There are helpful and simple (bit not easy) ways to avoid “relationship erosion”: 

Let’s imagine you are facing a difficult meeting or discussion, from intimate to casual, formal to informal. 

Decide how you will be, not how others will be, or how you wish you could be, decide how you will be(have). This takes time before the meeting where you give deep thought to how you will be (behave) and assess how you have already behaved and how your behavior has perhaps played a role in the problems you are facing. 

If you refuse to plan and prepare, you are likely to fall into old traps and habitual reactivity which will only prove to erode your situation further. If you prepare well and you “hold onto yourself” in the meeting it is very likely you will be delighted with the results. 

As you plan, resist all balme, all finger-pointing, all rehashing the past, no matter how justified or convenient it may be to do so. 

Assess how it is that you got yourself into this situation (whatever it is) and work from there. Blame and finger-pointing results in others being defensive, an unhelpful stance when you want to build rather than destroy relationships.

Remind yourself that you are the common denominator in all of your relationships.

I resist stating the obvious but you are much more than meets the eye.

We just are.

The iceberg metaphor is true for us all. There is a lot more going on beneath the surface of our lives than others, and even we ourselves, are able to see, let alone understand.

Sometimes the “iceberg” may feel like a volcano and your behavior is curt or erratic and you are short-tempered. Sometimes the “iceberg” is a secure yacht on a very calm ocean and you are friendly and relaxed and a model of kindness.  

It may be comforting (or discomforting) to know we are each a mass of compounded generational history perched on mountains of successes, failures, flaws, aspirations, losses and disappointments. Beneath the surface are jostling urges and surging tides coming from three or more generations of unresolved family conflict.

You are probably much more capable than you sometimes reveal. You are probably more loving and kind than some circumstances reveal you to be. There are things you’d like to say under some circumstances and pressures but you hold your tongue, cautious for how what you’d really like to say will be received or perceived – but you can’t really explain your silence.

“Don’t mess with my ‘iceberg,’” may be all the explanation you need.

Respect the grieving

The power of grief should never be downplayed or underestimated. Severe loss can leave a person in a state of shock for years and he or she may never recover if recovery means returning to the way things were before the loss.

• It is unwise to suggest a person move on, get over it, or has had enough time to grieve.

• Listening is useful and helpful and can provide tremendous support even if very few words are exchanged.

• Time passed does not equal grief diminished. A loss endured years ago can seem to rise up out of nowhere and hit a person afresh as if the event just occurred. It is as if grief is time-locked, living within the griever, and has a life and power of its own.

• A person who has grieved for years is probably an expert at understanding the grief process. Understanding does not mean the griever is on top of it. Insight and understanding do not equate to completion or the diminishing of the power of loss.

• Attempts at logic do not usually provide comfort. Grief escapes and logic.

• The “experienced” griever (who wants that title?) will often develop the ability to detect inner-rhythms of grief and know which days will be better than others.

When Nathanael turned eleven I saw very clearly the power that comes in a good, honest, appropriate, thank you. 

Having gone a little over-the-top for his big day, we were exhausted. But, the day had finally ended and the last of the guest-children was out of my hair and my sons were in their rooms and almost asleep and I was sitting downstairs taking stock of a full, satisfying day when I heard the birthday boy – each boy has very distinctive sound trails – coming down the stairs. 

Ever so quietly, almost sheepishly, he put his head around the door.

“Thanks, Dad,” he said, “thanks for an awesome day.”

We hugged. 

My heart burst. 

While I have diligently taught my children to express gratitude, I was not waiting to be thanked. I had simply done what dads do for their children’s birthdays. 

His acknowledgement hit something deeply within me. 

While it became very obvious that I needed my eleven-year-old son’s recognition for a job well done, something deeper was going on within me. 

I knew what it was. 

He, at 11, had done what I was unable to do until I was very, very much older: acknowledge my dad, look him in the eye, throw my arms around him and express my thanks to him for all he had done.

