Last week I divulged to the treasured audience of this column how close my brother and sister and I are despite the fact that we each live on a different continent.

A reader suggested we perfectly display the axiom “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” He said his four adult siblings all live within “striking distance of each other” but do not socialize. He said they hadn’t all had a meal together in 15 years!

Perhaps there’s an element of truth to his observation about my brother and sister, but I really think it’s minuscule. Despite the distance we’re in each other’s lives quite a lot! My brother and I talk a lot on the phone, sometimes daily, depending on the magnitude of what either of us may be facing. Then, he visits sometimes twice a year – especially if there’s a significant event in my sons’ lives. My sister and I exchange greetings and check in with each other so much it’s hard to even imagine there’s a vast ocean between us. She’s visited here with such investment that I have friends who think she lives here!

Maybe it’s absence that makes the effort to connect more focused.

I’ll close with a challenge to that reader and others of similar experience – make it happen…. call your extended family and enjoy the rewards of deeper and determined connection.

The Mercury / Tuesday

Top ten reasons to love yourself…

1. It’s your longest relationship. You might as well enjoy it.

2. It makes it easier for others to love you. It offers others a fighting chance if you lead the way.

3. You really are “fearfully and wonderfully made” and if you take a closer look you’ll see you really are beautifully complex, vastly capable. What’s NOT to love?

4. It will help you see others more clearly, especially your children, parents, and siblings.

5. Your family traits will become clearer and you will want to embrace them, not fight them off or reject them.

6. Rejecting yourself takes so much work. it’s so draining. It naturally results in rejecting others, which is even more draining. Love rejuvenates.

7. It makes you nicer, easier to be with. It is so much more fun to be around a self-assured, self-aware person.

8. It makes you safe. Self-loathing people are short fused. Anything can set them off, especially when they are around acceptance and love.

9. It shifts how you see and treat everything and everyone. “Inner conditions” spill like oil leaks or spills. If you’re unkind to yourself, if you loathe or hate yourself, others tend to keep their distance.

10. It’s a prerequisite for loving anyone and anything.

The Mercury / Tuesday

A few things I have observed over the years:

• People do what they are ready to do. No matter how skilled a counselor may be or how dire a situation may be, people determine their own pace and do what they are ready to do. The same is true for grief. People grieve at their own pace and you cannot move it along in the hopes of getting it done any sooner. For most, deep grief is never done. It moves, it shifts, but some grief is never fully over. It may heal, but there is no scar remover for some losses.

• People do what they want to do. They may do a lot of finger pointing and find a lot of reasons why something can or cannot be done when it comes to things they do not really want. But, when a person wants to do something he or she will find a way. I’ve seen mountains move under the feet of someone who really wants something.

• People can, and often do, learn from their errors and when people do, it changes just about everything about their lives. They start to take more and more personal responsibility and the success breeds more and more success. Their lives spiral up. When people refuse to learn from their errors and repeat the same things time after time, their lives spiral down.

(Permission granted)

Dear Mr Rod Smith

My name is TW. I am an 18 year old girl and I live in Durban, SA. (Your hometown, as I am told.)

My mother has been a fan of your column for about as long as I can remember. I only remember this because she regularly cuts out your column from the newspaper and pops it on our fridge so that our family can read it. I must admit however, I seldom do sit down and read your column with the focus and intent that my sweet momma wishes me to. Which is why I feel prompted to send you this email.

I arrived home this afternoon, after a rather draining day at school, and I saw that there was a small newspaper clipping stuck onto my bedroom mirror. I pulled it off, and found that it was your column, “To the girls I know and to the billions I don’t”. My initial reaction was to “read it later”, with no real intention of really reading it at all. But I read it – then and there, standing in front of my mirror.

I am so glad I did.

It is hard to explain how meaningful and powerful words can be when they arrive at the perfect time, and yours certainly did. It is not that I don’t know that I am valued and loved and beautiful – but I find that I forget. Fairly often too – most particularly when I am stressed, or busy, or uncertain. (Which is most of the time.)

It’s a funny thing, reaching the end of your high school career. I’ve found myself thinking back on who I was, and who I have become. More recently however, I’ve been caught up on the thought as to why I haven’t really had a proper relationship before, like most other matric girl. (It’s a silly thought, I know. I am only 18 – but it niggles none the less.) Am I not beautiful? Am I annoying? Am I plain? I don’t know. I haven’t really been able to put my finger on it until I read your column. (Like 6 times.)

