I will never forget the first time I laid my eyes on the piece of ground where my dad took his last breath. My husband and I, along with our two children, made the long drive from our East Coast home to the rural Midwest town where my dad resided. Though I had spent my growing up years in the general area, I was only vaguely familiar with the stretch of road that would now be forever etched in my mind.

It is not the memories of your cruel words that echo in my head until I am cold with an empty sadness. It is the bitter realization that you knew exactly what you were doing to someone you were supposed to love.

I believe most women want to support and empower one another. Yet, sometimes we end up doing the opposite. When a girlfriend calls brokenhearted, frustrated at work, or lonely, we carefully consider what we can say to help, but forget that our questions have the power to build one another up or wear one another down. As women, are we asking each other the right questions to support one another or are we unknowingly adding to the societal pressures on women to achieve it all and achieve it in the acceptable time frame?

As a parent, once our child is born our protective instincts kick into a whole new gear. This also included my BS meter. Once I started to toy with the idea of dating (joining sites, reaching out to friends, using social media to explore options), I soon realized I didn’t have time for petty games, the witty banter back and forth, and hours of texting and talking on the phone.

The thread that weaves itself throughout my relationship journey is always the relationship I have with myself. In this case, I loved him more than I loved myself. And I knew that. Things ended because I desperately wanted to love myself as deeply as he was loving me. While I was enamored with the way he saw me and treated me, I wanted to feel deserving of those things. So I let him go.

I discovered this truth so profoundly stated by C.S. Lewis: “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art .... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” I did not require friendship to survive a seven month deployment. But friendship made the deployment bearable, and not only bearable, but life-giving and sweet, nurturing and redemptive.

No one gets married with the expectation of getting divorced some day in the future. When you promise to love and cherish someone for the rest of your life, you don’t picture what it will be like to be alone again. And there’s no manual on how to put your life back together when “forever” is cut short.

I find ‘go-getter’ women have the hardest time with asking for or accepting help. I run and own a successful business, employ a small team, and manage our small farm. I’m the one typically hosting events, organizing groups, and dropping off the casseroles and helping wherever needed. When someone needs something - I fix it. But why was it so damn hard when it was my turn? Pride? Ego? It's all wrapped up in there somewhere.

I lived with my partner before getting married, and I had marriage 101 covered. Good communication + intimacy + teamwork + quality time = a bulletproof marriage. While my success formula had been a reliable tool pre-marriage, something changed. I began wondering if I would make it to the new year as a married woman.

I used to think I didn’t believe in marriage, but what I didn’t believe in was other people's idea of marriage. Hearing married people refer to their spouse as the ‘ball and chain,’ and getting the ever so helpful marriage advice of, “Don’t,” didn’t have me feeling incredibly confident about the whole thing.

On a mid-January evening, my (now ex) boyfriend of two years, whom I loved unconditionally and lived with in Colorado, blindsided me after he came home from a solo trip to the mountains and informed me that he “wasn’t happy”. While I initially suspected another woman, he blatantly denied it and lied to my face on multiple occasions. I later found out that I was ultimately deceived. This deception rocked me to my core; my emotions and actions that immediately followed were desperate, pathetic even. This was by far the hardest thing I had been through in my 29 years. The one person I needed to be there for me the most was the one person who put me in this horrific situation. This wasn’t JUST a breakup, this was much more than that.

Many of us have friends who are friends of circumstance – the person who sits next to you at work, the mother who always arrives at child pick-up the same time as you, the girl in yoga class who hangs out near the back where you are. And due to the necessity of social convention, we keep those friends at arm’s length. As my daughter once said, "Imagine if you really tried to become true, deep friends with your neighbor and it turns out you don't like them - and then you live next to them for 25 years. It's so much easier to just smile and wave and invite them over for a birthday party." How right she is.

Self-love is not just bubble baths and face masks, it goes far beyond that.

Lessons on life + love can come from unexpected places - like the Secret Service.

I finally cried and let go of the dream of “maybe someday” with him. And the weight began to lessen.

How to reclaim your identity after your marriage ends.

When my husband asked me to marry him, it really was a fairy-tale perfect, Instagram-worthy proposal of proposals. He did everything I could have dreamt of...and I missed it.

Ten months into the best relationship of my life, I freaked out. I remember the moment it happened too - as if a switch was turned on and I needed to get out now. Thoughts like we can’t do this anymore; how do I know he’s the one; we have to break up were repeated over and over in my head like a broken record.

We've all seen the quote floating around our Instagram feeds: "Don't let the success of others threaten your own success." But what if we pushed further and went out of our way to support the success of those around us? Here are four quick steps to help you make it happen this week.

No matter who you are or what you do, always surround yourself with good friends. They will spot you through life’s challenges, they will give you warm companionship, and you will support them with love in return.