Set the intention that you’re going to be okay. The fear and stress of breakups have a tendency to make us feel as though we’re coming undone, cut adrift from “life as we know it”. One of the ways I learned to remain grounded and calm in the midst of turmoil was to set intentions for my future self. I would constantly tell myself that everything was going to be okay. That I was going to be happy, safe, worthy, trusting, loving and loved. It was my way of reaching for something better, higher than where the present moment found me. Giving myself these positivity pep talks whenever I found myself struggling, prevented a bad moment from turning into a bad day.

Ask for help. And be super persnickety about getting the right kind of guidance that’s going to serve your self-compassion plan. Whilst our family and friends can have the greatest of intentions, we often receive a barrage of unsolicited advice, separation in the ranks, other people’s relationship drama, and hurtful gossip instead. Be an excellent guardian of your vulnerability and seek out a trusted someone who can guide you through this darkness with respect, compassion and light. I live thousands of miles from my family and sought my support from dear friends and my yoga community. My help showed up in the form of babysitting, a spa day treat, meals shared around a neighbors dinner table, a nightly call from my best friend, healing energy work, even home-made soup left on my stoop. Allow others to give you the gift of tending your heart.

Step aside for illumination. Your future deserves your awareness and expansion. Continually create time and space to reflect and heal. This will require you saying “no” to others, so you can say “yes” to what matters most, the opportunity to sit with the truth of your knowings. Your courage, compassion, soul, intuition and listening skills are mandatory attendees to these solo retreats. However, your fear and ego are blacklisted. I liked to take my self-enquiry to yoga, for a stand up paddle, or a walk along the beach. Take yours to the place where you feel most connected to you. Play the role of witness, rather than participant and see if you can connect the dots to identifying old patterns of behavior, beliefs or stories that no longer feel like they fit you. When we’re evolving and expanding our inner world, our outer world can sometimes feel misaligned. Shine the light of awareness by asking yourself what feelings, thoughts and actions are you willing to edit, delete or rewrite? What’s the value, where is the lesson in this experience? There’s buried treasure, often laying in plain sight, waiting to be mined; trust me. When I embraced the Universal truth that life was happening for me, I began to see everything through the eyes of gratitude, and that became a game changer.

The Bouquet Toss That Needs to Go

If you think that catching a bouquet means that you are going to get married in the near future, you are going to end up with a lot of dried flowers on your dresser. You have probably caught it on more than one occasion. You are practically a goalie at this point. This nonsensical tradition encourages the profile of women as desperate, helpless creatures waiting to be saved by a man. Getting married is not something that “happens to us,” anymore. It is something that we choose, and it isn’t for everyone. Some of us want someone to sit next to until one of us dies, and others want to spend their Friday nights with the entire bottle of wine, AND THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT.

Sex on your Wedding Night That Needs to Go

No one does it. Ok, maybe some people do, but they shouldn’t have to. “Sex on your Wedding Night” is a thing because it used to be the first time you were having sex. Literally, it was the reason you got married at 18, because you were desperately horny. Statistically, since most women have had sex with at least 3 other guys before their husbands (and if you live in a major city, it’s probably 3 times that); this implied convention needs to go. After standing at the altar, then having the first dance, followed by dinner, followed by more dancing, followed by cutting the cake and endless “CONGRATULATIONS!!!!” from every Tom, Dick, and Harry you have interacted with in your life, who has the energy for sex? Dust that heart of rose petals off the bed and PASS OUT.

The Groom arrives on a Horse/Elephant That Needs to Go

What?! Ok, this only happens at Indian weddings, but it needs to go. Traditionally, in Indian villages the groom would roll up to the brides side of the family on a horse or elephant with his whole posse trailing behind to be like “aiight, this woman is mine now.” He would see her for the first time, marry her and then take her back to his village. Fine, makes sense. (and if you happen to be in a village in India and are reading this, this does not apply to you.) But blocking off half of Chicago’s streets at 9am to dance around a horse does not make sense. Especially since you’ve been living together for the past three years. This is not India, and you are not a Maharaja. You are a consultant at Accenture. Get real. There is nothing sadder than a status-conscious Indian man who is riding a horse from the petting zoo into a suburban Ramada Inn with the swagger of Braveheart.

This has been an honest RSVP by MONROK.

The most awkward part about it for me was pretending to be happy about a pregnancy. I actually hate the idea of having children. This goes back pretty far in my life. As a kid, I always chose Pound Puppies over Cabbage Patch Dolls. Sure, there was a time when I dreamed of being married, having a Chevy Lumina and driving the kids to church every Sunday morning. But at that time, my goals shifted daily from becoming a veterinarian, to a pop star, a dog, and a litany of other creatures or occupations. Even at that early age, parent was never high on my list.

So imagine how awkward it was for me to pretend to be elated about a pregnancy even just in the initial audition process. My partner was the one reading the lines of my “husband” during my self-tape. “Yes! Yes I’m pregnant!” I felt that the simple act of pretending that it was a good thing would send him the wrong message. Or, even worse, result in some sort of accidental manifestation. If I performed too well, would he get the wrong impression?

