This is not some proud arrogant assertion – unless it is. Self-declared, in humility, it is the truth and key to taking responsibility for whatever we are called to face.
“I can learn new things, helpful things, and I can unlearn old things, things unhelpful to others and to me.”
This is key when we find ourselves repeating unwanted behaviors or we find ourselves lost in familiar, uncomfortable ruts.
“No matter what happens I will not return evil for evil or inhabit a world of payback.”
Energy spent playing tit-for-tat or payback is far better used more creatively no matter how tempting the desire for retribution.
“Under all circumstances I get to decide what kind of person I want to be.”
This essential self-talk question removes all others from the equations and demands we face ourselves.
“The issue is hardly ever another person or group of people. I have to ask myself what my role is in all the dilemmas I face.”
The common denominator in all of my relationships and entanglements is me. What do I need to do differently next time?
If you do not tell people who you are they will decide who you are. Which do you want? Your version or theirs? Show up. Speak up. Advocate for yourself – always. This is your thoroughly human, spiritual, adult privilege and responsibility. The healthy people in your spheres of family, friendships, faith, and workplace will endorse and honor this unique human joy that is yours and be similarly showing up and speaking up and advocating for themselves – which will, of course, get your support.
Do your part in reducing guesswork (withholding needed information) and crossovers (speaking for other adults rather than for yourself) and unnecessary entanglements (perpetuating gossip or “juicy” news or tidbits about others) in all of your relationships in all of the many spheres of your life. Clarity now – today – reduces future confusions and unnecessary misunderstandings.
Look for opportunities to “see” others for who and what they really are. FInd opportunities to empower others to achieve their dreams and goals. Neither activity on your part can be rushed. Seeing and listening to both what is said and not said takes time, determination. The rewards are mutually mind-blowing for those whom you will empower and the person who gets behind others and their endeavors.
How is your heart? What, where is the Human Heart? What are you putting your heart into? Are you loving life and others and yourself and God with all of your heart?
Clearly, I am not referring to the physical beating organ in our chests, as powerful, necessary, and as crucial as each of ours is. The heart, as I’m using the word here, is a metaphor. The seat of our emotions. The inner place where the mind or intellect, spirit, soul, meet. It’s our Bold Essence, the cross section of mind and body and spirit and soul – this is the heart. The core. The center. Where the Self begins.
And, it can be broken. And, it can be shattered. And, it can be healed. Taking care of your heart is about a lot more than eating well and watching your cholesterol or engaging in regular exercise. Our hearts can go from bruised or broken to bold and then onto being even more beautiful than they already are. Your heart may have been broken, you may have been betrayed or even brutalized, but you will survive, you will rise up, you will love and be loved again. Love your heart – it’s worth it.
It is my pleasure and joy to near Geneva in Switzerland this week where I will teach Family Systems theory and practice. Over our five days together I hope to:
Cover the history and the development of The Genogram. This is a drawing of any client’s family relationships covering at least three generations. The genogram is a predictive tool revealing what’s likely to occur within a family by seeing what’s set in motion by preceding generations. Each student will complete his or her Genogram.
Demonstrate how all family members are deeply connected to all other family members and how the connections either nourish or drain individuals and the entire network.
Demonstrate how assuming personal responsibility for one’s life lessens the power of the negative (unwanted) themes driving our lives. Assuming an active healthy and engaged stance about our lives increases the likelihood of a healthier future if the past has offered tough and debilitating challenges.
While every class is unique and the material is designed for each group, my focus is always to encourage deep engagement from every person. As insights are shared the way opens for the group process to be at least as powerful as the content.
I saw something beautiful today, an expression of true leadership, at a crowded domestic airport restaurant.
The Springbok Rugby Captain, #SiyaKolisi the athlete who led the team to win the recent Rugby World Cup, sat facing away from the crowds, trying to have a peaceful breakfast.
I counted. Twenty five people of all ages — in groups and alone — asked for selfies, autographs, books to be signed, and for photographs with their children. He hugged, laughed, chatted, and gave time to people, especially the young lads wanting to engage. At one point fans began lining up.
The gentleman was a model of grace and kindness, expressing zero frustration or annoyance at the multiple interruptions to his breakfast and the phone calls he was apparently trying to make.
Kolisi was the perfect contrast to the baseball hall-of-fame star I witnessed chase a child away with “I don’t sign autographs” to a young man whose face I saw light up on seeing his hero.
Jennifer Arthur (my sister) – meets the Double back-to-back Springbok winning Rugby World Cup Captain.
Kindly contact Shirley@ShirleyWilliams.co.za in the if you desire to attend one of multiple events I’ll be participating in next week.
I hope you are doing well! I love watching your travels, reading your posts. I am curious if you could touch on one topic for me. It can be a post so others who are struggling can also read it.
Will you please put into perspective why someone my son’s personality and challenges tends to stay to himself and struggle with anxiety. He has lost 5 schoolmates to gun violence since 2020. One was a best friend (since they were 3) who lived across the street from us until his death. Since that death, my son has been more angry, sad, irritated with me and one of his brothers. He is not hateful, just different. He also gave up competitive sport after his friend’s death. He still hugs, loves, smiles, but something is gone from inside him. You know my son and that’s why I am asking you. As a mom, I am so sad.
This is the first time I am sharing this.
Thanks.
Name withheld
Dear Mother
Yes. I know your son. And, I know you.
I grieve reading about the extent of your loss; your family’s loss, and specifically your son’s multiple losses.
I can only imagine the impact this has had on all of your caring, lovely family.
By nature, your now-adult son was/is a very private person, even though his athleticism placed him front and center of large crowds. I could be wrong but I think he was/is naturally shy despite the bravado required of his sport.
