Category: love

Turning Towards

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“Know all the theories. Master all the techniques. But as you touch a human soul be just another human soul.” – Carl Jung

“Guess what?” Miss O says to me and when I reply, she says, “I love you.” It’s a little call and response that I started with her when she was about 4 years-old. But I stopped doing it. She asked me why the other day and I don’t know. Was it because Mr D got older and I didn’t want to leave him out? Or was it because she started to know what I was going to say every time?

These little bids for connection matter according to Drs John and Julie Gottman of the Gottman Institute. They are our ways of turning towards our loved ones and even though the Gottmans primarily focus on partner love relationships, I think it applies to children as well.

On a recent Unlocking Us podcast with Brené Brown, they were talking about their latest book, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection and Joy, and what caught my attention was how grounded in research their advice is. Not surprisingly since these are the psychologists and researchers who proved their ability to tell if relationships would last and be happy from just 15 minutes of observation with a 90% degree of accuracy.

They made the distinction between turning toward a bid of attention (responding or engaging when your partner says something like “look at that blue jay out the window”), turning away (ignoring) and turning against (responding with something like “why are you interrupting me?”).

In happy relationships, people turn toward their partner’s bids for attention 86% of the time, couples who were not successful only turn toward each other 33% of the time. John Gottman explained the result, “Couples who increase their turning toward wind up having more of a sense of humor about themselves when they are disagreeing with one another, when they are in conflict.”

As Brené Brown summarized “Turning toward gives us a sense of confidence about our togetherness.”

“Love is a practice. It’s more than a feeling. It’s an action. It’s something you do and not something that just happens to you and you need to give and get a daily dose to maintain a healthy and thriving relationship.”

The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection and Joy by John Gottman and Julie Gottman

The funny thing about when Miss O does the call and response with me lately is that she gets me almost every time. She says “Guess what?” and my busy head doesn’t anticipate the next part. It’s the surprise that breaks through the momentum of the day.

I can’t remember why I stopped this particular ritual but now that I’ve been reminded, I am delighted to start doing it again. Because what relationship doesn’t need to be grounded in connection and fun?

To Dance or Not to Dance?

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“We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.” – Japanese Proverb

The other day a friend and I were talking about a conflict that’s arisen in her multi-decades marriage. She’s taken up ballroom dancing and loves it. It engages her mind and body in a way that feels like something generative and renewing. She loves studying the movements and the thrill of putting it all together.

Her husband doesn’t have any interest in doing it with her but also has a problem with her dancing with other partners. At times the thought of her dancing with someone else makes him feel queasy. He wants her to quit.

Before I continue, I must interject that these are both very smart, well-intended, committed and gracious people. This particular conflict occurs amidst the backdrop of a loving marriage, not as a crack in something that is already falling apart.

As my friend has progressed with ballroom dancing, she’s learned a great deal – but there have also been injuries that come with learning something new and moving in different ways (usually minor). Every time she has an injury, she wonders if this is a sign that she should quit or if she is learning to push through adversity. And every time it renews the conflict in her marriage. To push through both an injury and the resistance of having her husband against the idea is more than twice as hard but the idea of her hanging up her dancing shoes makes her feel sad and a little robbed of joy.

This is where things become muddy for me. First as someone who has been single for over a decade, I am sorely out of practice at compromise. But mostly because it seems to me that this conversation, and maybe most conversations where we can’t be supportive of what someone else wants to pursue with good intentions, are about something else. Unresolved conflict, old stories, wounds that haven’t healed, insecurity?

When I look at the situation, I can see the ripple effect that comes from one person forcing another to quit something they love. But it’s of course far more complex with that when you have more than two decades of history. It seems like my friend and her husband are already dancing but somehow have gotten out of sync.

So how do they find the wisdom to get back in step?

(featured photo from Pexels)

Our First Team

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“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. ‘Pooh!’ he whispered. ‘Yes, Piglet?’ ‘Nothing’ said Piglet taking Pooh’s paw, ‘I just wanted to be sure of you.'” – A.A. Milne

After I landed at the airport on Friday night, I received a text from my nanny as I was making my way home:

“Lessons of the week:

  1. Big sisters make the world go round
  2. You can’t out-bargain a 3-year-old
  3. Sometimes you just gotta go out in your underwear”

Quite frankly, I was impressed that she was able to get Mr. D to go out in underwear when he has more often than not opted for the full on naked this summer.

And then she expanded on the role that Miss O played during the week.

“I’m just so thankful for and impressed by [Miss O]! There were some really emotional moments with [Mr. D] and she was there for a hug whenever he needed it! She helped me find things around the house, helped me interpret some of his words, and has a true talent for knowing exactly where Bunbun [D’s beloved stuffy] is at all times.”

It made me think of my family of origin. I have an older brother who always made me laugh and cherished me. And I had an older sister that was angry that I came along and was jealous of the easy way I rolled through life.

