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Tag Archive for: friendship

attunement, connection, Curiosity, intimacy, love

Risk Curiosity

Much has happened in the past twelve months. Speculation, disbelief, fear and hope have been rampant. Perspectives have been challenged. Some perspectives have been validated; others are ragged, limp.

Loving on Life’s Terms often requires Curiosity.

Loving on Life’s Terms often asks us to hold our breath, being willing to Not Know and gently watch and wait to see what is unfolding.

Loving on Life’s Terms demands that we assess how we will live into that which we are co-creating.

The key, most times, is remembering that we are doing this [Loving, Living, Partnering] with someone else, with others.

This is a time in which we must allow ourselves to be curious, to ask questions and most importantly to hear each other. We cannot share creation if we do not hear each other.

Loving on Life’s Terms is risking asking questions and hearing the answers. It often asks us to risk stating our own truths.

Have you ever been afraid of a conversation, that you know you need to have?

Have you been surprised by how relieved you feel when you have the conversation, even if you don’t have a resolution? Have you been surprised by the peace that comes, even if there are no mutually agreed upon answers? Foundations, bare ground, seeing a truth about what is between us is a gift. We can make choices when we have that. We understand what we are doing with each other.

In 2017, let us all be curious. Let us all be willing to put aside what we think is true and listen to each other. Let us be willing to hear each other, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health.

Risk this intimacy. Risk Curiosity.

[I Know You Can Do This.]

January 3, 2017/by Melissa Perrin
/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg 0 0 Melissa Perrin /wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg Melissa Perrin2017-01-03 01:08:222021-10-14 22:24:45Risk Curiosity
acceptance, disconnection, disunion, intimacy, love, lovers

www.theonethatgotaway.show

We met and made music and told stories about “The One That Got Away.” We did this at the Laugh Factory in Chicago last Sunday. An amazing night. Something I did not know I wanted to do until Billy Pacholski and Scott Whitehair offered the opportunity.

www.theonethatgotaway.show

We told stories about lost loves, missed opportunities, misunderstandings and bridges burned. We told stories about found loves, epiphanies, unconditional love and falteringly brave connections.

We told stories about risking and gaining and losing and gratitude for risking, gaining and losing. We had much in common and nothing in common.

An epiphany: I was so young, I thought relationships would always be like this so I let him go.
An epiphany: I deserve Better.
An epiphany: She crushed me. This was so hot. I lost myself…until it was no longer hot. Then I had to save myself. And I did.
An epiphany: We loose pieces of ourselves to those who love us; we gain pieces of those we love and hold them forever.

An epiphany: My authentic self must be enough. It simply must.

Intimacy Happens. It just does. It happens when we risk asking, telling, hearing. It happens when we allow ourselves to bump into each other for a moment, an evening or a lifetime. If I let myself, if I choose to release my self-focus, I am changed by one story. I am changed by you. If I let myself. Whether we are together for five hours or five years.

November 23, 2015/by Melissa Perrin
/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg 0 0 Melissa Perrin /wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg Melissa Perrin2015-11-23 22:59:212021-10-14 22:24:45Totga at the Laugh Factory 11/15/15
connection

Neighborly behavior

Like a Good Neighbor…
When we all emerged from our cozy homes the day after Snowmageddon we were faced with a parking lot filled with snowed in cars. Everyone was outside armed with shovels, brooms, and willingness to help. As we began to dig out, the snowplow arrived to help clear the lanes. We were laughing, dodging snowballs, using teamwork to get each other’s cars free, one by one.  Our strapping teen boys dug fast and hard.  Our playful middle schoolers climbed the biggest snow drift to shout out direction about things they could see from their 13 foot perch.  Little ones watched from windows with mugs of [warm] chocolate.  We all had work to do and understood that gathering together made that work much more manageable.

Except for one of us.  He was in his four wheel drive truck, frantically shifting gears from reverse to drive, rhythmically gunning his engine in an attempt to rock his truck out of its snow prison.  He was clearly panicked, needing to be mobile sooner than the rest of us.

At first, the group reaction was one of annoyance which turned quickly to concern for the kids running around.  Neighbors alternated between looking over at his distress and putting their heads down to complete the task before them.  His distress, however, was increasing.  After a couple of minutes, we began to trickle over toward him and explained that we would dig him out if he would be still for a little while and let us do that.  He slumped in his seat and let us get to work.  When his truck was free he drove away with great relief.

We knew he had survived genocide before he arrived in our townhouse complex.  Neighbors may or may not be reliable.  They may only think of themselves and their own safety.  He later told me that his panic that morning had everything to do with his sudden knowledge that, no matter how prepared he was [even with a large 4 wheel drive truck to help him escape just about anything], he still had to depend on the benevolence of his neighbors.  Digging out from Snowmageddon made him feel as vulnerable as he felt the moment he understood he would have to get himself and his family to the nearby mountains in order to survive the slaughter going on around him.  The difference, in 2010, is that neighbors advancing on him with shovels and brooms came to help him escape.

Hopefully, not every neighborly opportunity to help will feel as desperate as this one.  There are opportunities every day to let someone near you know you see them and are friendly.  I know a woman who makes several sandwiches each morning to pass out to homeless folk as she walks to work.  Offering your seat to a fellow commuter who seems tired is a gift.  A smile or a nod as you walk by.  These moments, so small, communicate community. Such a simple thing.  Such a necessary thing for all of us.

Loving on Life’s Terms: being available for small and big moments of connection and awareness of the needs of others.