“Dad, where are you?” 

Every morning for years these were the first words out of my older son’s mouth.

“Dad, scratch my back and sing,” was my younger son’s oft-repeated goodnight ritual. 

By this time we’d moved out of the beautiful baby days. 

With all the tween years involved, it was easy to forget the baby years, the work, the mountains of laundry. 

It is easy to forget the sleepless nights.

But, tucked into the mundane and the repetitive, are things so miraculous that a middle of the night baby moments can transform into holy encounters. 

Our lives together were, and are, lessons of love, moments of kindness, volumes of vulnerability, sometimes encountered so powerfully and painfully they could only have come from the heart and mind of the Divine.

“I’m exactly where I was when you said goodnight. I have hardly moved.”

“No, I did not sing only two verses. I sang all three. But you were asleep by then.” 

When the washing machine dies and the dog jumps the snowy fence to explore the greater neighborhood and one son has a splinter in his finger and the other is hungry and needs his nappy (diaper) changed and the bills are mounting in a stack of unopened mail, it’s easy to lose sight of the trail of miracles that come with every baby.

I have gotten my fair share of letters asking about parenting only to discover the “baby” to whom the letter refers is a 40-something year-old man! 

I know this is an unpopular thought but I repeat, parenting ends. 

Somewhere around 17 to 20 it’s done. 

Parents have two decades to train children for great lives, to face challenges, love others, and to serve their communities. 

This is sufficient time to complete such training if it begins in the parents’ hearts and heads long before the child is born and is implemented immediately after the child is born. I do not mean that you are no longer his or her parent – that you will always be – but the function of parenting on your part, ends. Of course you can guide and assist and encourage and support but if it is not complete in 20 years it’s unlikely it will ever end.

He will “always be my baby” if you allow it and treat him like one.

Actively teach your children from as young as possible to be independent of you.

“The day will come when you can do all this (cooking, cleaning, laundry, finances, deciding, planning, loving others) on your own,” and, “you don’t need me nearly as much as you think you do,” and “look at how capable you are,” are wonderful things to tell your children.

TheAfterSermon – week 10:

Grief is a crazy companion, sometimes comforting, even refreshing.

Then, it will rip you apart.

When preoccupied, it can go away briefly, go into hiding and you can live, ever so briefly, as if you have never lost anyone or anything.

Then, out of nowhere, it will hit like a ton of bricks, playing its twisted game of hide-and-seek.

Believe it or not, grief has your best interests at heart.

It will do its work to revive yours, as battered and broken as your heart may be.

Let grief do its work as best you are able: its painful, beautiful, inner work. Allow it free-range. Full access. As it does its slow, deliberate, detailed work, you will continue to become even more beautiful than you already are.

That’s what it does: it turns hurting people into human agents of incredible understanding and grace – if you let it.

Your heart may be broken.

Your life may feel hopeless, but grief will ultimately deliver you to a hopeful destination and hope and courage will be yours again.

If you let it.

Try to get out of grief’s way. Allow silence. Allow yourself stop-and-think time. Allow yourself to remember. Play the music that may be painful to hear. Go to the places you are avoiding. Look at pictures, play the saved voicemails.

Watch the home movies.

Do these things when you are ready to do them.

You will know better than anyone when you are ready.

You may fall apart at first when you venture into the things you have been avoiding, but it is all part of getting ready to fall together.

Allow yourself speak-to-a-trusted-friend time.

Cry, write, read. Be angry if necessary.

Grief labors long over its ever-incomplete healing work.

Accommodation is possible. A full life is possible. But, keep in mind, the vacuum left by some loss is never filled, some losses are beyond healing.

It is natural to want to rush grief and to want all pain to be gone.

Who cannot want pain to be gone?

But, it is a crazy and unruly companion.

Grief breaks out at the most unexpected times.