I recall his quest for academic successes and sports successes seemed to “push” him into arenas my hunch suggested he’d have rather avoided. You may also recall he was sometimes anxious about belonging and wanting really good grades.
I do.
That your son is not hateful after all he has witnessed and endured and has had to accept does not surprise me.
He very easily, readily, openly often expressed his love for his parents and brothers and extended family and is most unlikely to turn to hate.
There is not a hateful bone in his body.
Yet, I am not at all surprised he is sometimes “angry, sad, irritated” with those who are close to him. Youth funerals leave me the same way even when I read about them, let alone know the victims and he knew the multiple victims of gun violence well.
Loss has robbed all of you but he was/is closer to the young men – I think they are all male – now gone.
I know you embody the ultimate loving and caring mom and so I also know you give him a lot of room for his varying emotions, much privacy, and encouragement to engage about these deep matters on his terms.
Your son is a quiet fighter, one who loves his friends very deeply.
Although he never expressed this to me, or if he did I have forgotten, I think he was one to feel as if he was wanting and loving his friends more than his friends were seeking him.
The boy we all knew (usually loving and warm and full of life and humor and joy) will soon be the fully present grown-man-version of himself.
Nothing is gone or lost.
It is resting. Recovering. Re-juvinating.
Re-routing.
Like Jem, in the book your son read with me word-for-word in the classroom, despite all the trauma, his former and full self will return.
Ask him about that reference. I am sure he will remember.
By the way, I will meet with him at the drop of a hat if he’d find that useful.
Offer him my number.
By the way, thank you for being mom and present for so many, many young people as I know you are as you fulfill your role in your chosen career.
Before you judge others by looks or clothing or demeanor or attitude:
You do not know their story, the hardships faced, the history lived, the moves, the changes and challenges faced. You do not know the heartaches, the heartbreaks, the longings, the broken promises or the losses faced and endured.
Tread carefully.
You do not know what they are hiding in embarrassment and shame with the clothes they choose to wear or what statement they are trying to make. You do not know what violence they may have endured which appear to demand clothing themselves for rejection or protection.
Read the signs with empathy.
People tell their stories – voluntarily and involuntarily – with their every move and every word and every mood and every decision. They do the same with their language, responses, the anger they hide and the anger they display.
Read, see, hear, with compassion, or resist the urge to read at all.
————
Terry Angelos – best selling author of “White Trash” – and I will be in conversation about her work and what we can learn about ourselves and our families from her work and principles of Family Therapy. Please contact Shirley@ShirleyWilliams.co.za if you would like to attend.
While life as we know it is impossible without Divine Grace, Grace extended to all. I am particularly interested in the interpersonal grace we each can generously offer all other people, from intimates to total strangers.
Yes, we can be agents of grace.
I have seen it powerfully at work for many years.
It includes:
• Giving others a very wide berth, room to make mistakes, to be opinionated, to be socially clumsy, without my interference or my thinking, feeling I should offer my guidance, correction, or opinion.
• Extending “grace-in-reverse” by not allowing any person’s past errors, tough, dark, or even sordid history, to hinder my perceptions, my experience of who and what they are in the present. This acknowledges people really can grow and change.
• Allowing others to own their story and to tell it in their way, without interruption, without uninvited interpretation, and certainly without being “one-upped” by something from my own life, something usually bigger, stronger, better, or more dramatic.
• Forgiving from the outset, without necessarily receiving an apology or explanation, and for that forgiveness to be unconditional and complete.
• Exercising radical hospitality. This is embracing fully (not limited to a hug) others who are not like us!
How do I know about such grace?
It’s been offered to me, time and again. The challenge is to give it to others.
On days when I feel like a local adventure I drive for Uber. I have to believe there is something powerful at play when it comes to coincidences.
This week I picked up a passenger from an obscure petrol station in a busy truck stop. The gentleman headed for the front passenger door, which I have noticed, only South Africans and Australians tend to do. The rider revealed he’s from KZN, specifically Isipingo. I immediately practiced my limited Zulu with him and we are both taken aback by the serendipitous nature of our meeting. On the same day, hours later, another passenger informs me that he goes regularly to visit the elephants at Thula Thula Game Park in KZN — and spends a few days in Umhlanga on the way!
KZN’s own best selling author Terry Angelos and I will have a morning together where we talk about her memoir “White Trash.” We will discuss her powerful work and its themes of redemption and reconciliation. You are welcome to attend. Terry will talk about her book and I hope to show how Terry has unintentionally revealed several fundamental principles of Family Therapy, applicable to all families of all cultures. Join us please for this 3 hour morning session on May 11, 2024. Shirley@ShirleyWilliams.co.za has all the details.
When push comes to shove you and I have to decide:
– What kind of people do we want to be?
Our everyday responses to the most casual and humdrum interactions embody our answer to this question. How we treat those we serve and those who serve us is our character the litmus test. No exceptions.
– How will we manage our responses to challenging and tough situations?
Our responses and reactions when things do not go our way reveal much more about us than how we respond and behave when matters move in our favor. How we lose is more revealing of our character than how we win.
How will we allow immediate events and relationships to impact the future?
Who we bond with, and who we sever from, over issues large or small, important or petty, become moments of trajectory shift. Taken lightly, we may end up far removed from our initial goals.
– Will we take responsibility for ourselves or settle for blame and finger-pointing?
It’s easy to blame the government, the economy, changes in society for the way we are. A brief look around will reveal that there are very successful people who have found success in the very same contexts we share. These men and women prove that blame and finger-pointing will get us nowhere worth going.
difficultrelationships.com 