Do you ever feel backed into a corner in an argument? Or forced to choose sides between polarizing forces? Perhaps in your intimate partner or family relationships? Perhaps in our wider, increasingly divisive social sphere? One of the biggest relationship-savers that Trevor and I have discovered over the last few years is to recognize when… Continue reading A ‘Third Way’
A year ago I was sitting in bed mid-way through watching 'Beauty and the Beast' with my daughter when the phone rang. Through sobs and gasps I heard a very good friend utter the devastating words ... "he's dead". Her world had shattered in a heartbeat - completely out of the blue. That morning her… Continue reading On Grieving
One of the things I didn't learn well growing up - maybe because of my autism, or maybe because of my experiences of gaslighting - was which things were emotionally my responsibility, and which things were not my responsibility.
So on Monday I introduced you to the idea of sitting with your hedgehogs (your emotions). It was a great description that helped me to understand a new way of interacting with my emotions. But what I discovered for myself, for my kids and with an increasing number of the families I work with, it's difficult to sit with your hedgehogs and name your hedgehogs if you're not actually clear about what emotions you're having in the first place.
So last week, I asked the moms in my parenting class to bring all of their clean spoons when they came. I didn't tell them why, but I specifically said, "don't clean any spoons specially - just bring what you have".
The idea of forgiveness can be very difficult for many people. It had always been drilled into me that it was important to forgive, and I would screw up my eyes and try hard to forgive those who had hurt me, but it rarely seemed to make much of a difference. Then a couple of years ago I ran across a book by the Rev. Desmond Tutu and his daughter, Mpho Tutu, called, The Book of Forgiving: The Four-Fold Path For Healing Ourselves and Our World. And I figured that since Desmond Tutu had grown up under the horrors of apartheid as a black South African, and overseen the Truth and Reconciliation commission there, he might have something of value to say on the subject of forgiveness.
What if there wasn't simply BLACK truth and WHITE truth? What if, instead, truth came in a RAINBOW of colours?
