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February is always a special month
for me. My son,
Alex, was born on February 8, so every year, we get
to celebrate what he creatively calls his "birthday
anniversary."
Then there is February 14, which for
many is
Valentine's Day. However, I'd love to see it be
honored as "heart day"--a day to remember the wisdom
and power of the heart, and to take time to slow
down a listen to the heart's voice.
In the spirit of the heart's voice,
this issue of
the HealingHeartPower Newsletter is chock
full of relationship-focused articles: Healthy
Self-Reliance and the Ability to Give and Receive
Love, The Power of Partnership, and Gender
Matters: The Plight of Single Parent Mothers and
Fathers.
This March, I am organizing a section
of my 6 week
coaching class, The Money Class, for the
first time in several years. This class provides a
wonderful opportunity to make peace with money,
explore what really matters to you, and reflect on
how much is enough. The Money Class will be
held on Thursday mornings from 8:45 am - 10:45 am or
Fridays over lunch from 11:45 am - 1:45 pm. If you
would like to participate, please let me know.
If you are interested in
participating in EKP in an
on-going way, my Tuesday and Thursday night Mixed
Gender Body Psychotherapy Groups have openings
for male and female members. An interview/one
individual EKP session are required to apply for a
space in a group.
And March 16 - 18, I will be
leading my
annual Healing the Traumatized Heart at
Kripalu in Lenox, MA. This is a wonderful
opportunity to spend a weekend in a beautiful
Berkshires setting, eat healthy food, and embrace
the power of the heart.
In closing, I wanted to share a
favorite quote by
poet Aeschylsus: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own
despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the
awful grace of God."
Heartfully,
Linda
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Healthy Self-Reliance and the Ability to Give and
Receive Love
 Our culture places a large value on self-reliance,
often understood to mean we should be capable of
doing everything in our lives on our own, and not
need others' help. While healthy self-reliance
is an important part of being a whole, grounded and
healthy adult, I am afraid I often see the
"self-reliance concept" taken to an extreme. In
fact, we seem to forget or devalue our
interconnection with others.
Crudely translated, "self-reliance" in the
vernacular, tells us that "need" is a four-letter
word, and when we need other people for help,
support or guidance, we are "weak." I sometimes
wonder if this overfocus on self-reliance comes from
a lack of understanding that in human development,
there is a natural progression from healthy and
appropriate dependence, to healthy and appropriate
independence, to healthy and appropriate
interdependence. I see many people who are so
afraid of being dependent, that they overcompensate. The go out of
their way to keep a distance from
others. In doing so, they also keep a distance from
their own vulnerability and basic human needs.
While this can quickly become a "chicken or the egg"
debate, sadly, people who have not had the
experience of growing through healthy dependence to
healthy independence, are often unable to experience
or create interdependence in their relationships. This limits our
ability to both give and receive love.
As I watch people parent their children, I see that
sometimes well-meaning parents are so afraid of
their own needs and vulnerabilities, that they push
a child towards independence prematurely--before the
child has had the developmental experiences they
need to be independent. Parents can also stifle a
child's appropriate efforts towards separation and
independence, because the parents are not yet ready
for this separation. It's as though we don't trust
our natural developmental urges, or because our
developmental urges weren't followed and nurtured,
we cannot follow them or nurture them in a child.
This reminds me of a film I watched before my son
was born. The film looked at how children's bodies
intuitively know what nutrients they need from their
food. If offered a well-balanced selection of
foods, a child will gravitate towards the ones which
fulfill their nutritional needs. I remember a scene
in the film where a child is offered a big plate of
carrots, a big plate of M&M's and a big plate of
broccoli. As the child reaches for the carrots, the
parents are happy.
After eating his fill of carrots, the child then
started eating M&M's with great pleasure. The
parents were now horrified, afraid the M&M eating
would get out of hand. In actuality, the child ate
what he felt was "enough" M&M's, and stopped,
deciding it was time to move on to the broccoli. The
child had an internal sense of self-regulation. And
in the end, the child's eating habits were perfectly
reasonable, demonstrating that moderation is a good
thing.
