Dear Ada: I am looking forward to reading your latest posts and reply tomorrow.

Anita

Hi Q:

Thank you for sharing all of this. It takes real courage to open up when you’re hurting like this, and it’s clear that you’re trying your best—through grief, through setbacks, through doubt. I just want to say: your pain makes sense. You’ve been carrying a lot, and you’re still showing up for yourself. That matters.

Losing someone while also feeling stuck in your career is a heavy mix. You’re not alone in feeling like one affects the other. And the thoughts you mentioned—the ones that tell you it was all your fault—aren’t the truth, even though they feel real. They’re coming from sadness, not fact.

Getting rejected after trying so hard hurts. And crying doesn’t mean you’re weak—it means you care. That hope you still have about reconnecting is human. You’re allowed to feel that and still choose what helps you heal. You already said it beautifully: for things to work later, you both need space to grow now.

Choosing no contact isn’t easy, but it’s not about giving up. It’s about giving yourself a chance to breathe, to rebuild. The fact that you’re aware of your emotional habits, and trying not to act on every impulse, shows strength—even if it doesn’t feel like it.

One step at a time, Q. You don’t have to fix everything right now. You’re grieving, rebuilding, and learning. That’s a lot—and you’re still here. Keep applying. Keep showing up. One day you’ll read this and see how far you’ve come.

Sending you warmth, A stranger who believes in you 🤍

Anita

That’s wonderful to hear. Zenith! I will be away from the computer for most of this hot, hot day

Hi Peter:

“Yes, I know that nothingness inside. That hollow, alone space.”- As I read this, I wanted to fix that nothingness inside you. It makes me smile to think that—even for a few seconds—I had the idea in my mind that I have that kind of power… ha-ha.

“There are times when the mystery feels too vast, and I long for something more tangible. The heart aches, even as it knows. The soul whispers ‘yes,’ but the body feels tired, small, and unseen.”- You write so poetically, it makes my brain say W.O.W! I don’t remember ever reading something from you as profound, so personal, so raw. Real.

I just had the image of boy-Peter looking up into the vast sky where God is supposed to reside, praying for help with the ache inside—a prayer that wasn’t answered. So Peter the boy felt tired, small, and unseen.

And I remembered myself as a girl… walking alone in the evening or night (it was dark), looking up at the sky full of stars and praying to the stars, begging them: “Help me! Please help me!” The stars twinkled, but no help came.

“As I mentioned earlier, the heart still aches even when the mind ‘knows.’”- Again (and I almost smile again), for a moment I thought maybe I could say something to you that would bridge the gap between spiritual knowing and emotional reality. Between the mind and the heart.

What I’ve been doing lately—through my stream-of-consciousness journaling (in my thread) and even here in this reply—is to build a bridge between my intellectual understanding (such as “I am not a bad person”) and my emotional reality… to truly feel and believe what I claim to know.

I say “claim to know” because this kind of information is useless unless it is in-the-body.

“And no, this doesn’t make me less needy of human connection. If anything, it might deepen the ache. To be candid, I sometimes wonder if writing about these things is a way to avoid that ache, but it doesn’t. It just brings me closer to it.”- I think I shared this with you before—that I thought that writing about mystery, belonging, nonduality might be a way to protect yourself from the ache of longing for human connection.

Your philosophical and poetic reflections could act as a shield—elegant and thoughtful—that sits between you and raw vulnerability.

But you say this shield, if it was one, didn’t numb the ache—it intensified it. And maybe that’s because connection matters.

“When I see bombs being dropped, I am That. When I see a child starving, I am That. When I see someone holding that child, I am That too…”- Powerful.

When I see my mother, in my mind’s eye… I see me? That feels uncomfortable. Wrong. And yet… it just occurred to me: her suspiciousness toward people lives in me still, and I’m working to resolve it. Just last Saturday, I hurt two honest, good people—with that suspiciousness.

So… when I see myself, I see my mother. But I don’t want to.

“I understand when someone might say what’s the point then if in the end that ache and that experience of nothingness inside remains. I don’t have an answer for that.”- The ache softens when someone sees us in it.

