I never thought I would be divorced. Marriage was for life. Or so I thought. Or so we thought. It was a holy expectation, a deep commitment to the lifelong. Through better and worse. Through the drama and mundane of life. We made vows before God and family and friends. We uttered them meaningfully.
Read moreWhat's Love Got To Do With It?
I’ve been studying Love lately. Both how it relates to me personally and to my work as a coach. I work with people who are going through a dark time in their lives – what was once their joy (a loving intimate relationship) is now their deepest despair. In exploring their loss and pain, the question inevitably comes to love: “How will I ever feel safe to love again?”
Read moreDivorce Grief: What Is It and What Can You Do About It?
Divorce is one of the most deeply painful experiences you can go through in your life. This is true if you were the one left behind or if you decided to end the marriage. Even if the end was a long time coming, and somewhat inevitable, what often surprises people is how heartbroken they feel when the end actually comes.
Divorce is a death – the death of your marriage and all the hopes and dreams you had of “happily ever after.” With the death of your marriage comes a whole host of secondary losses. Grief comes knocking at your door, insisting to be let in whether you want to or not.
Read moreReframing Relationships
What is a relationship, really? There are a few ways of looking at it. Firstly, we tend to see a relationship as a thing, referring to it in conversation as a noun. If you consider this a little deeper, you could think of relationship as the act of relating, connecting, bonding that you participate in with another.
Read moreEndings...Sailing to the Edge of the Earth
I want to talk about endings today. This is a topic that either nobody wants to talk about or that people just can’t shut up about. We’ve all experienced them. Your relationship ends in separation, the job you quit (or got fired from), your daughter moves out to go to college (or move in with her boyfriend, or both), the move cross-country to a place you’d never been – you know what I’m talking about because you’ve been there.
In this world, all things come to an end. Endings are usually seen as unpleasant, as bad, and we’re generally very upset about them. What I see a lot of in my coaching practice are the most devastating types of endings – the ones we don’t choose ourselves – the death of a spouse or child, the divorce we didn’t see coming, getting fired/laid off, the debilitating illness that threatens to take everything away.
Read moreOnly the Lonely....
Loneliness can be dealt with in many ways, and the attitude you have towards yourself and the vulnerability that this feeling produces has a lot to do with how much suffering you will assign to it. What do I mean by that?
Read moreThe First Step in Opening to Receive - Be Willing to Ask
I don’t think anyone enjoys the feeling of vulnerability. We don’t like asking for help as we have been conditioned to see that as a sign of weakness. Being judged as “needy” seems to be the ultimate insult as we like to think of ourselves as able to stand on our own two feet, as being self-sufficient. We take up sayings like, “It’s better to be a giver than a receiver.” Giving is an act of a generous heart and it also gives us a sense of control. Receiving can be really uncomfortable as it goes against the rules we have inside. We don’t want to be seen as takers or as victims.
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