What About Singles?

I have several very dear friends who are not in a primary, monogamous, long- term, committed relationship. I write about the healing powers of those relationships. The only way to flourish I, and others like me preach, is in the arms, the gaze, the love, the safety of a loved one.

What a bleak and unfair prediction/announcement I make. How arrogant can I be, for goodness sake? I am totally discounting and diminishing the creative and healing experience of hundreds of thousands of people who do not have a life partner, be it by choice or fate. I ask for forgiveness. My life journey has been to learn how to make a relationship work. My marriage of 17 years failed and I played a big part in that happening. Others suffered. So did I. Hence, my yearning to heal myself as well as help to heal others.

How dare I be so uncompromising! Of course there are a myriad of ways to heal. All of them, I believe, require some form of intimacy and vulnerability, however. What jumps right out at me first thing is the healing power of spirituality and faith. A sense of power within or a trust in a Higher Power can gives us a profound belief and trust in self and guide us to the knowing of belonging, being loved, a feeling of grace and an awareness of the depth of connection we all have with what is Divine.

I talk and write about “being one with all that is” when in the womb, that the safest emotionally and spiritually most of us will ever be is while in the womb. That same remembering can happen when we are able to turn ourselves over to something or someone greater than our obvious physical self. Music, poetry, meditation, solitary walks, dreams, listening, seeing, can all contribute to that connection with more than self and help us feel washed in intimacy and a deep healing secure place throughout our physical being. For those who can go within or trust beyond self, religion or spirituality helps us feel reconnected to our originally whole and sacred self and contributes hugely to healing losses and comforting hurts from growing up times.

This is a much as I want to say right now about how one can heal without being in relationship with another person. I believe there are other ways: work, children, dear friends, pets,interesting I am less inclined to say therapy. I do believe in therapy and the healing that can happen there. I think there needs to be more.An hour a week in a one sided relationship can only go so far.

Please email me. Nancy

Hello Bloggers, 2011

Well! At last! For about 6 months Clo, my partner and excellent computer expert, Marketa, my web designer, and I have been trying to get a clear route from my web to my blog. I must say, I believe my computer is my electronic nemesis, created to terrorize me daily and make me feel like dummy and a clod. However, Clo and Marketa got me back on tract yesterday and at last, I can write and you can find me. Much of 2010 I wrote and you didn't even know it. I got lost in a blog created by it's own self and accessible only by my password, which of course, no one knows but me. That's the point isn't it????

I suggest you check my winter 2011 newsletter on my web. I have written a book report on Dr. Sue Johnson's book Hold Me Tight. I am also offering a special for anyone who has read the entire 2011 Blooming Relationships Newsletter. Generous of me, huh?!

Dr. Johnson has done incredible research on attachment theory which in a nut shell means in order to thrive everyone, children and adults, absolutely must feel loved. Many years ago an important teacher and mentor in my life taught me that we all are searching for where we fit and where we belong. Imago adds the crucial need for feeling safe. Put it all together, and there is the recipe for happiness: a flooding of love (feeling loved), a heart open to welcome you (fitting and belonging), and being able to trust you are safe from emotional, physical, verbal, and spiritual wounding(it is your job to say and do things that help your partner feel safe with you).

Life is good. Check it out with someone who has faced death. I am still working on what I REALLY believe happens after we take our last breath here. But until I have it worked out, this is where I want to be. And helping guide and facilitate you to improve the pleasure and hope in your relationship is the major work I want to be doing.

Email me. I love hearing from you. Warmly, Nancy

If I Were To Tell You A Story:

What story would I tell you? How I married, had 4 children, a husband who was the pillar of his community, divorced, moved to Canada, became a relationship therapist, came to love and share my life with a woman and a adorable puppy in a lovely home built in 1923 and renovated between 1993 and 2011 by that same lovely woman?

I don’t think so.

Maybe how I played with the fairies under my mother’s white linen tablecloth that was spread on the dining room table? Or played in the back yard under the pear tree with Bradshaw, my very best friend whom my mother acknowledged but couldn’t see?

Hmmmmm Maybe.

How I survived pain and fear and uncertainty and faced death again and again when my heart went out of rhythm, my blood pressure soared, I had a small stroke, and congestive heart failure nearly claimed me at least twice?

I no longer live there.