This sense of internal self-regulation applies in
our love relationships. If we haven't had the
chance to find our pathway from dependence to
independence to interdependence, we cannot
callibrate our needs for space and connection, for
closeness and distance, and for rhythm and pacing in
a relationship. And we surely lack the language to
communicate our feelings and needs.
As a result, as a relationship grows and intimacy
deepens, we become frightened and often act from a
primal "fight or flight" place. Instead of being
nourished by love, we become overwhelmed by it. Instead of opening our
hearts to people who are
loving and kind, we put up a wall to keep them away. Like a feral
animal, we have learned to do it
alone, and doing it alone keeps us in our comfort zone.
We need to learn a healthy sense of self-reliance to
open our hearts to give and receive love. To do
this, we need relational experience where someone
who truly cares about us will stay in emotional
connection with us as we work to take down the walls
that protect our vulnerabilities, and strengthen our
sense of independent self so we can love and be
loved. Rather than opening up our hearts and having
no one there or being slammed, we need to experience
a loving, listening presence. Rather than doing
what we need to take care of ourselves and having
another be resentful or angry, we need to be
respected for our need for self-care.
EKP can help create the experience of "magical
stranger," a steady healing presence who knows just
where to stand in relationship to our dependence and
independence needs. By healing our hearts in this
respectful way, we develop the capacity to be
interdependent, to love and be loved.
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The Power of Partnership
"At present, people create barriers between each
other by their fragmentary thought. Each one
operates separately. When these barriers have
dissolved, then there arises one mind, where they
are all one unit, but each person also retains his
or her own individual awareness. That one mind will
still exist even when they separate and when they
come together, it will be as if they hadn't
separated. It's actually a single intelligence that
works with people who are moving in relationship
with one another..."
--David Bohm, Physicist
If I look back at my life and ask myself what
accomplishments have been most fulfilling, a
surprisingly high number of them are ones I have
done in partnership, as a collaboration. As a kid,
I teamed up with my grammar school best friend to
give "campaign speeches," from the auditorium stage
when drafted to run for class president. While I
hadn't ever had the bug to seek "public office," my
classmates saw my leadership potential. I needed a
"campaign manager." Who else to choose, but my best
friend. With Denise at my side, this shy girl was
able to sit on the stage, speak from her heart and
win by a landslide. It was a good model of partnership.
In my early 20's, I was fortunate enough to
collaborate with a musical partner, Lisa. For three
years we practiced for hours and hours, wrote music
together, and overcame our shared shyness to move
beyond the confines of our living rooms to perform
on the radio and in coffeehouses. The songs we
wrote together often had a richer texture than those
we created alone.
And as I embarked on my last job in the corporate
world as an organizational consultant, strategically
planted in a line job in a business unit, I realized
having a collaborator would help others ally with us
in a way that I could never accomplish as sole
trailblazer. My colleague, Peter, embraced the
vision, and together, people could hear us in a way
they could have never heard either one of us alone.
My mentor for 17 years, Bob, who sadly died an
unexpected death the day after his 69th birthday,
was another collaborative partner. He held my
vision in his heart as I held it in my own. And the
power of his support and understanding of who I am
and what I aspired to in the world helped me realize
dream after dream after dream. I came to realize the
power of a another person holding my vision, and
have enjoyed being the "co-holder" for many other
people's visions as they have taken steps to make
them real.
As I addressed in the first article in this
newsletter on "Healthy Self-Reliance and the Ability
to Give and Receive Love, " our culture gives so
much attention to the
individual, the sole hero, the lone wolf. And
surely, there is a place for individual
accomplishment and contribution. However, I have
always felt that a divine force operates when two or
more people come together, commit to a common
vision, and work together towards this higher goal.
