Messy life (redundant)

Older Child returned to college yesterday. We are bewildered and morose, funereal, weepy. First Covid case in our extended family, a niece. She and her friends tested (negative) before going to a resort together. Niece is the only one so far with Covid. So far very sore throat, taste and smell gone, fever. We hardly …

Nerves. Practicing flexibility

Younger Child started php for mental health. This could improve all of our lives. We have been saying life has many paths: school can wait, college isn’t required for living. Focus on health and well-being. Relieve suffering. Now, there is a chance to relieve suffering. You know us: we feel other people’s feelings, especially pain. …

Puzzling over exclusion

We have stopped solving The New York Times crossword and stopped using our USA Today book of puzzles

transforming enemy images

We are drained. Are you, too? Can we lean into it? If you are someone benefiting from white privilege, can you see how your black brothers and sisters cannot rest? Can you use that to keep going? For peace? If you have trouble empathizing with others, can you examine your enemy images? Whom do you …

Compassion for change

Maybe take in a deep breath Maybe let it out slowly Maybe repeat this a few times. Maybe sigh if it feels like a release Can we have compassion for ourselves to start? For how we were raised, for what we believed, for questions asked and unasked? Now can we have compassion for those we …

Internal meeting

T-2 is going to start seeing clients again. Therapist and client have to wear a mask at all times and stay six feet apart. Our Littles do not want to do it. They are too scared of the masks. Scared of being contagious. Of being feared. Of being afraid. Afraid of being afraid is common …

Thank you, Community!

Thank you to all the friends who interact with us on WordPress. These connections provide empathy, validation, perspective, and are helping to sustain us We have difficulty keeping up reading and commenting. We want you to know we are trying our best to support you, too Mostly, we want to express gratitude We are ruminating, …

creative vs delusional

Love gets confused. We forget how Older Child is related to us. Some of our me’s see Older Child as our parent, some see Older Child as our sibling, some as our friend, some as our offspring This awareness is itself startling and dispiriting. If we can notice and not judge, maybe we will have …

The “most frequent 1,000 words” game

This “game” requires the text editor at https://splasho.com/upgoer5/. Each word you type there will either be accepted (black text) or rejected (red underline)

What if there are no good or bad people?

What if there are no "bad people"? What if there are only people who try to get their needs met, most of whom have no experience connecting with other people so that the other people's needs are also met simultaneously? What if everyone was raised by human parents and everyone internalized ways of seeing and …

Being there for one another

T-3 asked us to write in a blog post some of what we said to T-3 in teletherapy today. We said that we wish that health organizations, whose mission is to protect lives, would use a language of unity, compassion, and mutual support and not language of violence and war. If people can social distance …

New Therapist (Intake Part I)

We had our initial intake for a new therapist today. This therapist's specialty is Somatic Experiencing. Our goal in adding this fourth therapist to our lineup is to extend the mind-body connecting we started in the hospital last fall. Since fall, we tried contacting five other therapists with some sort of specialty in movement, mind-body, …

Clouds or silver linings?

What is alive in us right now is fear and shame and hope. Fear that the relationship with Therapists is broken or that we won't heal it. That we will focus on the clouds instead of the silver linings. It is so easy for us to find the fault lines and use them as excuses …

What is alive in us now?

Do you get bogged down in the details of your story? In the telling and retelling? We do! In life, we feel an emotion, such as anger or fear, with the shock and force of a paper cut, and we are off on a trail of actions/events that almost always lead back to a major …

Empathy for those who piss us off

Everyone and everything and all experiences are teachers if and when we are receptive to the lessons. We spent much of our working career in a college, which means we spent most of our life at school. This was by choice because we like learning and teaching. Here is what Nonviolent Communication (NVC) teaches about …

Is this email factual, ambiguous, or not factual?

Please be honest about how you think/feel. Gauging our perception is useful. Also, we can handle being wrong and can respect opinions/perceptions that do not mirror our own. Younger Child's school sent out a mass email that reads: We want to remind you of State Department of Health (DOH) guidelines to use when determining if …

Take your time

"...take your time. Those three words give you the power to come from a spirituality of your own choosing, not the one you were programmed for... It's critical for me to be able to slow down, take my time, to come from an energy I choose, the one I believe that we were meant to …

Joys to notice and share

So many hard things are going on. We are suffering. Hope is low. Primary therapist told us to really dive into any joy that we experience, and use it as motivation to know it can happen again. This is dangerously close to resisting what is and clinging to what we don't have, and we can …

No compromise.

Have you read _Nonviolent Communication_ by Marshall Rosenberg? The concept of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is not at all transparent. The reason NVC works as a mediation tool is because there is no compromise required: everyone gets their needs met. No one has to give up what they want because, when human beings truly listen to …

Liberation in love

We have a person we want to be friends with. Person replied positively to our text asking if we could be friends. And our few follow-up texts were replied to briefly and with an intention for lengthier connection in the future. After a week of hearing nothing, we are anxious. And uncertainty is a gift. …

Triggers and new trauma

About three minutes after we sat down, a man approached us. We recognized him from our years of visiting this property. He is employed by the property manager. He is probably an inch or two below six-feet tall, has a shaved head, wears all black, and is very muscular to the point that we presume he is a serious weight-lifter.

Warning: consuming this article will cause indigestion (except in Utah)

Saturated fat from the fruit of the Doofo Tree will harden your arteries faster than an Alberta Clipper freezes a puddle!

Self-insight hacks (off-label)

Have you ever heard of "off-label" use? We don't do this with medication. We do this with books. Let me explain.

Frustrating attempts to get warring factions to communicate (no, this is not about politics)

Wow, we are making this shit up as we go; and it sounds like we might be onto something, doesn't it? 

No buts

A somatic therapist with decades of experience encouraged me two years ago to replace "but" with "and" when I spoke to her, because so many things can be true at once. I was using "but" to refute, negate, and isolate myself. Once I started trying to replace "but" with "and," I noticed how reliant my …

My emotional safety during the holidays

Now it's time to parent myself. To provide my many Littles with the love, understanding, and safety they never received.

What are you doing? Why “Not pooping” is an insufficient response

When we were little and acted contrary to someone's expectations, we were usually chided with, "Don't ____." Don't hit. Don't swear. Don't drink grape juice in the living room. As adults, when we're trying to change a habit or practice, we often default to the same thinking: Don't judge. Don't yell. Don't eat that. We …

When to stay the course, change, or give up

When we develop a dimmer switch, we increase our options for meeting our goals.

PTSD: how we struggle and how to help

Maybe if we honk our horns less and talk to our neighbors more, we will all feel better.

You’re good at negativity because you practice so often

starting a new practice--to look for good in things or to approach situations with no expectations at all--takes conscious effort

Can you “Notice” without “Judging”?

When we judge, we label, reduce, and remove context. When we observe with specificity, we provide richness and still allow ourselves to express our values.