You Are Not Sauce
If we are to move toward positive change in our communities and culture, we need you at full strength. Do not allow anyone or anything reduce you.
Blog
Lessons From an Autumn Walk
Hard autumn winds don't just blow away leaves; They can also blow away the things in our lives that no longer belong. Listen to find out what else trees can teach us about transformation and healing.
Tree Inspired Problem Solving (A Second Look)
Many times when I start to feel wobbly about current or imagined future circumstances, I look to the trees. In addition to giving off an amazing energy, I’m struck with the reality that many of the trees I encounter have been standing here for centuries. We have changed and challenged their landscapes again and again, and yet, they are still here. As we move into literal Winter, and also a time in our life as a Nation that is likely to be quite challenging, I encourage you to carefully consider the trees...
Truly Thankful (But not for Thanksgiving)
“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.” George Bernard Shaw... Today is the day when many people in the United States celebrate Thanksgiving. Like many of you, I will be sharing a collaborative meal and what should be some good connection time with some of my family. I am thankful for that. I’ve had quite a few not so stellar holidays in my life. I will tell you though, I do not honor this day as “Thanksgiving...”
Keep Calm, Andante On
The term “Andante” is a musical tempo. An Andante is a moderately slow, gentle pace. If you listen to the beginning of Carl von Weber’s "Andante e Rondo" you can hear what I mean. Notice how it just keeps rolling on, with a lilt here and lilt there? That’s Andante. 14 years ago, a different kind of Andante came into my life in the form of floofy little rescued “accidental” Lhasapoo. Since my daughter and I are both musicians we wanted to give him a musical name. We decided on Andante, and called him Dante for short. He has always just kept rolling on with a little lilt step here and there. That’s our Dante...
Givers, Takers, Transactionalists and Unspoken Rules
Have you ever thought you had one kind of relationship with someone only to feel burned as you discover they had a totally different understanding of what you were to each other? Let's get up under some of those disconnects and offer a different way forward.
Story Time: Three Young Eagles
Here’s our third story in the “Story Time” series, “Three Young Eagles.” Let’s see what some discomfort can do for us!
Story Time: A Tale of Two Squirrels
Two squirrels and a blue jay help us consider different ways to look at life and community.
Healing v. Cure
“We are cured when we no longer have disease. We are healed when we are restored to community.” (Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona ) Cured? Most religious faiths have some sort of tradition around asking their understanding of the Divine to heal people of this or that...
Dear S.E.R... (So Sorry)
Apologies carry the seeds of intimacy. Depending on how we handle them, we can either flourish or destroy that seed. Click here to find out more!
Tell Me a Story, Part 3
Psychiatrist, Neurologist and Lakota-Cherokee descendent, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, defines “healing” (as opposed to “cure,”) as being reconciled to community and to self. Storytelling in both Lakota and Cherokee traditions does exactly that. Stories remind us of what is true, support that healthy story of who we are, and remind us that we belong to something greater than just ourselves...
Tell Me a Story, Part 2
“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” (From Love in...
Tell Me a Story, Part 1
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” (Maya Angelou) The Power of Story When we as human beings listen to stories, the neurons in our brains light up in a complicated and unique way . We tend to do what...
Truth AND Consequences
“We can ignore the consequences of gravity, but remember, the consequences of gravity will not ignore us.” (Anonymous) The Anti-Hangover There's a new product on the market I keep hearing about on the radio. I won’t name it here because I don’t have the bandwidth...
In Tribute to Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon
“I was here before I came and after I go, I will still be here.” (Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, October 4, 1942 - July 16, 2024. Activist, cultural historian, artist.) I was a young teenager the first time I heard Sweet Honey in the Rock...
Unboxing Bodyism, Part Two
“ I'll never try to give my life meaning By demeaning you But let me just say for the record I did everything that I could do I'm not saying that I am a saint I just don't want to live that way I will...