Rushing grief, hurrying its work, will lodge pain even deeper into the soul only to later manifest as some unwanted reaction or unfamiliar emotion.

No matter how recent or distant your loss, welcome the tears.

Let grief’s first agents, first responders, flow.

“Time heals,” clangs the cliche.

Time doesn’t heal, not usually, not by itself. Time is time.

Time passed is not grief diminished.

There are some losses that are never “healed.”

Some never find “closure.”

This does not mean survivors cannot live full, productive, beautiful lives.

Warmth, two listening ears, and hot cups of tea accompanied by face-to-face-no-phones hours may be the most powerful gifts a person can offer one who has suffered.

It is ridiculous to approach a grieving person with a step-by-step generic packaged get-over-your-grief formula.

“What shall I do with this grief?” she asked, having lost so much, one thing on top of another, more than enough loss for many in a lifetime.

You shall sit with it.

Embrace it.

“What shall I do with the pain, the gaping hole in my chest, a wound in my soul, my very being?” he asks after losing his life-partner.

As difficult as that may sound, you will let it do its work.

You will go into survival-mode. Operate on automatic.

Auto-pilot.

Then, you will arrange your life around it, at least for a while.

“But, I do not want this, the anguish, this disorientation.”

Nobody does.

It is always an uninvited guest.

Crazy, unruly grief will do its work and you will emerge as gold.

You will know remarkable intuition and offer presence to others in ways now unimagined despite it being a path that you’d never have chosen.

The power of grief should never be downplayed or underestimated.

Grief is a private journey.

Don’t mess with it, not in yourself or in others.

It’s a crazy, unruly, companion.

Differentiation of Self – I will come to your group, church, organization to Listen and Hear and Teach — contact me if you think I may be of some help to you in your journey or crises.

Differentiation of Self — 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 your self AND everyone in your circle of influence.

Differentiation of Self 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 whom 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 necessarily include a former spouse or former in-laws or any situation regarding a romance gone sour — although it might.

6. Being able to declare clearly what I need and requesting help from others without overly 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. It’s understanding that some needs may not ever be met in the manner we may prefer or choose, or at all.

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 other people (or myself) 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.)

There are a number of ways to improve your family relationships. But, before you know what needs improving I’d suggest you do your research. 

At least for a few weeks watch for family patterns. You may think you know all about all the patterns but I would suggest you probably do not. Watch who is lazy (under-performs, is apparently helpless) when it comes to relationships and who works too hard (over-performs). You may also notice that such people tend to find each other and can dance this way for years. Notice where and how you over and under-perform. There is no need to comment. Watch, learn, and think.

Assess how you can more pointedly show up for yourself, self advocate, shape your own behavior within all your many contexts (home, work, social settings). I am not promoting selfishness but self-awareness. So, watch yourself. Become an expert in your behavior. Abdicate the role of being the expert in the behavior of all other family members and friends. Don’t do this dangerous work for them.

While researching, think about how you will know if things are improving so you will be able to identify successes. Focus on your thinking rather than feelings. You will think and behave yourself into new ways of feeling, not the reverse.

“It’s not what happens to you but how you respond to what happens to you that really makes the difference,” has become somewhat of a cliche.  

The axiom holds some truth. 

Like all bumper stickers and one-liners it doesn’t quite capture the whole truth or the complexity of the human experience. 

To the suffering it can be heard as judgment, as condemnation.

Some things that happen to people are so devastating, so vile, so out of left field, so horrible and unpredictable, that they need considerable space to grieve, to reorient themselves, to find their feet, let alone get back on their feet. 

People hit with heartbreak or significant loss or an act of violence need time, lots of it, to figure out who they are in their new reality and they may indeed not have the energy or the strength to know how to respond to what has happened to them. 

In the wake of devastating events people yearn for shoulders to cry on, arms to hug them, ears to hear them for as long as they deem necessary. How we respond to what happens to us may make all the difference in the world but the response itself may take years.