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Who Does That?
I asked my sister, because I am very frustrated about how adults blame their parents for their life. My sister gently reminded me that is the point of therapists and shouldn’t I know that? I’ve been a therapist for longer than a decade…I realized that by going beyond my own childhood demons, I had lost touch with being young, with being thirty, with the whole idea of evolving from child to adult to parenting and grandparenting and on, and on. Often people learn to resolve their childhood when they are raising their own children. At times, life can be so difficult that people have to stop and engage in therapy so that childhood issues can be put to rest and life can move forward.
However, this new fashion (and it may be old, just un-recognized) of blaming your parents for all of your adult life is just unrealistic. Yes, I inherited outgoing behavior from my mother and yes I inherited a short frustration fuse from my father, I get all of that. Isn’t it up to me to decide what I do with that? If I get angry with every supervisor I have because s/he reminds me of my father and I end up chronically unemployed, is that my father’s fault? If my mother spoiled me and I therefore expect my jobs to be easy and life to be without sacrifice, is that my mother’s fault?
We all experience great pain and great grief in our lives. Some of us have great challenges, such as disabilities and handicaps. Some of us have had great parents who taught us how to cope and how to be disciplined. Some of us had great parents who TRIED to teach us how to cope and have discipline and we did not listen or integrate those values into our lives. Our hair color is determined by DNA and possibly our attitude about life is determined by DNA. Who we are is a complex connection between our DNA, how we feel about ourselves and our intense and intimate relationships with ourselves and with others.
I believe to the bottom of my heart that we owe it to our best self to find out what we are capable of by applying our best effort and our best discipline to our own lives. In order to do that, we must own our lives. In order to own our own lives, sometimes, we must reclaim it from our parents. We must unequivocally state, my life, my responsibility, my results. This action requires bravery and ownership of some, perhaps, not so good decisions. I do believe that this action is one great way to happiness. If you are in another’s “clutches” you may never gain freedom for yourself and that is a sad way to live a life.
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God’s Kiss
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Clarification…
Being loving and gentle does not mean allowing your “other” to do and have anything s/he wants. If you are treating your partner and/or your kids this way, then I must tell you, that you are mistaken. Recall that codependence comes out of a very small and subtle beginning. We allow our loved one to speak inappropriately and then we allow our loved one to be rude and brusque and before we know it, we are being abused.How do we assure that people do not treat us badly? We must let them know in an unrelenting conversation what the effect of their behavior is on ourself. It’s important that we do this from the beginning of the relationship and not wait until we are being abused.
I mean this! Start with your infant. It is quite the thing these days to allow the child to run the household. We know that this is not the correct way of doing things, but it is the easy way to do things. Conflict is difficult and who wants to participate in anything that is difficult? Easier to let the “wild child” to just run free.
Mistake.
If you have a “wild child” you make a mistake if you let this child run free. I’ll admit that parenting is a complex combination of who-I-am and who-you-are; it is important for parents to remember that kids NEED real limits placed on their behavior. It’s not an option to gallivant and roam freely in this United States. To allow a child to think this, is an error for the child. The child grows up with expectations of an easy-going world, which, of course, does not exist.
Do the difficult thing including the nurture, nourish, it’s the right thing to do…
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Loving Children
I thought that everyone knew that the closest you can get to God’s light is by nurturing and nourishing children in a gentle way. I don’t think everyone understands this. I think people probably do not realize that it is truly God’s work to take care of children. -
Mom Discovers the Weird Secret to Thick Gorgeous Hair
I think that if you are young and beautiful that you do not need to read this and will probably have disregarded it based on the title alone. What I want to say here is that we don’t need to chase “thick gorgeous hair”, “washboard abs” or any other appearance that Hollywood dictates to us is the best.When we say beauty is “right” we are, by implication, saying that “ugly” is wrong. For some people, anything less than outright glamour is anathema. I do not wish to be unpopular by saying that the ceaseless pursuit of all things fashion is silly, no, my message is far broader than that. What I want to say is, the most beautiful people are sometimes ugly to look at. Sometimes the plainest people are the most remarkable.
It is okay to (OMG) be old. It is okay to NOT look like you are 22 years old. Acceptance, yes, that is the point, acceptance.
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Some People Believe They are Actually Right
They don’t realize that being “right” is nothing more than a point of view.
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Life Endures…
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The Purpose
I once attended a five day workshop entitled the “Masters Training”. The point of the training was for everyone to find and identify their very own purpose in life. The training was a very intense one with experiential exercises such as a litany of “Who are you?!” repeated over and over again to help you gain a sense of intuitive insight into your true nature.As we processed over this five day exercise, we all became very excited about the possibilities that we could see blooming within us. Yes, I really am a powerful woman! I shared with the other participants in the training. On the fourth day we began discussing the true point of our gathering which was to learn our purpose, as if there was an eternal, right and correct purpose in the universe that the wise and enlightened would follow. What was revealed on that fourth day of the training is that there is no purpose in life. Purpose is what you make it. I remember the pervasive disappointment of that day. We really wanted a prize for all of our efforts, we wanted a statement and a rightness to our work. And the truth was and still is that our purpose lies within us, not without. There is no way to find a purpose from a training or a book, we must bring the value to what we do and we must do what we bring value to.
Our true purpose is to create purpose. What is the purpose of going off to work every day? What is the purpose to feeding the fish? What is the purpose of the one-up-manship games that we play with each other? It is up to us to feel it, intuit it and then to make our activity reflect our purpose. It is up to us to give purpose to our activity.
This brings me to my next related point, a segue shall we say? Yesterday I bought a new dress to wear to an upcoming party. It’s a nice sun dress and my granddaughter loved it. The truth is that no one will really notice what I wear, and those who do will think one of two things, either “that looks ridiculous” or “isn’t she beautiful and elegant”. I think it’s important to point all of that out, because when it comes right down to it, the purpose of the new dress is so that I feel good, so that I feel beautiful and elegant and really it doesn’t matter how anyone else sees it. Their opinions will be reflections of whether or not they like or dislike me and in the end, have no bearing on my truth.
I think that it is important to know that our purpose is our own and that what we do, whether it be buying a new dress or working hard to help people in need, it is all about what is inside of us, not outside. And since this is so, we should look inside for our answers as they always reside there, with our heart.
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Unconditional Love
Patricia Cornwell writes and I quote: “You really can’t love unconditionally. People can burn and beat love out of you. They really can kill it, and it’s not your fault you don’t feel it anymore, and how liberating it is to finally realize that.”And I agree with that, I really agree with all of that. Yet, it is incomplete. My experience has been that there have been times when I have loved unconditionally, had my love beaten and bludgeoned, and the love remains. So, what I find is that I must separate myself from this person, who does not receive and does not understand my love. So, I end up loving from afar and faithfully, committedly keeping the toxicity away from myself. Sometimes, it all comes down to discipline. Just because I love you does not mean that I must take care of you, feed you, make love to you, or even be in your presence. Love just does not mean that. Love is an emotion, and while it is a powerful provocateur, love is not action. Action comes from decision.