Unboxing Bodyism, Part One
“God help you if you are a big girl, But too skinny is also your doom, Cuz everyone harbors a secret hatred, For the skinniest girl in the room; “So squint your eyes and look a bit closer I'm not between you and your ambition,...
‘Splain ‘Splaining
“In a world obsessed with status, let our compassion and empathy define us.” ( Henry Johnson Jr.) All the Splains Mansplaining . Whitesplaining . Straightsplaining . Thinsplaining . ‘Splaining ‘splaining ‘splaining. Our culture appears to be obsessed with positional jousting. We are drowning in hierarchical...
Contempt, Connection, Curiosity and Clarity
“Even the invisible leave footprints.” (Wayne Gerard Trotman) Using Discontent Well Dr.’s John Gottman and Judy Schwartz Gottman, (co-founders of the Gottman Institute,) can predict whether couples will divorce with 94% accuracy. The number one factor that determines this outcome? Contempt. I’ve found over the...
Beading and Un-Beading Relationships
“Assumptions are the termites of relationships.” (Henry Winkler) Simple, But Not Easy As mentioned in this space previously, I’ve been doing some beading lately. I love how easy it is to make something beautiful with beads. The patterns look so complicated. It’s an illusion. Beading...
Trading Snow Globes
“Good communication is the bridge between confusion and clarity.” (Nat Turner) Zillennial Gifts I completed the educational part of my counselor training in 1999. The landscape of mental health looked notably different at that time. My daughter’s micro-generation, the “Zillennials” , had just been born....
Holidays, Light and Dark
“Santa had the right idea: Visit people once a year.” (Victor Borge) Holiday Lights December is a month filled with holidays of all kinds. Some are religiously oriented, some culturally oriented, and some exist just because we want some fun! I’ve noticed that a whole...
Healing Relationships Step Seven: Repair
“ We must use money to heal where people are hurting and to stop more hurt from happening.” (From “ Seven Steps to Healing” by Edgar Villanueva in Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides, second edition, copyright 2021, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, Oakland, CA )...
Healing, Step Six: Invest
“We need to put all our money where our values are.” (From “ Seven Steps to Healing” by Edgar Villanueva in Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides, second edition, copyright 2021, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, Oakland, CA ) How Much Can You Invest? Bearing in...
Healing Step Five - Represent
“We must build whole new decision-making tables, rather than setting token places at the colonial tables as an afterthought.” (From “ Seven Steps to Healing” by Edgar Villanueva in Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides, second edition, copyright 2021, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, Oakland, CA...
Healing, Step Four: Relate
“We need space to share our whole selves with each other and understand we don’t have to agree in order to respect each other.” (From “ Seven Steps to Healing” by Edgar Villanueva in Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides, second edition, copyright 2021,...
Healing, Step Three - Listen
“We must acknowledge the wisdom of those excluded from and exploited by the system, who possess exactly the perspective and wisdom needed to fix it.” (From “ Seven Steps to Healing” by Edgar Villanueva in Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides, 2nd edition, ©...
Healing, Step Two: Apologize
“We must apologize for the hurts we’ve caused.” (From “ Seven Steps to Healing” by Edgar Villanueva in Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides, second edition, copyright 2021, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, Oakland, CA ) Today we look at step two of Edgar Villanueva’s “Seven...
Healing, Step One: Grieve
“We have to stop and feel the hurts we’ve endured.” (From “ Seven Steps to Healing” by Edgar Villanueva in Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides, second edition, copyright 2021, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, Oakland, CA ) As promised, this blog is the first installment...
The 7 Steps to Healing
“Mutual respect is the foundation of genuine harmony.” (the 14th Dalai Lama) I Went to a Conference and a Book Broke Out So there I was, watching the replay of a trauma summit segment, and this guy, Edgar Villanueva, started saying all of these things...
