Hope with Holly

Good intentions matter.

But good intentions do not erase impact.
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If I hurt someone I love, I don’t get to hide behind:
“That’s not what I meant.”

I can explain my intention AND still take responsibility for the way my behavior affected them.

But emotional maturity also works in the other direction.

If someone I trust hurts my feelings, I don’t automatically have to decide they were trying to hurt me.

I can say:
“That hurt me, but I know you love me. Can we talk about what happened?”

Healthy relationships need both accountability and grace.

Own your impact.
Be curious about intent.
And pay attention to the pattern.

Because one painful moment is not always proof of bad character.

But repeated hurt, defensiveness, retaliation, cruelty, or refusal to repair is important information.

Healthy people will sometimes hurt each other.

What matters is what happens next.

Do they care about the impact?
Can they listen without making it all about themselves?
Can they apologize?
Can they change the behavior?

That’s where trust is built.

Love,
Hope with Holly

You are not guaranteed romantic love.

But you are also not guaranteed loneliness.
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That matters.

One bad relationship—or even several—can teach you to believe that all men are unsafe, emotionally immature, unavailable, or incapable of healthy partnership. And when you’ve been hurt enough, shutting the whole door can feel like wisdom.

Sometimes it is protection.

Sometimes it is fear wearing a very convincing outfit.

You do not need to become naïve. You do not need to lower your standards. And you definitely do not need to start searching desperately for a partner.

Build a life you deeply love first.

Then, if someone wants access to that life, they should add to your peace—not destroy it.

And if you’ve done years of therapy, healing, self-reflection, or personal growth, remember this: you do not need to find a man who is exactly like you or has studied everything you have.

Look for character.
Look for emotional capacity.
Look for accountability.
Look for curiosity.
Look for someone who can regulate himself, repair after conflict, respect boundaries, and continue growing.

Different strengths can complement each other.

Healthy partnership is not about finding your clone.

It is about finding someone whose character, values, capacity, and life align well enough with yours to build something healthy together.

So yes—be cautious.

Vet carefully.

Collect the data.

But don’t become so committed to protecting yourself from disappointment that you close yourself off from possibility.

You do not have to believe love is coming.

Just don’t decide it’s impossible before life gets a chance to surprise you.

What do you think is harder after heartbreak: trusting someone new, or trusting your own judgment again?

Healthy can feel boring, distant, or even suspicious when your nervous system learned that love comes with intensity, constant contact, urgency, or emotional fusion. Follow Hope With Holly for more.

But healthy love often looks a lot less dramatic.

It can look like:

* consistent communication without texting all day
* interest without rushing exclusivity
* boundaries without punishment
* disagreement without disrespect
* two people maintaining full lives outside the relationship
* intimacy that grows slowly instead of exploding overnight

That doesn’t mean every distant or low-effort person is “healthy.” Independence is not neglect. Boundaries are not emotional unavailability. Taking things slowly is not breadcrumbing.

The question is always the bigger pattern:

Are they consistent?
Do they follow through?
Do they respect your boundaries?
Can they handle disagreement?
Do they make room for your needs?
Do they invest in the relationship over time?

If you’ve spent years confusing intensity with intimacy, healthy love may not immediately give you the same adrenaline rush.

Give yourself time to learn the difference.

Peace is not the absence of chemistry. Sometimes it’s what chemistry feels like when chaos is finally gone.

If your daughter were living your relationship, what would you want for her? Follow Hope With Holly for more.

Would you tell her to keep accepting disrespect because she might never find another man? To spend the rest of her life feeling lonely beside someone because being single sounds scary?

Or would you tell her, “Baby, you get one freaking life. Your happiness matters. Your peace matters. YOU matter.”

Now ask yourself why you deserve less compassion than you would give her.

There is no guarantee that leaving will bring you another partner. But you do not need another man waiting in the wings to deserve a life without mistreatment.

And if you’re afraid he’ll hurt you or retaliate, I’m not telling you to ignore that fear. You deserve support and a safety plan. A domestic violence advocate can help you work through your options. Needing time and help does not make you weak.

Give yourself the same love, protection, and permission to have a future that you would give your daughter. 💜

Love, Hope with Holly

Safety planning and support: thehotline.org

You should never give a boyfriend more power over your life than you have over your own.
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Keep your money. Keep your friends. Keep your community. Keep your interests. Keep your ability to support yourself. Keep enough of your own life intact that if the relationship ever becomes unhealthy, you are able to leave.

That does not mean refusing to depend on someone. Healthy love involves vulnerability, trust, shared responsibility, and interdependence.

But dependence should never become entrapment.

There is something deeply meaningful about knowing your partner could leave, you could leave, and yet you continue choosing each other because the relationship is loving, respectful, safe, and worth staying for.