It seems to me that siblings are the first team that we join in life. Not surprisingly, I was delighted to be on my brother’s team when we were growing up. These days we don’t talk all the time – or even all that often. But if I need to feel better about something incomprehensible, no one can match the comfort I get from my brother.

And if I want to know how to do something, I watch my big brother.

When I don’t understand how the world works, the person I listen most to is my big brother.

He’s like a huge filter of the information I take in as if his context provides me a starting point of where I need to go next.

In my business, I frequently help companies turn data into information. That is to say, there is often too many sources of content and not enough time for workers to verify them. For instance, there may be so many versions of the company background sales presentation, that a new employee may not understand which one to use when her boss tells her to start with that. So I help build systems that tell people which content is trustworthy.

I suspect our older siblings are like that – the systems that help us to know where to start. Whether we learn to trust what they say or to do the opposite of what they say, either way they are a reference point. And when they are trustworthy sources, we have an advantage of using them to help us read the world.

I don’t always listen to my brother, agree with him or even talk with him – but I am forever attuned to taking cues from him. And I suspect little D is growing up to do the same with his sister.

When Mr D was first walking, Miss O decided to train him to give her hugs on command. She’d clap her hands and then yell “hug” and he’d come running (some of the time). When I came home after being away last week, it was like that bond they’ve been building for three years was that much stronger. I’m so grateful not only for the team I have with my brother, but that my kids are building their own team.

How do you feel about your siblings?

If you want to see a video of Miss O training D to give hugs, check out my instagram @wynneleon

I’ve also written about the split in my family of origin because I’ve come to see my older sister’s suffering as one that started when we were young as a feeling of not belonging. More on that at Forgiveness or Letting Go?

Monday Mourning

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“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever.” – Paulo Coehlo

The other day I needed to drop off something at the church where my dad last served as senior pastor. It’s also where his ashes are interred so I stopped by the Memorial Garden and put my hand on his stone. Even now, almost eight years after his sudden death in a bicycle accident, tears immediately sprung to my eyes as I imagined all the things I want to talk with him about and even heard his answers down in my bones.

After I’d been standing there for a couple of minutes, someone that knew my dad and knows me walked by. She simply whispered, “Beautiful picture” as she passed.

I’ve been thinking about that moment as I’ve watched the celebration of Queen Elizabeth II. Grief for someone who has done life well or is touched our lives significantly has its moments of being so beautiful. It celebrates both our relationship with them as well as what they did well in life. For me processing my grief means that I can start to distill the most important lessons I learned from those I’ve lost.

Trying to get a perspective on the huge topic of grief, I turned to Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown. She quotes the work of The Center for Complicated Grief at Columbia on their definitions of grief which include both acute grief, which marks the initial period after a loss, and integrated grief.

Integrated grief is the result of adaptation to the loss. When a person adapts to a loss grief is not over. Instead, thoughts, feelings and behaviors related to their loss are integrated in ways that allow them to remember and honor the person who died. Grief finds a place in their life.

The Center for Complicated Grief

Specific to my dad, I feel as if the longer he’s gone, the more I embody him. It’s as if I relied on him as a source of energy and wisdom for all those years he was alive and now that I don’t have him to do it in person, I’ve had to become that energy source. There are also others who I’ve grieved and in that process have learned the lessons of what not to become so it’s worked both ways.

Despite that integrating, I still leak tears when I talk to my dad. And also ache for those going through acute grief in all those rending and earth-shattering emotions.  We stand on the shoulders on those who went before us – may we remember all their lessons, good and bad, and honor them in those beautiful still moments.

The Blossom of a Distant Crush

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“There is no remedy for love but to love more.” – Henry David Thoreau

When my friend Mindy got married over 20 years ago, I remember her remarking that she felt like finding her person freed up a space in her brain for other things.

It was an interesting observation but one I hadn’t thought about in great depth until recently when out of the blue someone I had a distant crush on sent me a beautiful email. In the one gesture, distant crush blossomed into a romantic possibility.

I haven’t spent much time actively dating since I decided to have kids on my own. In these seven years, I’ve had that space in my brain, as Mindy calls it, free to focus on taking care of these kids and more or less just cruising along getting things done.

So I’m a little shocked to remember all the space that having a little romance takes up in life, of which only a small portion is actually consumed by the lovely time spent talking to him.

First, I have emotions all over the place – excitement, fear, expectancy, impatience. They cycle through my day creating waves (often of elation and joy) in what to used to be a pretty calm (mostly happy) sea.

Second, I’ve spent all sorts of time making a music playlist called “Thinking of You” and listening to it instead of the podcasts and books I used to so efficiently consume. Granted, a lot of my podcasts have been on summer break so there’s that but to match my mood, all I want to listen to is The Cure, Cold Play, Leonard Cohen and so on.