Transformative Fear
“The only thing you have to fear is an elephant in your kitchen.” (Riley Eaton… my 8th grade Civics teacher) Just In Case… Fear protects us, but by nature, it overestimates threat. As such, fear cannot help but to create collateral damage. Fear is an...
Sacredness and Justice
“When we don’t know who we are, we act like someone else.” (Tiffany Sankofa) Recap In last week’s blog I mentioned that we humanfolk tend to get caught up in striving for importance . I stated that we are all sacred regardless of our performance....
Are You Important?
“There are no un-sacred places; There are no un-sacred people. There’s only **sacredness And our inability to understand it.” (Anonymous) ** Not Religious (Please let me start by clarifying that I’m not talking about religion. When I write about “sacredness,” I’m referring to the intrinsic...
Giving & Overgiving (Thanks, Uncle Shelby)
“ Without lines, spaces have no definition.” (Anonymous) The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein arrived on the earth two years before I did. It was a popular book to read to young people as I was growing up. My memory of those readings is dusty...
AIDing and Abetting: Self value
“Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.” (Robert Heinlein) You’re Not Listening! One of the more common wounds we human folk tend to carry into adulthood wraps around not feeling valued or heard. It can leave...
Going the Distance
“I will be here, you can cry on my shoulder, When the mirror tells us we’re older, I will hold you.” (Steven Curtis Chapman) Aaawwwwww I’ve always had a thing for those older couples you see walking down the way together, hand in hand. It’s...
Daydreams, Hope, Change and Success
“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.” (Anne Lamott) The Dark I have always been a daydreamer....
Our National Narcissism
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Genuine empowerment is threatened by nothing. Narcissism, Toddlers and Adolescents In last week’s blog , I wrote about narcissism as a developmental arrest in the ego-development stage of life. But what if an entire culture functioned like a Narcissist? What if...
Narcissism: Peeking Behind the Curtain
“A fragile ego is too consumed with survival to celebrate others.” Read With Caution I noticed the other day that I don’t often talk about narcissism in this space. It comes up often in counseling, but unlike most frequent flyers, I don’t usually blog about...
Black History
None of us are free None of us are free None of us are free; when one of us is chained, None of us are free. (Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Brenda Russell) NOTE: When a Person of Privilege celebrates the accomplishments of People of Color...
Love and Lurve: My Funky Valentine
Is It Love? Or Luuuuuuuurrrrrvvveee? Please take a moment and consider these actual song lyrics. (If you aren’t familiar and want to hear the songs, there is a hyperlink for each, which also includes song credits.) “You are everything/ and everything is you….” “Can’t live/...
Resentment is an Unexpressed No
“‘No’ is a complete sentence.” (Anne Lamott) A Good Thing, and a Differently Good Thing I was in my office doing some contemplative writing the other day when my husband slipped in to give me a nice hug and a gentle kiss. He lingered there...
Fear, Part Two: The Isms
“Everyone is a good example of… something.” (Dr. Robert O. Burdette) Fear Makes Us Fragile Last week we looked at the challenge of fear with in-the-moment decisions. When we carry fear and fearful thoughts about the world around us over time, it can be a...
Fear, Part One: It’s Not the Chicken!!
Our problem is not fear. Our problem is that we misuse fear. Haunted Mansion In the movie, Haunted Mansion, the children of one of the main characters appear with a pair of ghosts who have told the story of the Mansion and why they, (the...
Empaths as Truth Telling Trouble Makers
“Don’t try to comprehend with your minds; Minds are very limited. Use your intuition.” (Madeleine L’Engle in A Wind at the Door ) “Identified Client” In therapy, the “Identified Client” is most often the person in a family system that was dragged or pushed into...
Community Empathy, &@>#, It!
“A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.” (James Keller) Two weeks ago, I wrote about Individual Empathy and how to use it well without burning out. Last week I covered Collective Empathy . This week, let’s broaden that circle one more time and consider...
