Emotional process (your “inner-brewing” or the “subterranean-working” – usually invisible – beneath the surface of any person group) is on a broad continuum.

My writing and my thinking about emotional process is deeply influenced by the likes of Murray Bowen, Edwin Friedman, David Schnarch, and many others. They have articulated these thoughts with much greater clarity and thoroughness – and I’d suggest the interested reader research their many books.

Grief labors long over its healing work. In so many ways it is often never over, never complete. Some losses seem beyond healing. Accommodation is possible, a full life is possible, new relationships can develop, but the vacuum of some losses is never filled. Many want to rush grief and they want pain to be gone. Who cannot want pain to be gone? But in rushing grief along, the pain gets buried, runs deeper into the soul only to manifest itself later, often disguised as something unrelated to the initial loss.

• No matter how long past your loss may have occurred welcome the tears you feel welling up. Let them flow. Tears are grief’s first agents, first responders in a tragedy.
• No matter how long past your loss may have occurred welcome your desire to talk about it. Speaking about your loss stimulates grief in its unique work. Conversations facilitate healing and recovery, especially conversations with those who have waked a similar path.
• No matter how long past your loss or breakup or violation may be, welcome your desire to write about it. Words strung together into sentences and then paragraphs and then chapters can help deliver the hurting person into realms of peace and healing.

An affair doesn’t just happen. There are thoughts, behaviors, and shifts in habits that are indicators one is brewing. Here are a few precursors. Take heed. There’s no affair powerful enough to make it good and right to hurt your spouse or your children. If you really don’t want your marriage there are more civilized ways to go about exiting a marriage. An affair is the ultimate insult both to your spouse and to the person you use, surely unwittingly, as your exit strategy:

• You are covering your tracks and not truthful about where you are and who you are with. • You are spending more and more time with a specific person under the guise of having to complete work or secure a deal. • Time with this co-worker or new friend seems to fly by and you feel rejuvenated having had the time together – your shared experience is reminiscent of how you felt when you first spent time with your spouse. • Although the friendship is open and honest you cannot include your spouse in the friendship and there are times you feel guilty about the fact that it exists. • You really want to be with this person and your family feels like a hindrance to your happiness.

Forgiveness is always available and ways to find it are known and discussed. Then, once it is granted, the forgiven person is free to go on his or her way and live as if the transgression had never existed.

There are bizarre circumstances when forgiveness cannot be immediately available, when reconciliation is impossible, but these circumstances are so extreme I will not address here.

People go out of their way for each other; they pool resources to empower each other; they put family and the needs of family ahead of the needs and the demands of those outside the family. There are exceptions and there are friends who become family.

Then, there are family members and friends who will milk others dry. They should not be enabled.

Safety and protection can be found and trusted in a family. Secrets, weaknesses, vulnerabilities are safe in the sacred circle of the family. People can be strong and weak and brave and afraid without fear of exposure.

Of course there are secrets that should not be safe and expressions of weakness that should be exposed but again, these situations are so extreme I will not address then here.

• Regular phone calls and frequent visits. Everyone likes to be in the loop with the people we love. If you’re too busy as an adult to make regular contact with your parents, you are too busy. Something about your life probably needs re-assessment.

• Room for your parent to think and to speak and to tell stories, you, the adult son or daughter, may well have heard a thousand times. Stories are obviously a powerful link to past and serve to re-ignite the soul. Your parents’ repeated telling of the same stories are providing a valuable service.

• Opportunities to be with your children. While a grandchild is not a commodity to be passed around, he or she is the promise of hope to a grandparent. As much contact as possible should be encouraged. Of course there are exceptions. If your parents are relatively sane and sober (when your child is present) then there is much to be gained from encouraging contact.

• Hearty celebrations of milestones. Ignoring or forgetting a parent’s birthday is the same for some as ignoring the parent. If your parents’ birthdays are something you regularly forget there’s something deeper going on with you that may need your attention.

