Beyond Broken

Relationship

Redemption

Redemption

An act of redeeming or atoning for a fault or mistake and returning to a state of being redeemed.

Here is what happened for me. I married my husband when I was 26. I was a very young 26. I needed a mother and a father as much as I wanted a husband. He was going to make up for all my losses — a happy ending to a sad life.

It wasn’t so easy. He had two young boys in our care. They were 5 and 7 and had lots of NEEDS. I did not understand what it meant to be a wife, let alone a mother. I did my best at each of those tasks and I wasn’t very good at them. Most of the time I was resentful of everyone else’s needs and competed with them for my husbands attention. And I was so afraid to love. What if they did not love me back? I had no understanding of, or way to hold this negativity inside. The little boys were cute, creative and so smart. How could I feel so mean? I hated myself ­— guilt, fear and resentment forming a toxic mix….

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Are you keeping ‘cool’ this summer or succumbing to the heat?

 

Are you keeping ‘cool’ this summer or succumbing to the heat?

Learn more about what happens in our brain during ‘cool’ and ‘hot’ moments and what huge differences it makes in our relationships.

We are only three weeks into the summer and already there has been a lot to learn.  Most of us continuously find ourselves judging others and making assumptions about other people’s behaviors. We do this continuously in a scanning function in our brain. These assumptions justify our defensive behaviors. Our untested ‘realities’ give rise to disconnection, wall building and subtle and not so subtle negativity in our relationships.
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Our Investment In Our Grievances

“Holding on to my grievances give me a sense of power, which protects me from feeling vulnerable. It’s a way of standing up for myself and defending myself from being hurt, disappointed, or rejected again. It keeps me vigilant”

This hardening of our hearts is the ‘beast’ in us. It is the wounded beauty that has lost faith in itself because it was never fully seen or recognized.

“What keeps the wound and hardening from healing is not knowing that we are lovely and loveable just as we are while imagining that other people hold the key to this.”

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Understanding Is Not A Luxury

We are so often misunderstood that we begin to believe that understanding is a luxury. Even our closest friends or partners who listen attentively but then quickly try and fix us feels mis-attuned.

I am not sure how we come to live without understanding and stop our protests. Do we just assume we will be misunderstood and give up?

We might find a slight postural stance and freeze in our bodies. A small shrug – one shoulder up higher than the other – our head turned to the side – the body clearly saying, “whatever”.

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Celebration

Here is how it works! When you are little anyway.

You are almost two and have a ‘first’ moment.

Your first moment down a very steep slide, “Get ready, get set, go.” And you are flying. At the bottom you crack yourself up and then do it again and again and again. How smart you are.

How did you know to stretch out the moment of ‘firsts’ and until they land in in you?

How about the next ‘first’? When you can blow a bubble from the wand and watch it float on the wind. Again and again laughing wildly each time the bubbles stretch from the wand and take flight.

As we get older we take our ‘firsts’ for granted. A new insight in the therapy office, a new move at the gym, the first signs of spring, they barely get a nod, before we move on to what is next. Firsts get left in the moment as we speed on to the future.

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