Gifts from the Ancestors: Collective Empathy
“All Creation is one. What we do to one, we do to the entire web of Life.” (Chief Seattle, of the Suquamish and Duwamish) Collective Empathy Last week I wrote about empathy on the individual level . This week we will look at the collective...
Why We Vacate
“Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.” (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) As I mentioned in the People Are Not Mushrooms blog, we human folk rely on patterns to stay alive. As I also...
Goodbye/Hello
“I don’t know why you say goodbye/ I say hello.” (Paul McCartney) Each Goodbye is Hello When we graduate from a school it’s called a “commencement.” By definition a “commencement” is a beginning. I don’t know about you, but when I go to a “commencement”...
Are We Done With Middle School Yet?
“Adolescence is just one big walking pimple.” (Carol Burnett) Woohoo Middle School. Friend, what was your middle school, (or if you’re old like me, “Jr. High School”) experience like? Have you ever asked someone that and had them say, “Oh it was great! I loved...
A Father’s Prophecy
“Love involves a peculiar, unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.” (Diane Arbus) This Is Us Let me start by saying that I am one of those people; The ones who cried every week at the TV show, This Is Us , and are feeling ridiculous...
The Power of Loving (…and the Lovings that made it happen)
On June 11, 1967, I was seven and a half months old. On June 11, 1967, my husband, Amari, was six and a half years old. On June 11, 1967, “interracial marriage” was illegal in the Commonwealth of Virginia and 20 other states. If Amari...
Practicing Wild Kindness (in the midst of turmoil)
I have a cousin who is a school-based Social Worker and Peaceful Parenting Coach, (>shameless plug< ** Confluence Parenting, LLC.) He’s married to a dedicated, creative, tenacious public school Math teacher. They are also parents to two totally awesome young boys. As hard as the...
The Santa Cages
“Would it surprise you to hear that a man’s unhappiness is due in large measure to the way he is seeking after happiness?” (from The Seven Paths pub. by the Anasazi Foundation) I recently read, (ok, listened to,) the Kent Nerburn book, Neither Wolf, Nor...
Want or Need
“Take what you need. Give what you have. Live in harmony; Not competition.” (A saying found among many different Native American peoples.) Pearls of …well, something. If you have any age on you to speak of, you likely hear one or more of your parents’...
Lessons From My Mother: Sitting at the weird kids’ table
“Mothers are the Mt. Everest of Relationships.” (Tiffany Sankofa) Not That Kind of Blog So, before you go assuming that I had some wonderful relationship with my mother, we were best friends, blah blah blah… Please know this isn’t that kind of post. Neither is...
Who's Driving Your Bus?
Who’s Driving Your Bus? “ Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that leads others to join you.” (Ruth Bader Ginsberg) Déjà Vu All Over Again Why do we deteriorate in conflict with people that really matter to us?...
Thank you, IRS: Lessons in freedom and flexibility
Have you ever noticed that large, rigid trees get uprooted or snapped during hurricanes? It’s the palm trees that survive: They can flex their heads all the way to the dirt and snap back up every time. It’s the water inside of them that makes...
Temperature Check
“If you're in the middle of the ocean with no flippers and no life preserver and you hear a helicopter, this is music. You have to adjust to your needs at the moment.” (Tom Waits) Weird I went into the vet’s office the other day....
Ain’t No Peaches on That Tree
As you might have guessed from the title, I’m going to give you another “About Last Thursday Tale” this week. (See last week’s blog for an explanation.) I want to mention that when I write these stories, I have to write them in the voicing...
Smile, Dog Loves You
** For those of you who are not “Dog People,” I promise… this blog is only secondarily about dogs. These are my “buddhas.” You have your own. My Life in Dogs I have shared my life with dogs for about 50 of my 55 years...
Skunk Lessons
Skunk… tell me the story, So I will know it well. Of how to attract And how to repel. (Jamie Sams) R-E-S-P-E-C-T Thank you, Aretha! And thank you, skunk. Jamie Sams, author of the above poem, is the co-author of a series of animal cards...
