Watching your loved ones suffer is hard.  Harder still is not trying to ‘fix’ the problem or the person yourself.

 It is almost impossible for me to hold my tongue when I see my loved ones struggling.  Most of the time I am able to withhold my advice by the simple truth, I am not really doing any of them any favors when I interfere.  Sure, it feels good to me to offer my so called wise council, but am I really helping?  Or am I denying them their own empowerment by wanting them to do it my way?

 I may think I am saving them from making the wrong choice, but don’t we all know it’s in those mistakes that the greatest lessons can be discovered?  Within the lesson, transformational moments happen – ultimately unlocking each person’s own separate peace. 

 When I step in, I deny my loved ones this opportunity.  I learned awhile ago that when you really love someone you allow them their failures.  There is room for mistakes and you continue to love them.  You may not excuse or accept all the behaviors, but with healthy boundaries, you can still love them as they stumble through the quagmire to a new day. 

 Hence instead of offering unsolicited advice, I encourage you to tell your loved ones you belief in them.  Maybe you do need to connect them to outside support.  Do, and then step back.  Return your focus to what you can fix, you. 

 You will discover much of your pointing at another’s problems is really masking your own real hurts that need healing.  This is your work.

 Later this week I will discuss healthy boundaries and family.  Please email me any specific questions that I can include in the discussion.

What I Know Now Letters to My Younger Self is a great, quick read.  Fascinating women share their wisdom that comes with time, life and success.  What surprised and delighted me most was the humor, love and kindness these women have for their younger selves as they stumbled through a previous life crisis.  Not surprisingly, balance and trust-in-self are the central messages of the letters.

 I particularly loved Roz Chast’s letter to her neuroses plagued nine year old self, opening line, “You are not going to die of leprosy. I promise.”  Priceless…and Queen Noor, “You don’t have to be perfect,”…or author and activist, Kitty Kelley, “Speak the truth but ride a fast horse,”…or Jane Bryant Quinn’s letter, “About your kids – it’s okay.  They’ll grow up…” or CEO Marilyn Carlson Nelson struggle with “having it all” expectations only to discover you can, but not all at once…Really this is good stuff!

 I like how each of these women have been down and out – the world outside may not have known, but they knew…And through many steps, some missteps too, they have arrived on the other side.  Each has found their own kind of separate peace, an individual wholeness, not perfection, wholeness…

Confusion runs high at the end of a relationship. Over and over, the same refrain, voiced by client after client, “Is he going to call?” The very words make my heart ache at their desperation. Ugh. The same thought enters my mind, “Of course he will, but hopefully, by then you won’t care.”

Let me tell you a secret, 99 times out of 100 he or she will call again. Maybe not this week or next, maybe in a year, but unless you are a total nut case, he’ll call. And here’s why: you have unfinished business. It is my experience that if you are “desperate” to hear from anyone, things are unresolved. To get to that level of anguish, I’m betting this has been an unhealthy or out of balance relationship for awhile. The clincher is when a client begins reciting all the ways she/he has helped the person in question “live a better life.”

I have found a better question to ask is, Why am I so desperate for him/her to call? What am I avoiding by focusing on him/her? Loneliness, isolation, depression, abandonment, addiction?

The truth is that breakups suck. There would not be so many songs, books and movies about the subject if it was otherwise, but there is an unhealthy and a healthy path. When a healthy relationship goes awry, of course, there are tears, deep sadness, hurts, but it does not lead to this desperate place of “Is he going to call again?” This phrase screams, “co-dependant, big fights, slamming doors.” All reason and rational thought go out the window and the anguished refrain, “Do you think he’s going to call?” begins falling from your lips with frightening regularity…

Let me ask you another question, if you are desperate for her to call right now, ask yourself, is this the first time you have felt this way in this relationship? This queasy, nervous space with aching all over it, or have you been here again and again? He left you waiting that time. You discovered something. This nervous, clinging space has become familiar, a habit really.

Let me tell you something else I have discovered: you can break a habit. It doesn’t happen overnight, but by new, healthier thoughts and beliefs you focus on everyday until you have the new habit of being in healthy relationships.

How to do this?  Try meditating or picking up a new habit such as hiking or just getting outside more.  Check out my resources page to discover an interesting book to support you during this process.  Go take a workshop about something that interests you and even meet new people interested in things you like to do.  Above all, get busy – so, when he/she does call and he will, you will see him for what he really is – someone you don’t want to call you.

How do you mend a broken heart?  How does it get broken?  Is it in one event?  Or are there dozens of offenses before the crack?  Oh, I wish I knew.  For me, it happens over time, dozens of offenses forcing me to dodge and weave hoping to keep my balance.  Some days I can, and some I can’t. In my early twenties, I dated a man, really a boy, who I adored.  It was an incredibly, passionate relationship.  I discovered passion is a slippery thing, it goes both ways.  The intensity you love is equal to the intensity you hate.  My, my does can that lead to interesting times…We stayed together six years. Our break-up was a pitiful good-bye, lasting a year of push and pull.  The end did not result from a lack of love; it ended because of all the hurts.  The wounds left to fester and grow.  He was an alcoholic.  I suspect he still is. I grew up with a father who drank too much and a mother who yelled too much.  My old boyfriend was like home.  I loved and hated home as I loved and hated him.  I’m sure I even became the woman who yelled too often, much to my disgust. I remember after he left, laying in bed, weeping for hours – hurting so deeply from the inside.  I would take deep breaths in all the time because I felt like I couldn’t breathe — never enough air, never any relief.   Over and over, in my mind I would repeat this poem my mother once said to me, “I told my soul to be still and wait. Without love, For I know not what to love. Without hope, For I know not what to hope for. But in the waiting, there is faith.  There is love, hope and faith in the waiting.  I told my soul to be still and wait.”  If I said it enough times, finally a peace would descend.   Comforting me, even if it lasted only a little while. Today I know that comfort was God.  I was ceaselessly praying with my poem.  As I lay in my bed at night, I would imagine myself held in the palm of God’s hand.  I started going to church.  It was when I gave up, that my heart began to mend. I can’t say it happened over night.  It was a process and time was a huge part of it.  I can’t even say it won’t happen again.  But what I can say is, I have faith.  There is love, hope and faith in the waiting.  In that space, God waits for me.  I am held there and gently reminded “courage.”  I told my soul to be still and wait.