Kalua Rhody, R.Psych, Paramount Psychology & Counselling

12/14/2025

12/12/2025

12/12/2025

12/11/2025

Thank you GP! 🙏
I am so grateful  for our community and to be able to work alongside and lead such an amazing group of people.

12/08/2025

12/07/2025

While  to love and be loved is the most human of yearnings, it’s prison when your worthiness and happiness hinges on it.

Love is the trickiest kind of freedom. Margaret Atwood, whose work often probes the complex architecture of human desire, offers a stark invitation: to let go of the yearning to be loved, and in doing so, find a kind of liberation. It’s a tough pill to swallow, especially in a culture that equates love with validation, self-worth, and even survival. But Atwood’s voice, sharp and unflinching, asks us to reconsider what it means to be truly free.

Margaret Atwood’s poetry, with its mix of wit and wisdom, often circles around the illusions we cling to in the hope of security. The desire to be loved isn’t just a longing; it’s a kind of tether that binds us to others’ approval, to the fragile architecture of relationship dynamics. When you recognize this, it’s easier to see why giving it up might feel like losing a part of yourself. But what if it’s not loss but gain? What if freedom lies in stepping outside the endless cycle of needing to be wanted?

This idea resonates with the work of philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva, who explores how identity is shaped through both connection and separation. Kristeva’s notion of the “subject in process” suggests that we’re always becoming, never fixed by others’ love or rejection. In this sense, Atwood’s call to relinquish the desire to be loved aligns with a deeper psychological truth: our sense of self isn’t dependent on external affirmation. It’s an ongoing, often messy journey inward.

Similarly, the contemporary writer Maggie Nelson, whose work blurs memoir, theory, and poetry, wrestles with love’s paradoxes. Nelson doesn’t shy away from the vulnerability that love demands, but she also acknowledges the ways it can entrap. Her writing suggests that freedom doesn’t come from escaping love altogether but from refusing to let it define or confine us. It’s a subtle distinction but a crucial one.

Margaret Atwood’s insight isn’t about cynicism or detachment. It’s about reclaiming agency in a world that constantly tells us our value depends on being loved by others. There’s a quiet power in recognizing that the last illusion might be the very thing we hold onto most tightly. And in that recognition, there’s a kind of peace. It’s not the absence of love but the presence of self-possession, a freedom that doesn’t ask for permission or proof.

In a time when social media amplifies the hunger for likes, shares, and validation, Margaret Atwood’s words feel more urgent. They remind us that the deepest freedom might come not from being loved but from loving ourselves enough to release the need for it. It’s a radical act, and maybe the most necessary one we can undertake.

12/06/2025

12/05/2025

Pretending it doesn’t hurt is just denial dressed up as strength. Healing begins the moment you tell yourself the truth.❤️‍🩹

12/03/2025

12/02/2025

Only you can do it, for yourself. You’ve got this!