Once we got through the self-taping, an awkward feeling loomed around for a couple of hours. I even made some jokes about how hard it was to pretend I was happy about that, just to reassure him that it wasn’t real and that I was, in fact, just acting. He’s like me in that he sees children as a burden. He recently replied to the sounds of a crying baby in another apartment in our building by saying, “I hate kids so much that I’d be perfectly happy if there were no more generations of humans.” I fell more in love with him at that moment. I don’t HATE children. I just don’t want to be in charge of any of them. I like having dogs. I can leave them alone for hours at a time, I don’t have to sacrifice my body for them, and they’ll never get old enough to resent me or ask me for money.

The job was made even more difficult by the fact that my costar felt the same way. I’m not sure if he and his wife share the exact sentiments as my partner and I, but it was made very clear from the get go that both of us were challenged by the roles of people happy about a baby entering into their lives. So we decided to use what I now call The Conan Method: Utilize the happiness that you’re feeling about working with a long-time hero and project it into the happiness of having a pretend baby with someone you’ve just met.

This method worked, apparently, because people are still saying, “wow, I can’t believe you were so happy about having a baby.”

Now, I’m a pretty smart girl, and when I think these things my brain quickly interjects and is like, “what lady? That’s insane, you know that’s not true!” And my brain is right. But it doesn’t change the fact that I still feel this way, and I’m willing to bet most women do. This is the reason why women don’t report sexual assaults most of the time, because of the fear of not being believed or retaliation.

Suddenly, I was overwhelmed by more images and memories. I recalled that when I was six and the boy showed me his penis, he also told me that if I told anyone, he would kill me. Then when I was 10 and the kid grabbed my chest. I went to my parents who told the principal, who then called the kid into the office with me and made him apologize, and the next day the kid threw a half full soda can at me for “being a snitch”. Then I remember when I yelled at my friend for exposing my breasts and putting his hand down my pants how he turned around and called me a slut to my group of friends. And when I was in my 20’s and I finally went to HR to request a transfer to another restaurant because of the harassment, and the woman HR director told me that if I wanted a transfer I would have to prove the harassment by confronting him in front of some of the execs, because otherwise they wouldn’t’ believe me.

Right, there it is. This is the old feeling of shame I grew to know so well. There you are you old bastard! Every time I was assaulted or harassed by a man I was either threatened physically, called names, or was told I wouldn’t be believed. It was established early on that no matter what I did, I would never be able to stop a man from behaving badly if he wanted to, so I might as well get comfy with my pal shame, and do my best to move on with my life.

Shame is the reason why those who were assaulted by Bill Cosby didn’t come forward for years, and why women are coming forward in droves now about Trump. Shame is tricky like that. It dances by the perpetrator and embraces the victim.

The release of the Donald Trump tape has sent shock waves of anger and disgust from women all over the country, and not because we’re so surprised that he said those things, but because we’re fed up with men like him thinking they have a right to a woman’s body just because they’re men in a position of power, which can mean a presidential candidate, a restaurant manager, or a person who’s simply older and bigger than you.

The only take away I can surmise from this experience is that this media debacle has given me an opportunity to teach my own kid that no matter what, it’s never acceptable to feel unsafe, pressured or afraid of another person.

And that asshole shame is no longer welcome in my house.

Certainly something is working. Houston, a member of the American Athletic Conference, concluded last season at 13-1 and ranked eighth nationally, the program’s highest end-of-season ranking since 1980. This year’s team was ranked 13th before its home game Saturday night against Tulsa, which Houston beat, 38-31, to bring its record to 6-1. The program also hopes it is on the verge of an invitation to the Big 12 Conference.

Herman’s rite has earned praise from psychologists for its frank articulation of the emotion that inevitably develops on teams and glues together the best of them.

“He’s disrupting a stereotype about boys and men, a notion of masculinity that says boys and men are only driven by the desire for competition and autonomy,” said Niobe Way, a psychology professor at New York University. “All the research — not just mine — emphasizes that humans are actually not driven by competition and autonomy. What we’re driven by is the desire to be in connected communities.”

McCloskey, a senior and a team captain, said the practice fit comfortably into a program where “any day you walk into the facility, you have no idea what’s coming down the pipe.”

At Houston, coaches knight players with swords. Game-day breakfasts have been known to feature random smoke bombs — part of what is known in the program as “training for chaos.” Before last season, Herman promised to get a diamond grill — dental jewelry popular in hip-hop circles — if his Cougars won their conference. When they did, he kept his word.

The kisses are part of a larger message of brotherhood that Herman has made the core of his coaching style. The players have responded to a story he has shared — one also told by Herman’s former boss at Ohio State, Urban Meyer — about a soldier who confided that what most compelled him to fight was not self-preservation or hatred or patriotism, but love for his comrades.

As at Ohio State, Herman said, Houston players who score touchdowns are instructed to find an offensive lineman and hug him. “We require a two-handed embrace,” Herman said.

Herman reckoned he has kissed his players for more than a decade, going back to his days as the wide receivers coach at Sam Houston State.

They got married according to the traditional rituals and Charlotte then became Charulata after marriage. However, marital bliss was short-lived as Charlotte had to go back to Sweden. She asked Pradyuman to move to Sweden with her, but that was impossible for him because his studies were still on. He promised to come to meet her and refused the air tickets which his wife was buying for him.

Pradyuman then decided to cycle all the way to Sweden to meet his wife! Yes, that was possible a few decades ago. It took him 5 months to ride all the way to Sweden and meet his wife. The Swedish officials were spellbound to see the man who rode all the way from India.

Here’s just a tiny sampling of what the average American woman looks like in 2016: