(My phone started acting up, had to post mid-post)

Spending time sitting accepting, and understanding the natural quality of these intense emotions will help with the holes. Not a baby throwing a tantrum, a rose showing her thorn. Normal. Beautiful.

The second step is doing better with self nurturing activities. When we don’t self nurture, we become sluggish, compressed, feeling like giving up on our own happiness. Laziness. Procrastinating. Like, we don’t have the fuel to make anything right, so we go into the garden and eat some worms in self pity. This is also normal, and self nurturing provides the fuel we need to make lasting positive change. It bails the water out of the boat and opens its sails.

For this, consider adding nurturing activities to your daily life. My favorite is metta meditation. Metta is the feeling of warm kindness, and helps reach deep into the subconscious and rekindle our love. Consider searching “Sharon Salzberg guided metta meditation” on YouTube. Consider a gratitude journal, writing every day about things in your life that sparkle, things you are grateful for, everyday blessings that get ignored. There are many others, such as walking in nature, listening to its sounds, seeing its motion. Expressing yourself with a brush, instrument or other mediums. Taking a bath with candles and aromatherapy. Help yourself find a tender space, and rest, recharge, rejuvenate your warm heart. Let the outside and inside conditions move you toward opening up the space.

Finally, consider following through on your boundaries toward that man. As you grow more self nurturing, your boundaries toward him will be more easily enforced, but you will need to use your willpower. You know he isn’t worth it, so when his crocodile smile comes around, his sweet tasting poison enters your view, don’t be fooled. He stabs it in, and your body does not like it, experiences pain after the pleasure, so do what you need to do to keep your little boat safe. You’re worth protecting, a marvelous piece of nature, a good hearted being. Don’t let charisma pu you away from what you know is right.

With warmth,
Matt