February 24, 2015/by Melissa Perrin
/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg 0 0 Melissa Perrin /wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg Melissa Perrin2015-02-24 09:00:352021-10-14 22:25:00Neighborly behavior
Uncategorized

Love = An Action Step

Unscheduled time on retreat.  We were mulling the statement: “Love is a choice, not a feeling.” We all weighed in. I shared my current thoughts: the limbic system functions to help us find the partner; attention, thought and choice help us stay with the partner.

Love is a verb. It is an ongoing action step.

In an interview with Carolyn Alterio, poet Li-Young Lee said that as a parent he felt he needed to act “as much as possible out of a condition of being totally present.”

http://www.sobs.org/poetry/an-interview-with-li-young-lee.html

This conviction embodies love as an action step. There are those who say that Love asks us to hold ourselves to the highest standard.

  • Am I with you in body, mind and spirit?
  • Do I understand that your experience matters as much as mine in this moment?
  • Am I treating you with respect?
  • Do I care what you say [even if I have heard this 10000 times before]?
  • Can I count to 10 [24 times] before responding when pausing is prudent?
  • Can I attend to the moment and appreciate the fact that I am with you? That I am doing something for and with you?
  • Can I receive? [a compliment, a hug, help, soup, love, a push, constructive criticism]

Choosing to love puts me at risk for joy and loss, easy times and work, intimacy and more intimacy.  There is the danger: intimacy and more intimacy.

  • Can I let you into my space, my boundaries?
  • Can I risk the consequences of loving you?
  • Can I risk the consequences of being loved By you?

As you mull Love as an action step, know that perfection is not an option.  None of us are capable of being present, of loving fully, during every single interaction.  Life doesn’t work that way.  We aren’t made that way.  We can, however, strive.

After all, it’s the loving thing to do.

February 19, 2015/by Melissa Perrin
/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg 0 0 Melissa Perrin /wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg Melissa Perrin2015-02-19 09:00:152021-10-14 22:25:01Love = An Action Step
love

Loving….

…on Life’s terms takes presence, attention and attunement.

Love cannot thrive in complacency.

Love demands attention, mindfulness and focus…with a dash of blind faith, that faith that doesn’t demand complete understanding or perception.

Loving on Life’s terms is a partnership in which the Couple, that creation of two people, is tended to as if it were a child.  That same level of focus, care and stewardship.

Loving on Life’s terms is accepting the child, the friend, the co-worker, the enemy as they are.  Understanding that they, too, are making their way in their lives.  [Even if we see clearly where and how they might change for the better….]

Loving on Life’s terms is understanding that soul mates are those folk who challenge us to grow into our more mature selves; those folk who do not let us rest comfortably in stasis.

Loving on Life’s terms means understanding that the person we love, whether romantic partner or fellow traveler, is making it up as they go along too.  For better or for worse.

Loving on Life’s terms means showing up.  Attending.  Closing the laptop, placing the smart phone face down [perhaps even turning it off….].

Loving on Life’s terms is opening.

February 14, 2015/by Melissa Perrin
/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg 0 0 Melissa Perrin /wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg Melissa Perrin2015-02-14 09:00:162021-10-14 22:25:01Loving….
Uncategorized

Hovering = Loving?

Jason sat on the edge of my couch, his head in his hands, weeping. He had graduated from a top college on the Eastern Coast with solid grades and a gritty year abroad. On paper his capabilities were strong. However, 6 months into his first job, Human Resources had sent him to me to assess motivational and planning issues; standard executive functioning issues.  He was exhausted, befuddled and needed something he could not name.

Raising children can be the most amazing, frustrating, exciting, crazy, awe inspiring, agonizing fabulous vocation in the world as we know it. This tiny life is suddenly in our hands, in our care. Many parents have the hope that they will not make the same mistakes their parents made. Some hope they will be able to replicate the childhood they had. Others set the bar very high and hope to give their child a very different childhood experience from the one that created them.

Hovering. Helicopter Parenting. These words describe a parenting style in which the parent “helps” the child by organizing the child’s social schedule, manages the child’s “free” time with enrichment activities, offers a crushing amount of unsolicited opinions, hires tutors for the child to mange high expectations and eventually does the child’s homework so that the child gets a good grade or doesn’t have excessive stress.

As parents engage in this parenting style, they rarely say to themselves: “Let me do what I can to stifle my child’s sense of self; I want a child who cannot structure a day, execute a project, manage anxiety or forge solid working relationships with co-workers.”  Usually, the hope is to attend to their child the way they were not attended to.  The hope is to be sure their child doesn’t experience undue stress or discomfort.  The hope is to make sure the child knows that the parent loves them and will always be there for him or her.  Sometimes the parenting style is used to make the parent look good or to help the parent remain in the social group the parent wants or needs to be in.

Aron had executive functioning issues.  Or, equally accurate: he needed to learn, in his early twenties, what kids were learning naturally in middle school and high school.  He had never learned how to make his own schedule and keep to it.  He hadn’t learned how to budget time to complete various stages of projects.  He struggled with co-workers and the distribution of work.  He needed a supervising agent to tell him what the next goal was.

Aron’s case is extreme.  He had a lot of unlearning and learning to do in order to catch up to his peers.  Other kids experience this steep learning curve when they go to college or move out of the family home and leave their helicoptering parent behind [as much as possible].  Cell phones and texting can make this very difficult.  We also had to work with his parents, his father in particular, on managing their reaction to his anxiety as he mastered some of these goals.

Loving on Life’s terms means giving a child enough guidance and support that they can accomplish the learning they need to accomplish without doing it for them.  Children must learn how to manage anxiety, learn through trial and error, handle down time without screens or being entertained, think for themselves.

February 6, 2015/by Melissa Perrin
/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg 0 0 Melissa Perrin /wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg Melissa Perrin2015-02-06 09:00:422021-10-14 22:25:01Hovering = Loving?

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