Kitty,

I’m sorry for the difficulties you’ve been struggling with, and can understand why the situation is confusing and confounding. Sometimes when we’re scared, we tend to make things about us that we don’t need to, and as we do we compromise our joy. Said differently, it seems you’re struggling a lot with unmet expectations, and while it is important for your needs to be met and your heart fulfilled, much of the pain you seem to be experiencing is needless.

For instance, you said his son needed to be taught manners. Or what? What made that your job? Being a step parent is difficult enough, and it is his dad’s and mom’s job to raise him. Why is that somehow about you? As a step parent, your authority is tenuous, difficult to maintain, and its no wonder why it has erupted into anger and violent confrontations. Its understandable that you wish to see the son act in a different way, but know that most step parents that choose to step in like you have, find similar results that youve found. Consider that love and understanding are the key, rather than discipline and rigid expectations. Said differently, he needs love and compassion to inspire him along his path. You can’t force a bud to bloom, nor a child to grow… especially as a step-mom.

Another example is the plate of cold food. After three marriages, consider that you’re lucky they fed you at all! 🙂 It often takes time to warm up to new in-laws, and if they are cold to you, consider being warm in response. If you take offence, make it about you, and shut them out of your heart, then all of you lose. If you let it go and share with them your warmth, then they’ll love you back with time.

With the daughter, it again seems like you’re making it all about you. This is natural when we’re uncomfortable, but inside you rests a heart that wishes to love all beings. Said differently, perhaps instead of “what is best for kitty”, you would find great joy if you begin to ask “What is best for her? How can this house be nourishing and loving to her?”

All of that being said, there is no reason that our life should be an endurance trial. If you’re being under nourished, with your husband ignoring your needs, its no wonder that these experiences are painful for you. However, if its just because these people around you are not behaving in the way you expect them to… well, respectfully my dear sister, that’s your own baggage to settle. People don’t owe you, and when we let ourselves suffer because they have their own free will and don’t act as we want them to, then we’re missing out on their beauty needlessly. Namaste.

With warmth,
Matt

Kitty,

Other people don’t have to fulfill our expectations. They have their life to live, their song to sing. Respectfully, it seems like you don’t have much compassion for many of the people around you. For most of us, this leads us to become under nourished. I’ll do my best to explain.

Consider the daughter for a moment. You seem to be saying “she has not earned my love, instead she has wounded me deeply.” Consider your husband for a moment. He didn’t want to go to the wedding because of various things, and so now you refuse to go and see his brother. These seem to be at the root of your difficulties. “I will give back after I receive” or “tit for tat” is a losing strategy. It is like a farmer who curses the soil for not bearing the right kind of fruit, so she refuses to plant more seeds. Then next season, the ground yields no fruit, and she curses again and refuses to give the soil her seeds. No wonder she’s hungry!

Kitty, you’re going about this all wrong. Love isn’t something that grows from being loved often, it grows from giving love often. So your step daughter is being shitty… give her love instead of judgment. So the husband doesn’t want to go to the wedding where he feels he has to pretend to be happy. So help him find his happiness! Right now, the vision that comes into my heart is a stubborn woman who refuses to smile until someone smiles at her. However, its your smile that brings joy to their faces! So instead of being the light of love in the world, you are letting time and opportunity slip through your fingers waiting for someone to show you the right type of kindness. Sister, that will get you nowhere.

I suggest a different strategy. Consider spending time wishing your husband, your step children, and your in-laws to be happy, to be well, and to be well loved. This will soften your heart, open your mind, and let you become the nourishment you’re seeking. Said differently, perhaps it is not others who are the problem, perhaps its those expectations. Let them go, and the joy that surrounds you will naturally inspire you and those around you. Then, the soil will produce many juicy and wonderful fruit. Right now, you’re so caught up in how others “should behave” that you’re drying up whatever chance you have of producing a garden! Said differently, when your heart is feeling empty and you’re seeking hope and fulfillment, its not the job of others to give that to you… its up to you, your heart, and the gentle girl the rests inside you, waiting to awaken. Namaste, sister, may you find joy and nourishment.

With warmth,
Matt

Kitty,

I’m sorry for the misery you’re experiencing, and hope you find your inner light and joyousness. Sometimes when the world around us seems harsh we get into a mentality that joy is unavailable to us. Please don’t despair, dear sister, there is always a path to joy.

Consider for a moment that many of us, when we are in pain, blame others for that pain. I am so sorry that you’re miserable, and I mean this with the intention of helping you find freedom, the misery arises on your side, from your perceptions and interpretations. If you imagine the Buddha, sitting in a quiet minded state of enlightened bliss, when the step kids or husband said things and did things, he wouldn’t lose his peace. Their words and actions would be seen, but they would never be about him, not taken personally. It can only happen this way when we are well nourished, secure in our own heart and mind.

Said differently, the problem isn’t in your husband, your step kids, your in laws… its that you’ve been nourishing yourself from them, and they are not a good food for you right now. It makes sense that youre lonely, and wish to be loved in a certain way. Unfortunately, most people are busy with their own lives, with their own issues… and so the love we receive is whatever scraps they have left. When we rely on others for love in that way, we are constantly disappointed, thirsty, and low. Instead, we can cultivate self love. Said differently, we can learn to grow loving warmth within our own heart independent of the situation we’re in.

Before you can really start that process though, you have to have some detachment from what is around you. Consider:

“I feel miserable because others treat me poorly.”

This makes us a victim of others behavior, and isn’t even true! Now consider:

“I feel miserable, and others seem to treat me poorly.”

It may seem like a small shift, but it makes a huge difference. It opens up the potential for:

“I feel joyous and happy, and others seem to treat me poorly.”

From there, the actions of others are about them… they might push and pull at your happiness, but they don’t cause or prevent it.

The goal or aim then becomes “how do I grow my happiness directly?” or “how do I deepen and strengthen my joy independently of my environment?” Kitty, my dear and distant sister, this is the question, the arising curiosity that moves us into bliss, peace and light. You have a choice, and always have, but many of your decisions thus far have deepened your misery instead of relieving it. Consider when your husband was on the phone. You turned up the TV to send him a message?!? That was dumb, petty, and manipulative. It is not good for us to push people around like that, and while his reaction was equally unskillful, it is not surprising. That being said, if his “punch” was one of a pattern of abuse, there is no reason for anyone to endure it. However, when we poke a bee hive, we don’t act offended that the bees sting us. We poked it. My suggestion is to stop poking the people around you, turn inward, and start growing your happiness directly.

This is done most swiftly through self nurturing. The best form I know is metta meditation, which is a way of using our mind and body to grow our inner warmth. Consider searching YouTube for “guided metta meditation” if you’re interested. Set down the baggage of husband, children, future, past, in laws… and target the feeling of misery directly. Let the other big things wait for a little while as you rekindle the inner girls warmth and happiness. Those other things can wait for a little while, set down the list, the big life direction changes. Here and now, there is the potential to find freedom, and it happens internally, not out there.

Namaste, sister, may you find your inner light.

With warmth,
Matt

Kitty,

What did she say that impacted you so much?

With warmth,
Matt

Let’s create inventory, should she this/should she that and vote. It would be sort of Big Brother solution. Perhaps that’s what Kitty needs.