Turning the Cube, Finding Compassion
"Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, the human race cannot survive." (The Dalai Lama) My husband, Amari, likes to do this thing he calls, “Turning the cube.” Whether it’s a news story, something he just read in his ravenous study of history...
Undercover Panic Attacks...
What people think in their hearts gets out, no matter how hard they try to hide it. (Munshi Premchand) Undercover Panic Attacks Have you ever watched reasonable enough, generally sane people turn into utter control freaks in a crisis? How about this one: You are...
THOSE People, Case 2: Non-Binary v. Binary Gender Assumptions
THOSE People, Case 2: Non-Binary v. Binary Gender Assumptions Joseph and Ren Meet today’s diametrically opposed duad: Ren and Joseph. Like last week, our brave participants were taught the principles and format of healthy conflict conversations as demonstrated for us by George and Rana. (See...
THOSE People Case 1: Vax v. Antivax
Ok friends, as a reminder, the 4 key elements we need in our difficult conversations, (as mentioned in the last blog,) are: Self regulation A commitment to a common goal, (and with it, a shift toward “ me and you against the problem ”) Grace...
Stereotype-Breaking Tools: May the 4 Be With You, Rana and George
“Sometimes a problem isn’t really a problem, but the solution in disguise.” (Richelle E. Goodrich) Well that went south fast… I found our heroes, George and Rana, back in the fitting room of relationships, yelling at each other, hurling accusations and “Well YOU’s” like light...
Rana, Put that Hammer DOWN! (More effective tools for hard conversations.)
“Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost.” ― Khalil Gibran The Right Tool Hard conversations like the one George and Rana are having might, at times, make someone want to pick up a...
The Fitting Room of Relationships, part two
The Fitting Room of Relationships, part two “Learning to stand in somebody else’s shoes, to see through their eyes, that’s how peace begins… Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.” (Barack Obama) George and Rana to the Fitting Room, Please… When...
The Fitting Room of Relationships, part one
We dress differently, think differently, strive differently, each of us unique, and yet uniquely connected to the entire human family. The Skin We Are In It’s easy sometimes to imagine that all of the other humans have the same experience of humanness that we do....
Stereotypes: Picking the Right Detergent
“Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.” (Roy...
Stereotypes: Cleanup in Conference Room Five
Everyone wants to be seen. Everyone wants to be heard. Everyone wants to be recognized as the person that they are and not a stereotype or an image. (Loretta Lynch) Power Many spaces in the United States continue to operate in a way that thinks...
People are Not Mushrooms
“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” (Maya Angelou) Acclimation I’ve been telling you all for some time that everything in us seeks patterns and familiarity. Sometimes we get so used to certain patterns (habits) that they...
When the Whole World Has PTSD
“Even in times of trauma, we try to maintain a sense of normality until we no longer can. That, my friends, is called surviving. Not healing. We never become whole again - we are survivors. If you are here today, you are a survivor. But...
A View From the Other Side of the Couch: Coupledom, Interdependence and Risk
“I define vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure... Loving someone leaves us emotionally exposed. Yes, it's scary, and yes, we're open to being hurt, but can you imagine your life without loving or being loved?” (Brené Brown) A-Ha! I've been talking a lot about...
When Glass Slippers Crack
Where the ant sees a tree, the giraffe (barely) sees a twig. Cinder Ella Grace, and Family Cinder Ella Grace is a 16-year-old whose mother passed away when she was born. Her father, Ferdinand Grace, married the Widow Rocks when Cinder was 12 bringing her...
Reading each other’s newspapers
"The court of human relationships does not pivot on justice; it pivots on connection." Politics are like gravity I have a lot of political opinions. It was a bit unavoidable. I grew up in and around DC, where the federal government is simultaneously everywhere, and...