I have founded many groups and organizations, and I
can assure you, I could not have done any of that
alone. Each time, a team of partners who shared a
common vision joined me. And together we were able
to do more than any of us could have on our own.
Creating a child requires an essential
partnership--at the very simplest level, the coming
together of a sperm and an egg. And parenting a
child is designed to be a partnership of at least
two adults committed to the unfoldment and
well-being of the child.
I guess there is a sacredness to true partnership,
where God or a spiritual dimension supports the
commitment and collaborative effort two partners
make to each other. David Bohm speaks to this point
in his quote at the beginning of this article. And
singer Paul Stookey points to this experience in the
words from "The Wedding Song," "the union of your
spirits here has caused him to remain. For whenever
two or more of you are gathered in his name, there
is love."
If we can embrace the power of sacred partnership,
we can be happier, more successful and fulfilled in
our lives. Knowing we are truly not alone in our
most important endeavors gives an incredible
rootedness. Holding each other in our visions gives
them extra creative power. Working together towards
a common vision, creates a result greater than the
sum of the parts.
Find
out more....
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Gender Matters: The Plight of Single Parent Mothers
and Fathers
Living in a time when 62% of marriages end in
divorce, and many children find themselves living in
single parent households, the question of what life
is like for single parent mothers and single parent
fathers is one worth some study and reflection.
A colleague of mine, Tracy Marks, actually did some
research on this topic when she was in social work
school years ago. She was a research assistant for
a professor doing a comparative study of the plight
of single parent mothers versus single parent
fathers in the US and 10 European countries as well.
The results were sobering. Not only did single
parents in the US fare worse than in the European
countries, but also, the differences between women
and men were profound. They found that women
flocked to a single parent man and wanted him as a
partner. They thought everything he did for his
child was wonderful. Men, on the other hand, often
ran from the single parent woman, or expected her to
be able to work full-time, handle parenting superbly
and have a lot of time for "relationship" without a
complaint.
In my observations, things have not changed
dramatically since her study. While, to be totally
fair, there are men who have had children themselves
who love having the opportunity to be involved with
a child again, and there are also men who didn't
have the chance to be a parent, and welcome the
chance to contribute to the growth of a child, I
have found this is the minority.
I have attended countless social functions where men
looking for partners have made it clear that a woman
with children at home would not be of interest. I
have also watched grown men feel intimidated or
angry in response to a mother's appropriate
nurturance of her child, because he did not receive
this from his own parents. I have listened to men
voice their resentments of the time demands
parenting requires of a single mom, and have watched
a seeming insensitivity to why the mother might need
to plan activities, and surely trips.
To be totally fair, as well, I have listened to
women whose children are grown also express their
desire not to get involved with a male partner with
children still at home. It just seems that I've
heard more men than women voice their lack of
interest in a single parent with children still at home.
I welcome your feedback on this important, and
perhaps, emotionally charged topic. What is your
experience? What have you observed? How might we
improve the state of affairs for single parents and
their children in a society that is still founded on
the institution of the two parent family? Write to
me and tell me at LSMHEART@aol.com.
Find
out more....
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You may also want to visit
www.sexspirit.net to see the wonderful programs the Boston Area
Sexuality and
Spirituality Network has put together for 2007!
In closing, I leave you with a
beautiful quote that Jim Shipsky sent to me:
"There is a river flowing now, very
fast. It is
so great and swift that there are those who will be
afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are
being torn apart and suffer
greatly. Know that the river has its destination. The elders say we
must off into the middle of the
river, keep our eyes open and our heads above the
water. See who is in there with you and celebrate. At this time in
history, we are to take nothing
personally, lease of all ourselves, for the moment
we do that, our spiritual growth comes to a halt. The time of the lone
wolf is over. Gather
yourselves; banish the word 'struggle' from your
attitude and vocabulary. All that we do now must be
done in a sacred way and in celebration. We are the
ones we've been waiting for."
Heartfully,
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