How to Hug a Porcupine
There is a parent who never stops criticizing, a friend who turns every kindness into a contest, and a partner who pulls away the moment you get close. You keep reaching out, gently, carefully, only to get pricked again.
Learning how to love them without losing yourself in the process. That’s what this book is about. Not fixing them, not hating them, not pretending it doesn’t hurt.
Dr. John Lund’s How to Hug a Porcupine is a book written by someone who’s clearly been in the trenches of human relationships long enough to know how love can wound as much as it heals. He has written a book that keeps you nodding, underlining, sighing, and whispering, “Yes. That’s it." Between its covers lies a map for those of us wandering through relationships that leave us pricked and bleeding, yet somehow still essential to our lives.
1. The Porcupine Principle
The title sounds playful, but it hides a painful truth: some people are hard to love — not because they don’t deserve it, but because they don’t know how to receive it.
Lund calls these people “porcupines,” individuals who protect themselves with quills of sarcasm, criticism, or control. They’re not trying to hurt you (at least not always); they’re trying not to be hurt themselves. The trick, he says, isn’t to hug harder — it’s to hug smarter. That’s the first real step toward peace.
2. The Compassion Equation
Lund makes a radical point: difficult people aren’t born that way — they’re protecting something broken. Their defensiveness, their anger, their need to control — it’s often pain wearing a disguise.
Seeing that doesn’t excuse their behavior, but it frees you. Because when you understand that their cruelty is rooted in fear, you stop taking it so personally. You start loving from a place of steadiness instead of survival.
It’s not “tolerating” them. It’s understanding them without letting their wounds reopen yours.
3. Loving Without Losing
“You can’t stop someone from being difficult,” Lund writes, “but you can stop them from making you miserable.” That line hit me like truth I should’ve learned years ago. Because how many of us have kept peace by abandoning ourselves? How many times have we confused silence with love?
Lund doesn’t tell you to cut everyone off, he shows you how to stay present with your dignity intact. He teaches you how to respond instead of react, how to detach with love instead of guilt.
Boundaries, in his view, aren’t walls. They’re the quiet way you say: I can care about you without letting you destroy my calm.
4. The Mirror Moment
About halfway through, I stopped reading to just sit in the quiet. Because somewhere between Lund’s humor and honesty, I realized: sometimes I am the porcupine.
The one who withdraws when scared. The one who uses sarcasm to keep from feeling small. And that’s where this book becomes more than a guide, it becomes a mirror. You start to see that healing isn’t just about surviving other people’s quills; it’s about softening your own.
Lund reminds us that love isn’t about rescuing others. It’s about learning how to stay open-hearted without becoming collateral damage.
Some people may never change. Some will keep their quills forever. But you can still choose peace. You can still love from a safe distance. You can still forgive without forgetting yourself. Because real love — the kind that endures — doesn’t always look like closeness. Sometimes, it looks like compassion with space.
When I closed this book, I sat quietly for a while. Thinking of all the porcupines I’ve known, and the times I’ve been one too. And maybe that’s the hidden beauty of Lund’s message: everyone’s just trying not to get hurt. Some just haven’t learned a gentler way to live.
BOOK: https://amzn.to/49avf5z