Third, I wake up in the middle of the night now with my brain racing to think about what’s next, the last conversation we had or to wonder about all sorts of things I can’t control. I think about The Hot Goddess’s latest brilliantly funny snarky pie chart about communication in midlife dating and wish I had her sense of humor about all this. Or The Goddess Attainable’s list of Zen she’s found from dating disappointments and wonder if I can find my Zen again.

All I can say is that this makes for a very rich meditation practice. Finding the space beneath all the energy and excitement where the river of life still flows and will carry me regardless of what is to come seems both harder to do these days but also more important.

I’m also discovering that it doesn’t matter how old you are, the intensity of new possibility is electrifying. I might have lost that space in my brain but I’ve opened wide a space in my heart where possibility roams free.

(Quote from Mary of the delightful Awakening Wonders blog, featured photo is mine)

Love No-Matter-What

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“Love is God’s religion.” – Rumi

A couple of days ago, Miss O and I had a mother/daughter day of rock climbing at the climbing gym. As we were buying our after-climbing lunch at the neighborhood grocery story, Miss O dropped the glass bottle of soda she was carrying and it shattered right near the check-out lines.

Trying to ease her embarrassment and horror, I told her that it was okay. She hissed back, “It is not okay. Have you ever dropped something like that?”

And I replied, “Only all the time.”

Which is a phrase I picked up from a recent Ten Percent Happier podcast with Father Gregory Boyle . In it he suggested the most expansive view of love and the power of love that I’ve ever heard. Days after listening to it — twice — I clearly am still trying to ingest the beautiful view of loving people no-matter-what that he presents. So it’s the topic of my post today for the Pointless Overthinking blog: Expansiveness.

That Tricky Little Thing Called Self-Love

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“Aging is the extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been.” – David Bowie

This spring Miss O went to a neighbor’s yard sale and came back proudly carrying a gift for me. She’d bought me a beautiful necklace, or so she thought. It was actually a lovely beaded chain for a pair of glasses. Which actually might be something that I need more than a necklace these days since I’ve reached the age of needing reading glasses most of the time.

So when I heard a podcast on Oprah’s Soul Sunday about aging well, I was inspired to write a post for Dr. Kathy Garland’s Navigating the Change blog called One Thing to Love.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Carried by Joy

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“Keep knocking, and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who’s there.” – Rumi

The other day I needed a photo of myself. I used the search feature of my phone to find pictures and although I wasn’t entirely shocked, I was a little surprised that it only came up with 3 of me by myself in 7 years. Virtually all of my pictures are with one or both of my children. And a few were with my beloved dog, Biscuit.

What I like to eat, where I want to go on vacation, what I do with my days – all these things have been hijacked in my life as a parent. I wouldn’t name this time as the marker of high personal happiness in my life – but wow, is it filled with joy. And it has been joy that has carried me through times when I’m sleep- deprived, achingly tired and spent. Which is why I wrote about happiness and joy in my Pointless Overthinking post this week: Good Mood of the Soul.

A Question of Love

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“The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.” – Margaret Atwood

Yesterday in the car, Miss O asked me who she should marry. Off the top of my head I said, someone who is kind, honest, funny and smart and then stopped to ask what she thought. She added, “Someone who is sweet and who likes to kiss.”

I started laughing and she explained that not all boys like to kiss which I’m sure is accurate in the 7-year-old world.

But it made me think of all the times I’ve wondered who I should love and the answer started with loving myself.

And it made me think of that WHO I should love is also an acronym for HOW I should love which I found is best with conviction, patience and kindness.

It reminded me that sometimes the answer to the question isn’t who I should love but am I brave enough to try.           

Finally, I landed on what is with age becoming clearer to me is that when I tap into the Oneness of things, I find it easier to love everyone, even the people that get my goat because when I look closely there is something about them that reminds me of me.

Miss O has about 20 years until she reaches the average age of brides in this country. I hope that in that time she learns a little about love, especially self-love, before she does.

What’s your list for what to look for in a partner? And your best advice about love?

(featured photo from Pexels)

A Kind Word

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“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” – Lao Tzu

I received a lovely email from someone this week that was incredibly kind and complimentary. It ended with the sentence, “So, I just thought that was the sort of thing a person ought to hear about themselves.”

Encouragement, defined by Oxford Languages, is “the action of giving someone, support, confidence and hope.” The word origin is from the French from en (make, put in) + corage (heart, daring) from which I draw that encourage could be “make daring” or “put in heart.”

Using either definition, I am always deeply grateful for the people who have and continue to cheer me along. It is a gift that takes just a sentence or two but has a ripple effect that lasts so much longer than a conversation.

I find encouragement to be one of the secret sauces for life – whether it’s in the giving or receiving, everything tastes better. And when properly nourished, it’s so much easier to share the love. In trying to express my gratitude for my friend’s kind words this week, I hope I’ve taken a little bit of heart and passed it on. May we all tell someone just the thing they ought to hear about themselves.

Have you given or received encouragement this week? What does it look like for you?

(featured photo from Pexels)