Love can be expressed in a vast variety of ways but it never hides behind some things:

Jealousy. Some think authentic love naturally involves elements of jealousy. Quite the contrary. Love celebrates freedom and encourages the loved to explore and enjoy many and diverse relationships.

Control. Perhaps this is Jealousy’s first cousin. Love and control cannot live within the same relationship and it is never an indication of love. Some claim they control others for their own good. This is nonsense. Healthy adults exercise no control over other healthy adults and when they do it is no indication of love.

Swearing, cruelty, and temper tantrums. These are never an indication of love. Some say screaming and the harshness show how much a person cares. Nonsense. Love always behaves like love.

Manipulation, domination, and intimidation. A loving person will not resort to these measures and will certainly stop them in their tracks once they begin to reveal their devious ways. Pushing and pulling others with a hidden agenda reeks of the antithesis of love.

Gifts we can offer those we love that cost everything and nothing all at the same time

• Listening – the willingness to listen without waiting to speak and without formulating a response or without re-arranging what we hear into something we may prefer to hear.

• Time – the willingness to schedule uninterrupted time together.

• Freedom – the willingness to resist taking or assuming control.

• Room for change – the willingness to allow those whom we love the freedom to change, the freedom to make errors, the freedom to be growing in ways we might not predict or expect.

• Thinking out loud – the willingness to allow those whom we love to speak things out as an exercise in exploring and planning.

• The possibility of failure – to be willing to encourage those whom we love to express new ideas and try new experiences with the understanding that they may not work.

• Room to apologize and to make things right – to offer those whom we love the space to express regret without recrimination or an attitude that says “I told you so.”

• Room even to “grow away” – some things the people whom we most love have to learn things alone and without us.

The Mercury / Tuesday

Please, do not make such a drastic and permanent decision in your attempt to solve the problems you face or to alleviate the doom you feel.

Your actions will send your family reeling. They will be retelling of your death for decades as they attempt to piece together the mystery of why you chose to take your own life. Alternatively, your action may shock them into generations of silence, as they fail to resolve how you decided on an act so final. More important, much more important, you will miss your fabulous future and deny yourself the opportunity to enjoy all of life’s challenges and blessings.

You are loved – even though this may not be your immediate experience. And, you will be loved, even long after those you leave here will struggle to remember the sound of your voice.

There is a way through your overwhelming experience that does not involve self-harm. Always. I know it all now feels pointless. It’s not. There are adults and friends who can and will assist you. There are better days ahead for you even if everything feels impossible.

Please, make the slightest turn from the foreboding darkness desiring to envelop you. Edge toward a positive act, a miniscule movement toward a caring, trusted friend or adult. Whisper, or scream that you need help.

* There seems to be an increase in suicide among early teenage boys and girls in my city. Perhaps this will dissuade one such child in yours.

The Mercury – Thursday

Family Emotional Health is on a continuum. All families fall somewhere between remarkable wellness on one end and debilitating dysfunction on the other.

Here are few of several measures:

Healthy families talk about anything and everything: love, sex, justice, peace, pollution, religion, literature, death, dying, money, and a lot more – there are no “no-go” areas. People talk as well as listen – people get to freely agree and disagree – and everyone gets a turn at some point.

“We need to talk,” is celebrated.

Unhealthy families, if they talk, the conversation is scripted. Topics to avoid are known even though they are probably not clearly defined as “no-go” topics. People just know not to “go there.”

“We need to talk,” fills family members with apprehension and fear.

Healthy families are unpredictable – they can change directions in a minute, seize unexpected fun opportunities, and are unafraid of the unknown, the unexpected. They frequently do daring things – the things less healthy families often consider irresponsible.

The more a family leans toward dysfunction, the more it craves certainty, predictable routine, for things to be under-control, for things to go to plan. Fun is organized; it’s planned, if it is embraced at all.

Healthy families embrace non-conformity. Unhealthy families interpret it as betrayal.

I love the topic of anxiety and reading about it and writing about it. Please, don’t confuse it with mere worry – although of course worrying is part of it. While simplistic, situational anxiety is the reason we use seat belts, the chronically anxious are strapped in, car or no car.

Anxiety is a killer – it kills joy, ambition, truth, and vision. When people are anxious they cannot see, think, hear, or communicate with any reliable sense of accuracy.

Anxiety can lead people down rabbit trials in search of reducing their anxieties only find it spiked by new and unexpected sources.

Anxiety let loose makes victims of as many people in the circle of influence as possible. It’s contagious.

Chronic anxiety is not usually reduced by making different choices or decisions but by understanding and negotiating loyalties – visible and invisible.

While freeze, flight, and fight are often the response to chronic anxiety; distorted protecting and fused caring are both its product too.

So, what may the chronically anxious do?

Connect as deeply and appropriately as possible with family, take time to search for the source, and find a small community of supportive friends who are unafraid to set their boundaries and join you in a journey of growth.