I am single for a reason. Not because I am not beautiful, or because everyone else if better than me – I am single because I refuse to settle. I will not settle for a boy who does not see and love me as the raw, essential version of myself. I will not settle for a boy who is only interested in the superficial, and I will not settle for a boy who loves me more than he loves Jesus.

Your column made me realise that this IS okay.

That I am worth more than settling.

I felt so encouraged by the affirmation that “Talent, power and bravery are divinely endowed. They are yours. They are in your bones, your soul; in the depths of your spirit and your being.”

I am talented.

I am powerful.

I am brave.

I am happy to be where I am, and where I am going as me.

My future is full to the brim with possibility and adventure, and I am excited to dive into it as a “gifted, talented, uniquely curious” young woman.

I will not be delicate, I will be vast and brilliant – simply because I am.

With Love and Grace

TW

Differentiation of self

Self-Differentiation (a term coined by family therapy pioneer, Murray Bowen) is a progressive, internal interplay between autonomy (separation) and connection (togetherness) while progressing toward developing and known goals.

Being an authentic adult is hard work and a never completed task. The pathway is paved with difficulty and challenge.

To become an adult, every person faces the task of the differentiation of self.

Not to differentiate is to fuse (the failure to become a separate person) with others and to place responsibility on others (or on situations, predicaments, and hurdles) for the way in which our lives develop. To differentiate is to provide a platform for maximum growth and personal development for everyone in your circle of influence.

Differentiation is described in many ways in the following points:

1. Growing in the ability to see where and how I fit into my family, the position I hold and the power that is and is not given to that position.

2. Growing in the ability to be fully responsible for my own life while being committed to growing closer to those I love.

3. Intentionally developing, at the same time, autonomy and intimacy. In developing autonomy I set myself towards achieving my dreams and ambitions. In developing intimacy, I allow those close to me to see and know me as I really am.

4. Being willing to say clearly who I am and who I want to be while others are trying to tell me who I am and who I should be.

5. Staying in touch with others (co-workers, family members, neighbors) while, and even though, there is tension and disagreement. (This does not include a former spouse or former in-laws or any situation regarding a romance gone sour.)

6. Being able to declare clearly what I need and requesting help from others without imposing my needs upon them.

7. Being able to understand what needs I can and cannot meet in my own life and in the lives of others.

8. Understanding that I am called to be distinct (separate) from others, without being distant from others.

9. Understanding that I am responsible to others but not responsible for others.

10. Growing in the ability to live from the sane, thinking and creative person I am, who can perceive possibilities and chase dreams and ambitions without hurting people in the process.

11. Growing in the ability to detect where controlling emotions and highly reactive behavior have directed my life, then, opting for better and more purposeful growth born of creative thinking.

12. Deciding never to use another person for my own ends and to be honest with myself about this when I see myself falling into such patterns.

13. Seeing my life as a whole, a complete unit, and not as compartmentalized, unrelated segments.

14. Making no heroes; taking no victims.

15. Giving up the search for the arrival of a Knight in Shining Armour who will save me from the beautiful struggles and possibilities presented in everyday living.

16. Paying the price for building, and living within community. I am not suggesting some form of communal or shared living. I am suggesting the differentiated person finds a place with others while also being separate from others.

17. Moving beyond “instant” to process when it comes to love, miracles, the future, healing and all the important and beautiful things in life.

18. Enjoying the water (rather than praying for it to be wine), learning to swim (rather than trying to walk on water).

(Please PRINT this page and STUDY it. Spread it around your office and among your friends. Read more writers about this concept. The ONLY thing I ask in return is that you let me know you printed it – by leaving a comment – and you SPREAD the word to others.)

The Mercury – Monday / Healthy Retorts…..

Healthy retorts to unhealthy prompts. These are not direct quotations. They encapsulate what I have heard from healthy people:

– No, I do not feel as anxious as you do about this – it’s not helpful if we are both immobilized. (Wife to husband over a business failure.)

– This is a conversation it seems you need to have without me – your adult sons and daughters want time alone with you. I understand completely. (Man to his wife in a second marriage.)

– Your accomplishments at school are yours. When you are doing well I will not take the credit. When you are doing poorly I will not feel as if I am to blame. You already have everything you need (from me) to be a superior student. What do you need to change about your work habits? Start there. No, I will not speak to your teacher. You are perfectly capable of doing that for yourself. Your teacher is not responsible for your performance – you are. (Parent to son of 15.)

– I am very uncomfortable speaking about people who are not present unless you are full of praise for them. Gossip is not at all good for friendships. (Friend to friend.)