The Tender Places:
What Love Requires

At my son's wedding, I stood up to give a speech and found myself saying things I didn't know I knew. About vulnerability as courage. About trust as sacred responsibility. About the map to someone's tender places and what it means to hold that power gently.

I thought I was giving marriage advice. But as the words came out, I realized I was talking about something bigger: what it takes to love well in any relationship. To show up whole. To be fully seen and still fully loved.

This seven-part series explores the themes from that speech—commitment to shared direction, the courage of vulnerability, trust that holds tender places sacred, growth that doesn't erase individuality, and joy as essential oxygen. These aren't just lessons for newlyweds. They're lessons for anyone brave enough to be known.

Series Index

1. The Speech I Didn't Know I Was Ready to Give (Introduction): Standing at my son's wedding with a microphone in my hand, I realized something: I'd spent years becoming someone who could say these things out loud. This is the story of what I told them—and what it taught me about releasing old identities while stepping fully into new ones.

2. Two Paths, One Mountain (On commitment to direction, not agreement): You won't always be on the same page. You'll load the dishwasher differently, approach problems differently, maybe even temporarily lose sight of each other. But if you're both committed to the same summit? You'll always find common ground. Here's what that means in practice.

3. The Whole Self, Not the Highlight Reel (On the courage of vulnerability): To be truly loved, you have to share all of yourself—the good, the bad, the scars, the 3 AM insecurities. The sanitized version gets you a pretty good relationship. But the real, whole, unfiltered you? That's where the magic lives. And that's terrifying for a reason.

4. The Map to Your Tender Places (On trust as sacred responsibility): When you're fully vulnerable, you're handing someone a map to exactly where you can be wounded. This is where trust becomes everything—not blind faith, but the deep belief that the person holding your tender places would never want to use them against you. Even when they accidentally hurt you anyway.

5. Your Best Self, My Best Self, Our Best Us (On growing together without losing yourself): Make self-improvement a priority, and do it together. Not because anyone needs fixing, but because the best version of your relationship needs the best version of both of you. Here's how to be each other's biggest cheerleader while staying fully yourself.

6. Laughter as Oxygen (On joy, play, and not taking it all so seriously): Please don't forget to have fun. Joy isn't a luxury in love—it's oxygen. Here's why laughter matters as much as vulnerability, and how to protect playfulness even when life gets heavy.

7. What I Learned from Letting Go (Conclusion): Giving that speech meant standing at the altar watching my son walk toward a life where I'm no longer central. The bittersweet freedom of releasing "just a mom" as my primary identity. What integration looks like when you're proud and grieving and hopeful all at once.