Ruff Stuff
“Security is mostly superstition.” (Helen Keller) Gone to the dogs, totally Last week we talked about not channeling our inner Zenifred. (You can catch up here .) Today I’ll pick on Andante. …Oh, don’t you start too! I tried to say something about Dante’s post-surgery...
Channeling your inner… Zenifred?
“Inner stillness is the key to outer strength.” (Jared Brock) Many people reading this blog have had the pleasure of my assistant, Dr. Dante D. Dawg’s company. He is a gentle, quiet soul. He was never formally trained as a therapy dog. He seemed to...
The Alchemy of Silence
“The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides.” (Artur Schnabel) I wrote about the Alchemy of Words the other week. Today, I’d like to talk about the Alchemy of Silence....
The Other F Word
“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” (Lewis B. Smedes) Nice idea That’s a nice idea, isn’t it? It’s right up there with the quote attributed to St. Augustine, “Harboring resentment is like drinking poison and waiting...
Option WHY: The Charles Defense
“’No,’ is a compete sentence.” (Anne LaMott) If nothing else, the past 13 or 14 months has taught us the power of thinking outside of the box and challenging what has “always” been expected of us. My Stepfather, Charles, taught me something amazing about this...
What’s Your Butter Worth?
“None are so empty as those who are full of themselves.” (Benjamin Whichcoat) The butter battle Imagine that you go to the grocery store. On the shelf, you see two packages of butter. The package on the left is in pristine condition, shiny and bright....
Belonging
Sometimes we get so used to words that we look right through them. Have you ever really thought about the word, “’belonging?” We long to be. Just, to be; To be who we are, and still find ourselves connected to others. Isn’t that the dream? Belonging. Are you longing to be? To be seen? To be valued? To be joined? To be embraced? Some people are longing to be left alone, feeling crowded out by people who are nearby, but not safe-enough people to just “be” with. Our places of belonging hold up a mirror to show us who we are, what gifts we bring, and how we fit into something bigger than ourselves. Belonging shapes our sense of purpose and our sense of identity.
The Fear Factor: Finding stability when it all goes shaky
Although the world is full of pain, it is also full of overcoming it. (Helen Keller) And then… So this has been a fun week… Regardless of where one’s politics land, the Capitol building being breached, two people killed and four others dead is just...
Toes in the creek: “Willowing up” in a climate of constant change
“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.” (Loren Eiseley) Maryland I grew up in semi-urban neighborhoods inside the DC Beltway. One of the things that I appreciate most about Maryland is that nearly anywhere you go, even in urban spaces,...
Connection is the Cure
“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” (Chief Seattle, 1854) COVID marathon number six… I don’t know about you...
Ask v. Guess: Managing expectations (especially around the holidays!)
“People can’t hear what you don’t say. Thinking isn’t communicating.” ( Frank Sonnenberg) Asking and guessing My 23-year-old daughter explained the concept of “Ask v. Guess Culture” to me the other day. Apparently it’s been “a thing” for a while, but I missed it. The...
What I learned in Therapy: Compatible terms for relationship
“It is necessary, and even vital, to set standards for your life and the people you allow in it.” (Mandy Hale) Jockeying for space I have three older brothers, one of whom I am close to, one of whom I always wanted to be close...
XYZ, and this is not okay with me
“I think... we have to really accept that anger is a normal human emotion that can be a positive force for change.” (Koren Zailckas) As many of you know, I’ve been taking a fiercely candid look at anger and rage for the past couple of...
Healing Community Trauma
I've been doing trauma work clinically for over 21 years. The arcs of personal trauma and community trauma are, not surprisingly, entirely parallel: There comes a time when we are strong enough, well-enough endowed at every level that we can boldly refuse our Perpetrator's definition...
Anger v. Rage: How to Use Both Well
“Anger tells us something needs to change; Rage tells us something needs to heal.” ~ Tiffany Sankofa Afraid of Anger? Are you afraid of anger? I have to say, most people that walk into my counseling office are. You are not alone. However, you are...
