we need to realize these are only expectations; they belong to us, and we’re not always boss. - Melody Beattie

He talks about God, and loving God. he says that when we open to loving a person, whether that person is a spouse, friend, or child, we open our hearts to loving God. He says when we let someone love us, we're opening our hearts to god's love. he says the acts are the same. p 19
I decide loving isn't for the fain. Its for the courageous. p 19

[Reactionaries] Just feeling urgent and compulsive is enough to hurt us. We keep ourselves in a crisis state...ready to react to emergencies that aren't really emergencies. Someone does something, so we must do something back. Someone says something, so we must say something. Someone feels a certain way, so we must feel a certain way. WE JUMP INTO THE FIRST FEELING THAT COMES OUR WAY AND THEN WALLOW IN IT.

I want to thank each person who has the courage to push through and past the set of coping behaviors we’ve come to label as codependency — who learn what it means to take care of themselves. “Nobody taught me how to take care of myself,” a fifty-year-old woman told me recently. “I didn’t have enough money to go to therapy, but I had enough to buy a book.