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Encouragement for Those Who Are Weary
Greetings gentle readers,
I ran across an old song I haven’t heard in years that I wanted to share. I loved the song when it first came out in 1979 (for those of you born after that year, there is no need to point out how long ago that was, I was a seniorĀ in high school. Trust me, I know how long ago that was. š ) but it speaks even more strongly to me today. It has been such a struggle to learn about how to handle the inevitable pain of life, in some other way than futilely attempting to avoid it. One of the best lessons taught to me by BN is that while pain is inevitable, the answer to pain is love. (See The relationship of love and painĀ andĀ Love is the AnswerĀ for more detailed explanations of that truth).Ā The love we find by connecting to other people, by sharing our burdens, by holding each other up. That is where we find the strength to face life challenges. Continue Reading
Book Review: How We Heal and Grow
I have been following Dr. Jeffery Smith’s blog, Moments of Change for some time now and was very honored when he asked to send me a pre-publication copy of his new book, How We Heal and Grow: The Power of Facing Your Feelings for review. I have long been a fan of his lucid, clear writing and his gift for so clearly explaining the often mysterious and elusive interplay of therapy. This book has proved to be no exception to that rule.
If you read only one book about healing this year, or even this decade, let it be How We Heal and Grow. The book is well written and easy to read, with clear prose and carefully delineated arguments. Continue Reading
Everyone Has Closets
I just finished watching Ash Beckham’s talk at TEDx and had to share it. I thought this was a wonderful, impassioned plea to treat both ourselves and others with compassion and empathy. I really appreciated how open and honest she was about all of her feelings and thoughts, and in a very self-deprecating manner. Even if you think this isn’t your cup of tea, please trust me and take a sip. You will not regret the time you spend.
A 4-Year-Old Girl Asked A Lesbian If She’s A Boy. She Responded The Awesomest Way Possible.
Coping with Grief and Abandonment Part II
This is the second post in a two-part series on Grief and Abandonment, see Coping with Grief and Abandonment Part I.
I’m sure it will not surprise any regular reader of this blog to realize that BN was a huge part of how I coped, even between appointments. BN has a very generous contact policy, I am allowed to call him 24/7 including when he is on vacation. If I leave an emergency message with his service, he calls back within an hour. If he is on vacation and doesn’t answer the service in a certain amount f time, his backup (a wonderful, warm, empathic man) calls back, but always offers to have BN also call; it’s just a longer wait than usual. (I have higher standards for contacting him when he is on vacation but have done it. Earliest I have ever called is 8 AM and the latest is 10:30 PM although BN has made it clear that 2 in the morning is ok if I need). We very rarely do any processing during phone calls but when the grief threatened to overwhelm me, or the fears that BN would also abandon me, would rise up, then Ā a short phone call would help to ground and reconnect me. Most of mine are under three minutes and it’s not unusual to keep it under one minute. BN once referred to my “patented one minute phone calls” when I was worried about calling too much. š Often it wasn’t what he said but just the sound of his voice and experiencing that he was there that would do the trick. Continue Reading
Coping with Grief and Abandonment Part I
GE asked the question below on the Ask AG page:
im wondering if you are wiling to share some of the strategies you used to cope with grief and abandonment feelings when things got rough during your recovery.
As I said in reply over there, this is an excellent question. Since I see grieving our losses as being at the heart of our healing, we should probably learn how to grieve, right? I have been grieving, one way or another, for a large part of my time in therapy, so this might turn out to be a bit of a laundry list, but I am hoping that everyone might find something that they can use in their own journey. Continue Reading
Why keep going back?
***Trigger warning: Religious content, I talk about my Christian faith in pretty specific terms late in the post.
A reader emailed to ask me a question whose answer I thought would make a good topic for a post. So with their kind permission, the question is below, followed by my answer.
I would like to ask how you got through it.Ā I mean when the feelings became so intense with your therapist, how were you able to keep going back?Ā What stopped you leaving?
This is a really good question. There were so many times I threatened to quit, or told BN I wanted to quit. I lost track of how many times I said (often out loud) “I cannot do this anymore, I can’t take it.” Sometimes on the way to therapy. I wish there were a simple answer to this question, but it was, as usual, a complex interplay of a number of factors. Experience, fear, attraction, desire, longing, faith, hope, determination and belief. One at a time, all at once, or some subset were what kept me going. Continue Reading
Happy 1st Birthday Tales
It has been a very long, sucky, painful day, full of misunderstandings and hurts, some caused by me, to my regret and some inflicted on me. (Yay!! While I was working on this, someone did an amazing thing and was vulnerable and we’re repairing it. Great now I’m going to short out my keyboard!) So I am more grateful than I can say to come here to my blog to celebrate a very happy milestone for me, and hopefully for some of you. š Tales of a Boundary Ninja is one year old today. This is my first blog and I was both excited and terrified putting up those first posts, not quite believing anyone would actually want to read what I had to say. Continue Reading
Tales of a Boundary Ninja 
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