That time is all behind. I carry it, all of it. But today I live in today and look forward. I have stopped walking into the future backward, I have closed that door, turned around and I embrace the future with curiosity. It smells nice. I like the smell of the future. I like the sound. It sounds like the tiny chimes over my front door that let me know clients have arrived. Or a friend is here. Or my puppy and my partner are going out for a walk.

Most of all I like that the empty place inside of me is being filled with hope and filled with vague dreams: vague because I don’t yet dream concretely. I dream of colour, fragrance, smiles, laughter, breath, strong hearts, sounds of love.

I want to tell a story that you want to hear. I believe you want to hear about love, hope, peace, joy, knowing where you fit and belong. What else?

Fit and belong makes me think of a dear mentor and teacher, Carl Hollander, who many years ago, at least 30, taught me that we spend our life longing for and searching for where we fit and belong. The reading I have been doing lately tells me it is a brand new theory and awareness that we all need to feel loved, need to belong, need to be wanted and cherished. We have known for several decades now, that children do not thrive if they are not loved, touched, wanted. But for some silly reason we forgot that that need doesn’t end when we reach 18, or 21, or 45 for that matter.

If I had known this was such an unknown theory 30 years ago, I might have made my fame and fortune writing about it then! How dumb is that? I learned about needing to fit and belong, feel loved, seen and wanted, before I was 3 years old. When I played with the fairies and brought Bradshaw into my life, I had figured out my outside world trembled, so I best create an inside world with foundations that would keep me safe.

Bright kid!

Maybe it isn’t too late.

Love heals. It sooths, comforts, helps us feel safe; relieves anxiety, distress and fear. Throughout our entire lifetime our greatest need and desire is to be loved and be able to feel that love deep within our soul. The opposite of love is fear. If you don’t love me I fear I will not exist. If I don’t love you I fear I don’t know how to love. Either way, I fear I will never belong. And then I will wither, shrivel, dry up and blow away in the wind., never to have been known or wanted.

More about fear another time. Blessings. Email me. Nancy

2011 I'M ALIVE !! AND JOYFUL! AND PEACEFUL!

And happy. And in LOVE. In love with the Divine. In love with life! In love with ME! And of course, in love with Clo. Dear Clo who has valiantly, loyally, thoroughly seen me through 3 years of struggle. We held hands and faced the blizzard together. And when I couldn't pull my share, she grabbed a rope, put it around my waist and dragged me. My gratitude to her is as great as the greatest of mountains, deepest of seas, vastness and mystery of deserts, bold and beautiful as the Danube, the Rhine, the Nile, thick and profound and rich and life giving and hot as the Rain Forests.....

I have learned. At last, I am learning. Man, is that a relief. I keep saying out loud and to myself,"What is the message, here???" Gradually it comes to me. I turned a corner a few days ago. And I might even be able to put words to what I have learned thus far:

I get too emotionally involved in just about everything: my work, my friends, my family, the world (though I do not watch or read news) However, I am convinced all of us have bodies and souls that absorb what is happening in the world and we carry those feelings unconsciously. We need to delicately acknowledge there are those who suffer profoundly and direct our energy, focus, and attention to love, beauty, healing, hope, joy and peace.

I am learning to rest, sleep, read, listen to music, talk with friends, write, dream, eat, play, laugh; all in peace. All with NO recriminations; no guilt; no disappointment in myself. All in celebration of the gift I have been given. It is a gift to live in this time and in this place. I came from a place of love, have been given the gift of life, and will return to love, peace, hope and joy.

I teach couples how important it is for them to help each other feel safe. I also help them learn to embrace their own and their partner's need to feel loved, to fit and belong, to be held in grace. Everyone needs to have that trust that there is a place they are safe and wanted. No one is overly needy. There is NO such thing as being too needy or dependent. If we don't feel safe, we panic. In our fear we clutch. When we are soothed and comforted, we let go, sigh, and smile.

Connection. Belonging, Being wanted, seen, understood. Simple. Crucial. Life giving. I know. That is what Clo and the brilliant, wise, and creative doctors and care takers and friends and family gave me. That, and my own internal ability to love and heal and commitment to myself and life as I know it to be, is some of what I have been learning.

Wow! No wonder I often need a nap. Heavy duty. Email me. I would love to learn about your life journey. And I would love to hear how what I share affects or doesn't affect you.

Love, hugs, hope, Nancy