Tuesday, February 24, 2009

You can say that again

From one of the bulletin board sites I read regularly came this post:

"I cannot love a person out of their life lessons ... they cannot love me out of mine either!

We all learn what we learn along the way and maybe, just maybe,
that is exactly howthe Universe plans for us to learn, slowly, intensely, and individually."

Smacks a punch, hm?

From another one:
"You begin and end somewhere and I begin and end somewhere else. Healthy boundaries are the foundation to healthy relationships. Don’t take on what you don’t own. Let others be responsible for what they are responsible for."

And also this one:
" If nothing changes, nothing changes. If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. In order for things to change, you must change things."

The last two are from Getting Past Your Past, a blog I've read mostly daily for months. While I am not, thank god, in an abusive relationship nor have ever been, my daughters have been. I've shared some of these writings with them from time to time, although I also realize that you don't hear and see until you are ready to hear and see. But mostly I read because the lessons are good ones for any relationship.

I'm trying to learn to hold my tongue these days rather than instruct/inform/lecture/berate -- which, these posts remind me -- is pretty useless when you're dealing with anyone, sick or not. Sometimes silence is indeed golden -- something I forget too many times.

This is one of my life lessons: to learn to be speech-less sometimes, to remember that all the talk in the world will not effect change if the person doesn't want to/isn't ready to change.

All I can do is take care of MY business, to establish boundaries I need.

I'm grateful for the Internet and the lessons that are out there on so many wonderful sites, just waiting for us to find them, like books in a library. We teach each other by our stories, we encourage each other with subject-oriented bulletin boards. We are not alone in our experiences, or in our pain. That is important to remember.

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