"somehow the farther along you get into it,

the more warped ones perspective gets.

and the more you want to believe what he's saying

because the alternative is too painful.

you just end up...sort of trapped."

- Sarma Melngailis

When you choose to give up smoking, you are simply getting rid of another thing that is preventing you from being your greatest self. Know that. You are worth the time & energy it takes to quit. If even just the thought of giving up smoking overwhelms you, look back at the list of all the gains you'll make my subtracting this one habit. 

The task of capturing the raw emotion of a weekend with 500 other women who are all at different points in their own recovery (from a myriad of things including addiction, mental illness, eating disorders, codependency, etc, etc.--many of us, myself included, are recovering from all of these) process seemed way too big a task for me. It feels like one of those events where you don't know what to say except, "you just had to be there." 

I think what we want to summon is courage. Courage to be our real selves in our relationships, and courage to trust that it’s enough. And the strength to handle whatever comes our way — rejection or acceptance.