Greetings!

    

     I have been one of those lucky souls that have loved the profession I fell into many years ago. My clients have been the kind of folks that I would have loved to have had as good friends. The sort that can recognize entrenched storylines created long ago who now make room for new possibilities.  I admire people like this. This month's writing comes from the shared integrity of the clients I sit with every day. 

 

Holding Me ... Holding You:  Building inner muscles

 

     For the second week in a row, the tile man has postponed the installation of our new flooring. Impatient me blurts, "This sucks!". My wife Julie says, "I know, this is soo disappointing" and wryly adds, "for a first world problem." We have recently been teasing one another about the great gap between first and third world suffering. And yet, would we not only be deflecting away from our real disappointment if we prematurely respond with "yea, you're right .. sorry I got a little self-centered there". How do we walk with BOTH an awareness that this disappointment is real for me AND that in the grand scheme, this is small potatoes.

 

     Possibly it is in our capacity to honor both, to let ourselves feel what is before us here and now AND simultaneously to breathe into the rich and enlivening work of noticing all the places that I can desperately cling to perceived comfort.