner was held at an Italian restaurant, and each guest was offered a "cannoli fortune cookie" for dessert. Each one had a small fortune inside with a written Pia-ism. Pia-isms are signature phrases of wisdom that Pia repeats regularly and that most of her students know by heart.

The Pia-ism in my cannoli was: People are allergic to discipline.

Do you relate? I don't know one person who doesn't. Discipline is the most necessary skill for the practice of moderation — one of the 5 core skills in Pia's model of developmental immaturity (the term she preferred later in her career to describe what most people refer to as codependency). The truth is that we’re never 100% moderate, but discipline helps maintain moderation most of the time.

Here are 4 more Pia-isms:

1. It's punishment enough to be him (or her). This one is nice to have in your toolbox when you're dealing with a difficult person who's creating drama or chaos in your life. The gift of it's punishment enough to be him, helps you let go of the need to get even or to get your power back in ways that hurt you and others — knowing that justice happens without effort on your part.

2. Respect is the minimum of love. This one is invaluable. How many times have you gone off the deep end, lost your containment (boundaries), and said things you couldn't take back in the heat of the moment? Respect is the minimum of love helps you remember that when you can't stay respectful in relationship with someone else, you probably need to take a relational time-out.

3. You are perfectly imperfect. This is radical self-acceptance and applies to everyone — especially perfectionists. It's about esteeming and accepting yourself, flaws and all.

4. There are no traffic jams on the high road. This is a tough one. Have you ever wanted to have the last word? Tell someone off? Expose someone for who you know them to be (and no one else seems to know)? Taking the high road can be one of the most difficult paths to take . . . and exceedingly rewarding. It means letting go and letting God/Higher Power/The Divine.

And here's a bonus Pia-ism: Everyone burps, farts, and is a general pain in the ass.

Definitely!

What I loved so much about Pia was her honesty, especially about difficult topics. I spent more than 200 hours with her, face-to-face, in trainings and workshops, and heard her say many times that humans are by nature xenophobic.

As a white woman who was often speaking to (mostly) other white women and men, this statement was more subversive than it might appear. Yet no one ever pushed back or argued the truth of this statement. My wish is that we would have the courage to see and speak our own fear of the other and have frank, honest, productive conversations about the legacy of the collective brainwashing that makes us stupid and cruel.

The ease with which Pia accepted and spoke uncomfortable Truths made her uniquely qualified to demonstrate through her very being that no one was better than or less than anyone else.

Pia’s reverence for life, her allergy to “othering,” her wisdom, and her deeply spiritual core are with me now and forever.

I bow deeply.🌹

In the past few days, the Texas House of Representatives passed two bills (HB 1128 and HB 1794), now headed to the Texas senate, allowing persons to carry “concealed handguns by handgun license holders on the premises of certain polling places on the day of an election or while early voting is in progress.” (HB 1794)

The author of HB 1794 presented no evidence of the need or advisability of such a law, except that leaving a firearm in the car of the parking lot of the polling place would place it at risk of being stolen if the gun owner must leave it in their car.

These bills, if passed into law, will not only make voting more difficult, they will make voting more intimidating and dangerous.

As a native Texan, I can attest that voting has become more difficult over the past 5 years. The polling place where I voted for two decades was quietly closed, reducing the number of polling places in Harris County, the most populated county in Texas.

I have witnessed subtle forms of voter intimidation, including a man with a large dog standing alone at the parking lot entrance of a popular polling place in central Houston watching people as they drove into the parking lot.

If you are a current resident of Texas and believe that guns at polling places are a threat to human safety and the integrity of elections, go to the link below to find your state senator and call their office to let them know you oppose these bills.

Click here to find your Texas state senator.

Maya: What was the inspiration for Personal Boundaries for Dummies?

Victoria: Out of the blue, I received an unsolicited email from an acquisitions editor at Wiley & Sons, publishers of the Dummies© series books. She wanted to know if I would like to write a book about personal boundaries for the Dummies series. I love sharing what I’ve learned about the life-changing impact of personal and relationship boundaries, so it was an offer I couldn’t refuse!

Maya: How do you define personal boundaries in simple terms related to your book?

Victoria: Personal boundaries are limits and parameters you create around your physical space, personal belongings, what you say, and how you listen. Their primary purpose is to protect and create order. Every person is the ultimate decider about every boundary they create. No one gets to tell another adult what their boundaries should or shouldn’t be.

Priya’s Publishing Journey for Personal Boundaries For Dummies

Maya: I’m curious: did you need to set any personal boundaries to get your book written and published? If so, what boundaries did you set, with whom, and how?

Victoria: Absolutely! You must create structure if you want to accomplish or create anything that has lasting value. It is another word for boundaries.

The most valuable information for writers and aspiring authors about themselves is knowing their best writing schedule, finding their preferred place or space to write, and identifying the writing tools that work best for them.

My best practices for getting writing done are to write in the morning before doing any other work is being in a completely private and quiet space. Then, I like to remove distractions like cell phones or notifications. After that, I divide my writing periods into one-hour segments with a timer.

Lessons Learned about Writing and Publishing

Maya: This is your second traditionally published book. What did you learn about writing and publishing when you worked on the first book, with Lisa Tener as your coach, that you applied to writing the second book (and/or book proposal)?

Victoria: Creating structure and a writing schedule is key to finishing a book. Deadlines—a form of boundaries—are vital to the process.

One of my best decisions with my first book, Moving Beyond Betrayal, was to include a link for readers to get a free downloadable companion eWorkbook. Not only was the workbook a service to readers, but it also created a way for me to stay in touch with readers after they were on my mailing list. So, this resource in the first book was so successful that I decided to repeat it for Personal Boundaries For Dummies. Readers can get the 6-Step Boundaries Clarifier eWorkbook by using the link in the book. It will guide them through the six steps for identifying, creating, and maintaining effective boundaries I present in the book. . .

Click here to get the whole interview.

(How to Write a Book is a project of )