• An honest person; one who lives with a clear conscience
• A growing person; one who learns from mistakes
• A kind person; one who is aware of the needs of others
• A loving person; one who loves without being possessive or jealous
• An educated person; one who is aware of the world and its fabulous beauty
• A forgiving person; one who initiates forgiveness even when it is not necessarily deserved
• An outgoing person; one for whom no one needs to remain a stranger
• A self-starting person; one who seizes opportunities, especially those that enhance the common good
• A reflective person; one who examines his of her life and makes necessary changes
• A well-mannered person; one who knows how to treat others, even those who can do nothing in return.

Healthy people employ healthy boundaries. They are able to see the distinction between themselves and others. They know people require space and separation as well as togetherness and connection in order to function well.

Healthy people have a sense of direction. They plan a future and watch it unfold with a sense of excitement and expectancy.

Healthy people offer others a high degree of cooperation. They can work toward declared goals both alone and with others depending on the needs or task at hand.

Healthy people are unafraid to express their thoughts while also aware that everything they think doesn’t have to be expressed.

Healthy people can lead others and follow. They are not fixated on hierarchy or titles. They want the equipped or qualified person to do a job despite rank or the lack of it.

Unhealthy people are invasive, entitled, dismissive of legitimate authority, and constantly threaten to “go to the top” if things don’t go their way. They are injustice collectors; they are easily offended and easily bruised. They hold grudges and are slow to forgive. They crave attention – positive or negative. They work hard at derailing happy and productive people.

The challenge remains: bring your healthiest self to work everyday.

On this particular day may you….

• Be unafraid, unafraid to dream great dreams for your life and to work every day at making it exceptional. World changing and exceptional people do not wake up one day and discover they are key figures in the betterment of the world. They work at it every day. They work at it for many years before it becomes a reality. They design blueprints that stretch years ahead.

• Be adventurous and embark on some new area of discovery, be it some area of personal research or on some literal journey to a new place. May you go somewhere you have heretofore been unafraid to venture. In so doing, may you find some degree of fulfillment or even of healing, healing you may have not known you needed.

• Love in ways you have not loved before. May you reach out in fresh ways to those whom you have loved for years in ways that surprise you and others. May you also find love for the stranger, the men or women whom you have previously excluded from your social circles, the “them” and “those people” – may they hear from you (and from me) in ways none of us expect.

Building blocks that will bring powerful shifts to your life

• Deliberately become the most generous person you know. This is not about possessing wealth.
• Hold everything you own with an open hand. Share, just as you learned as a five-year-old.
• Empower others. You lose nothing when you help others to gain.
• Say “yes” more than “no” to the adventures that come your way (Ed Friedman) although it’s necessary to learn how and when to say a firm “no.”
• Develop the capacity to “see beyond” the limitations set by your family history, your nationality, and your faith story. (Also Friedman)
• Learn to live within your means. In other words, make more money than you spend.
• Determine to embody forgiveness, freedom, and grace for all who will repeatedly and naturally attempt to sabotage you. You will meet more and more resistance as you become more and more intentional about your choices.
• Acknowledge and embrace your inevitable dark side. Try to understand it and accept it so that it will not try to take you by surprise in response to your denial of its presence.
• Be gentle on yourself as you would with a treasured loved-one. After all, you are all you’ve got.

Adolescent boys can be very unkind to girls.

Teach your sons to stop and your daughters to expose it.

I well know girls can also be unkind, but the following is to parents with girls. Your feedback and additions are welcome:

• Listen for what your daughter is NOT saying. I know this is tough but what she is not telling you will reveal reams about her experience. No – I am not trying to be obscure.

• Affirm your daughter when she advocates for those she considers victims and ask her about if there are ways she may need someone to advocate for her.

• If she is being victimized she may not immediately inform, she may believe she has to tough it out. Like you did when she was younger and learning to cross a street, you may have to assure her that it is safe to speak even though it may be scary.

• Encourage your daughter to show up, stand up, and speak up for herself and that doing so is essential and not selfish. Literally applaud her when she does.

• Repeatedly assure your daughter that you are the only parent she will ever need, that it is safe for her to test everything about life by testing it with you.