Love should be a choice you keep making—not a situation you can’t escape.


I know what it feels like to trust yourself—and I know what it feels like to be taught not to.
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That is why I care so deeply about women having autonomy and agency.

Not because I think women should reject love, marriage, motherhood, family, or men.

But because no woman should have to disappear inside those things.

For years, I believed being a “good woman” meant being supportive, submissive, self-sacrificing, agreeable, and willing to place someone else’s dreams above my own.

I was taught to question my instincts.
To defer to male authority.
To believe sacrifice was holy.
To believe my reward might come later.

And eventually, I had to rebuild something I once had naturally:

Trust in myself.

Autonomy is not selfishness.
Agency is not rebellion.
Independence is not hatred of men.

It is adulthood.

It is knowing you are allowed to have a voice.
A bank account.
An education.
A career.
Boundaries.
Opinions.
Dreams.
Choices.
And the ability to change your mind when the life you built no longer fits who you are.

Love people deeply.

Build families if you want them.

Choose partnership if it enriches your life.

But please do not spend your one life becoming a supporting character in someone else’s story.

You are allowed to author your own.

Love,
Hope with Holly

There’s a difference between a partner who is imperfect, annoying, emotional, messy, defensive, or frustrating… and a partner who is cruel. Follow Hope With Holly for more.

One creates friction.
The other creates erosion.

Friction means two imperfect people bumping into each other, getting things wrong, repairing, apologizing, and learning how to love each other better.

Erosion is different.

Erosion happens when one person repeatedly criticizes, punishes, intimidates, humiliates, controls, or scares the other person until they start becoming smaller just to keep the peace.

You talk less.
You ask for less.
You spend less.
You dream smaller.
You stop being fully yourself because you’ve learned there are consequences when you do.

And remember: your partner is not your parent. They do not get to punish you, discipline you, control your choices, or demand obedience from you.

Healthy adult relationships are built on equality, not authority.

Don’t confuse normal relationship friction with cruelty. But don’t minimize cruelty by calling it “just relationship problems” either.

RECEIVE is a 3-night, 4-day restorative women’s retreat for women who are tired of carrying everything. Follow Hope With Holly for more.

Come rest, be cared for, reconnect with yourself, and learn practical, science-informed tools for your nervous system, thoughts, boundaries, relationships, self-respect, and the patterns you may have inherited from family, religion, culture, or patriarchy.

Your retreat includes:
✨ 3 nights lodging
✨ All meals, snacks & drinks
✨ Private 60-minute massage
✨ Workshops + guided experiences
✨ Meditation, breathwork, movement & reflection
✨ Long afternoon “Receiving Hours” for naps, nature, creativity, play, connection—or absolutely nothing
✨ Retreat gifts + RECONNECT Comfort Kit
✨ Private countryside retreat experience
✨ A small group of only 8 women

RECONNECT • REGULATE • REFLECT • RECLAIM

Come to learn. Come to rest. Come to laugh, eat, breathe, receive, and remember that you belong in your own life too.

Which religion has been responsible for the most religiously sanctioned violence?
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The strongest historical answer appears to be Christianity—not because Christians are uniquely violent, but because Christianity became tied to enormous political and military power for centuries.

The Crusades. Religious wars. Colonial conquest. Biblical defenses of slavery. Witch executions. Forced conversion.

Christian rulers, churches, and empires repeatedly used God, Scripture, and religious authority to justify violence and domination.

Islam also has a history of religious conquest and empire, and the Hebrew Bible contains stories of warfare commanded by Yahweh.

But Christianity had an extraordinary combination of religious authority, military power, empire, and global reach.

There is no honest way to calculate one exact “Christian death toll.”

But the larger lesson is clear:

Human beings become dangerous when they believe God has authorized their violence.

That is why religion should never be exempt from moral scrutiny.

One of the strangest stories in the Bible is hiding in 1 Samuel 28. Follow Hope With Holly for more.

Saul, the first king of Israel, is terrified because the Philistines are about to attack. He asks God what to do, but God refuses to answer him.

So Saul disguises himself, finds a female medium, and asks her to summon the dead prophet Samuel.

And according to the story…

it works.

Samuel appears.
Samuel speaks.
Samuel predicts Saul’s defeat and death.
And the prediction comes true.

Now, the Bible absolutely condemns Saul for consulting a medium.

But that still leaves a fascinating question:

Why does a forbidden ritual actually work?

The text never says it was a demon pretending to be Samuel.
It never says the medium was a fraud.
It repeatedly calls the figure Samuel.

For anyone who grew up being told that mediums, ghosts, and communication with the dead were automatically fake or demonic, this story raises some very uncomfortable questions about the supernatural world the biblical authors actually believed in.

1 Samuel 28.

Read it for yourself.