Hi there! It's Lisa here with our second "official" posting.
All of our posts here will be about relationships in some way. In my opinion, everything in life is a relationship - whether it's to another person (spouse, friend, co-worker, enemy, stranger, etc.), to money, to God/god (whatever we each may conceive of that to be), a pet, etc. Within each of these, we're hoping to be our true self while also allowing and encouraging the other to be the best of who they are.
When Brian and I first got together, it was a magical time and it also was a time of intense growth and learning. It was a scary time for us because we had finally found someone who we wanted to be completely open with and that's incredibly vulnerable... what if we get hurt? With that openness and fear comes a lot of expanding and contracting. "I love you and want to share everything of myself with you, but what if you hurt me? What if you abandon me?"
We had a lot of rough moments during the beginning years, but we've always been honest in saying to each other, "Do we want to keep doing this together?" and, with every answer of, "yes," we knew that it meant we had even more work to do together.
It took us years to realize that we needed to see that we were always on each other's side even during an argument that seemed like we weren't (and realized later that we were saying the exact same thing, but with different words).
Brian and I both grew up without examples of what we wanted to create together. Brian's dad died when he was 2 years old and he was raised by an amazing single mom. I grew up with parents who were focused only on their own needs. I don't remember a time with my parents when I felt unconditional love. As I matured into adulthood, I realized how to honor my feelings of conditional love from my parents. I've learned that that feeling may always been there in some way, but I also learned to no longer fill it with people or things like my parents (conditional things or people). I learned that I can sit with that feeling and that I can allow unconditional love and grace to come in from those who I now surround myself with. Brian (above all) has always shown me what unconditional love and grace is.
I've been scanning a lot of old pictures over the past couple of weeks. There have been happy moments and sad moments. There have been times I have sat and looked at a picture of someone who is no longer in my life for different reasons. I'm struck with how we force ourselves to hold on to every relationship while relationships are always meant to ebb and flow. Few relationships are those that will make the choice to continue to grow with you through it all - to allow the growth to happen in a safe and supportive way. We shame ourselves when a relationship goes away instead of allowing ourselves to grieve it for what it was, what it wasn't or what we needed it to be, but never was. Sometimes we know why we need to end a relationship and other times we just know our gut is saying, "it's time... at least for now".
Every relationship (whether we feel like it was a failure or it is flourishing) is an opportunity for self-growth.
The relationship to our gut/intuition is one of the hardest relationships I've found to build. In childhood (especially with trauma or abuse), our intuition can become solely built on survival and on people-pleasing (outside of ourselves). As we start to plant ourselves in healthy relationships, we can start to feel safe and allow our intuition/gut to start being with us in a different way - allowing us to start creating our life that we've always dreamed of having (open and being all of who we are) instead of always in hiding who we are in order to be safe. Our intuition/gut can then be for navigating the life we always wanted to be living.
When you are in a healthy relationship, cherish it and give it every nutrient it needs to grow openly and proudly. Relationships require our time and energy - they don't just magically happen on their own - they may take a lot of retraining from what we were taught to believe about ourselves and what the world teaches us. Each relationship requires safety and healthy nurturing. Without knowing we are safe, we remain in a serving and shut down/people-pleasing place. Each healthy relationship (whether to ourselves or to someone/something else), is safety in being our true self while also allowing and encouraging the other to be the best of who they are.
What/who are the relationships in your life?
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