Sometimes Life Sucks…
Letting Go of the Fear of Abandonment
Dumping Dysfunction
Raise your hand if you’ve ever dated (or married) someone that now makes you shake your head in disbelief.
Don’t be shy. You’re not alone.
Now, take an honest look back at yourself in that relationship. Were you in a healthy place? In full working order?
Probably not.
When it comes to relationships, we tend to attract and be attracted to people that are operating at a similar level of awareness and functionality as we are.
Those who are overly nice and have difficulty maintaining boundaries find partners who are overly needy or demanding.
The one that seeks to control and fix finds the one who cannot manage alone.
Those that are fearful to fully engage in life meet up with others who are content to live at half speed.
People that struggle with addiction dovetail nicely with the ones who are happy to enable.
The one that feels unlovable will end up with the one that likes to abuse.
And individuals who are afraid of being alone will settle with those who don’t have the skills needed to sustain a relationship.
Like attracts like in the particular magnetism of relationships. Patterns of dysfunction fitting together just so in a way that can hide the maladaptive patterns of one by folding into the other.
And sometimes one person grows and in doing so, grows out of the person they were once fitted with. The relationship becoming a too-tight sweater that constricts instead of hugs. Without their corresponding pattern of dysfunction to hide beneath, the too-sharp edges of the slower growing partner begin to rub and your tolerance begins to wear thin.
Maybe they will be motivated by your growth, your changes prompting alterations in their own habits and patterns. Perhaps your shift is enough and you are able to learn a new way to operate that improves the overall dynamic.
Or possibly you’re in the difficult position of choosing between being limited and letting go.
Sometimes to move forward, you have to begin by dumping the dysfunction.
And then doing the work to become what you want to attract.
Let That Sh*t Go
When I walked into my yoga studio this past Monday evening, I saw a woman with the most amazing shirt. Under a simple image of a figure in a pose, were the words:
Let that sh*t go.
I laughed. I smiled. And I reflected back on my day, the first day back at school after spring break. A day filled with tired, yet nervous kids, as we all prepared for the upcoming standardized testing season.
I felt my shoulders kissing my ears as they still were still struggling to carry the load of the day. I recognized that my mind hadn’t left the school and was still busy tweaking the lesson for the following day. I sensed a current of anxiety coursing through my body, fearful that I would somehow mess up the testing in some critical and unforgivable way. I realized that I was already anticipating what I needed to accomplish after the yoga practice instead of making preparations for my yoga class.
And then I made a decision and with my next exhale, I followed the advice of her shirt and I let that sh*t go.
As we go through our days, we collect worries and troubles like a young child collects pebbles on a walk through the park. We stuff our pockets, line our shoes and fill our hands with as much as we can carry. We become overloaded, burdened, with the weight we carry. We curse it, we complain about it. Yet we rarely follow a form of the advice we would give to the child overloaded with collected treasures on a walk –
Let that sh*t go.
Mistakes
When I was in kindergarten, I got in trouble for talking in class. My consequence for the misdeed was a missed recess. The talking was a simple mistake, a lapse in judgment rather than a lapse in character, yet I internalized the mistake. Instead of merely sitting along the wall with the other kids who made a mistake that day, I had to be consoled by my teacher because I was so hard on myself.
Mistakes are inevitable. Mistakes are opportunities. Making a mistake doesn’t make you any less of a person.
Let that sh*t go.
A Bad Day
Have you ever noticed that once you label a day as “bad,” there seems to be no shortage of ever-compiling evidence to justify that moniker? Every slight, no matter how small, is a sign the world is against you. Every stressor becomes a mountain, every trigger detonates an explosion.
Days aren’t good or bad. They’re simply a measurement of time. And what happens in one fraction of a day doesn’t have to impact the remaining parts.
Let that shit go.
Expecting Things to Be Different
I receive questions and pleas for help on a daily basis where the writer inquires how to go about changing their spouse’s or ex’s behaviors. They enumerate the lies and the irresponsibility. They express their frustrations about the lack of accountability and the absence of emotional intelligence. Sometimes, they lament the circumstances rather than the person, begging for a way to alter their current reality.
But reality is as it is. There are circumstances we cannot change and people beyond our influence. To believe otherwise is maddening and self-limiting.
Let that sh*t go.
Continue to read the rest.
How to Rewrite Your Divorce Story
When divorce happens, it can leave you feeling like a failure. Powerless and adrift in your life. It’s easy to internalize these feelings, to recite them to yourself as if they were gospel.
But what might happen if you change your story? Take back your power?
And rewrite your divorce?
Learn the steps you need to take to release your divorce find your voice again.
Lessons From the End of a Marriage 