Forget about the virus! This are LIFEskills! The Stoplight Technique
Forget about the virus! This is LIFE! The Stoplight Technique Those people in our lives who can respect our boundaries will love our wills, our opinions, our separateness. Those who can't respect our boundaries are telling us that they don't love our no’s. They only...
Surviving in Captivity, Part 4: Emotional Loading and The Power of the 4 Answers
“Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.” (Roy...
Surviving in Captivity, Part 3: Expectations: The What and the How, and the XYZ Formula
“Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.” (Anne LaMott) But I thought… You are holed up with your family following all of the COVID containment instructions and trying to make the best of it. For a while, things seem to be going ok. You’re finding a...
Surviving in Captivity: Fact Checking, Assumptions and “You and Me Against the Problem”
“Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost.” Khalil Gibran “Words are the source of misunderstandings.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince The crucible of captivity In these days where we are together with...
Surviving in Captivity: Living well with others while practicing "social distancing"
Getting Off of Your Last Nerve "The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: If there is any reaction, both are transformed." ― Carl Gustav Jung Sometimes the chemical combustion of two personalities makes something wonderful. Sometimes it makes something...
Surviving in Captivity: Living well with others while practicing "social distancing"
Introduction "How can I miss you if you never go away? With the current COVID-19 concerns and directives to avoid public gatherings, a lot of people will be spending a lot more time at home in the weeks to come. If you, like so many...
Relationships 101, Part 8: The What and the How
I’ve been working with couples and families for almost 20 years as therapist. One thing that has become abundantly clear that is that when people are in conflict, what they need the other person to understand is incredibly important. How we communicate that truth can...
Relationships 101, Part 7: Separating Personhood and Behavior
American cultures bend toward shame. When something bad happens, many of us immediately try to determine if the person responsible for whatever it is a “good” person or a “bad” person. We assign blame as if having an imaginary frame to hold events in gives...
Relationships 101, Part 6: Shared Vision
One of the things that first attracts us to others is a sense of shared vision. When we are first getting to know someone who intrigues us, we tend to get enamored with this idea that we have found a person who understands us -...
Relationships 101 Part 5: Self-regulation
If you’ve ever had a conflict you know how uncomfortable and difficult it can feel, physically. You might find yourself saying things you don’t mean or having a hard time thinking straight. You thought the conversation was going one place and then you find yourself...
Relationships 101, Part 4: Stages of Relationship
At the beginning of most relationships we get very excited by how much we have in common. This person seems to see life the same way we do, or at least, compatibly. We see a future together! As time goes by and we’ve had a...
Relationships 101, Part 3: Interdependence
I had a pastor once who aptly identified common misconceptions about love using the contemporary love songs of the day. The songs said things like, “I can’t live without you!” “I am nothing without you!” “You complete me!” “I found myself when I found you!”...
Relationships 101, Part 2: Remembering Our Why
Has your relationship started to feel stale and unsatisfying? Do you find yourself thinking about other people and then getting mad at yourself for it? Are you wondering where the person you fell in love with went? Sarah ban Breathenach wrote, ”Discontent breeds lifelong change.”...
Relationships 101, Part 1: Essential Elements
It’s terrifying to think that love can die. In truth, unless they are well cared for, relationships die. When we first fall in love it’s easy to think it will always be this way. Somewhere down the line while managing whatever stressors life throws at...
Conflict Code of Conduct
In the process of writing my wedding vows this morning, I started reviewing the last five years of my relationship with my fiancé and how we’ve grown together. It occurs to me that one of the biggest catalysts for growth and positive relationship together has...
Give the Gift of “No”
We can be the caring, savvy, thoughtful, patient person in the lives of those around us, but only up until we hit *that* wall. Then it’s all teeth, claws and craziness. I’ll own that. In owning this reality, we have the opportunity to do something...