I’m having this image of a blank canvas full of dark colors—representing the ache—and I’m nowhere to be found on it. The ache feels heavy, unbearable… until someone, with a few brushstrokes, paints me onto that canvas. What a relief: there I am. I didn’t know I was there.

You submitted a second post while I was writing this—a meditation.

What I’m taking from it this morning: When the intellect quiets, it isn’t the mind shutting off—it’s the mind becoming still, like a pond with no ripples. All the analyzing, labeling, and conceptualizing drop away. No need to name the feeling. No urge to solve the mystery. Just stillness. Presence. Breath. And when the intellect rests, other ways of knowing wake up.

What might wake up for me right now? Just now, I noticed the sound of a plane moving past, the far-off hum of traffic, birds singing. I hadn’t heard any of it until the ripples of my mind quieted down.

With warmth, Anita 🤍

Dear Zenith:

You wrote, “I had more unstable childhood but still never left anxious my future.”- you felt anxious about the Present time, back then.. was it easier than feeling anxious about the Future?

It makes sense you want to be there for your mom emotionally: you love her! Does she fully know that you love her so much? Does it make her feel better to know it?

I loved my mother very, very much, but she either didn’t know that I did, or it didn’t matter to her.

Sending care 🤍

Hey Peter: I want to revise my rephrasing—“When I see my innocence in you, how can I harm you?”—because sometimes, people carrying unresolved trauma, especially from childhood, don’t see innocence as something beautiful. Instead, it feels unbearable. A child’s purity can mirror back what was lost, what was stolen, what still aches—and rather than protecting it, they may reject or harm the child because of what it represents: a softness they were denied, a reminder of how deeply they were hurt.

I think I took the original sentence—“When I see I am you, how can I harm you?”—literally, when it’s meant more philosophically. It points to the idea that we’re all connected—that separation is mostly an illusion, and at our core, we share the same essence. When we truly feel that, love and care flow naturally. Harm becomes impossible—not because of who we are individually, but because we stop seeing each other as separate.

🤍Anita

Hey Confusedasf:

It’s completely okay to feel lost right now. You’re in emotional limbo—where you and he still miss each other, but there’s no clear path forward. It might feel like your heart is being pulled in two directions at once—toward him and away from him—and it’s hard to know what’s real or what to hope for.

For someone with a fearful avoidant attachment style, this kind of in-between space can be especially difficult. You may deeply want closeness, but also feel afraid of being hurt again. There’s a craving for connection—and at the same time, a strong need to protect yourself from the pain it might bring. So when things remain unclear—like him saying he misses you, but not offering change or commitment—it’s hard for your nervous system to feel safe.

That doesn’t mean you’re wrong for feeling confused. It just means your system is reaching for something solid—either closeness with consistency, or distance with peace. But emotional limbo offers neither. When you’re given intimacy (he misses you) without direction (a plan or effort to rebuild together), it creates a push-pull inside. You miss him, but don’t feel safe hoping. You hear warmth in his words, but it doesn’t feel stable enough to lean on.

And from everything you’ve shared, it sounds like his life is already overflowing: new job, travel, stress about work and family, and the pain that leads him back to drinking. On top of that, it seems like he holds a lot in emotionally—always thinking, but struggling to communicate what’s really going on inside.

When someone is that overwhelmed, it’s hard for them to show up consistently in a relationship—especially one that asks for emotional honesty and care. It’s like there’s no room left for something that requires real work and steady presence. And maybe, just for now, that alone makes trying to get back together feel more like a setup for heartache than healing.

If any of that speaks to you, maybe let it breathe a bit. No need to decide anything—just something to notice gently.

Talking about breathing, here are a few gentle things that might help bring you calm:

* Slow, deep breathing — Even five minutes of steady breathing can help soothe the nervous system. Try inhaling for four counts, exhaling for six.

* Stream-of-consciousness journaling — Write without judgment, just let your thoughts and feelings spill out. Sometimes clarity comes after the words.

* Body check-ins — Notice where you feel tight or heavy. Place a hand there, breathe into it. Remind yourself: I’m safe right now.

* Touch something grounding — A favorite object, soft blanket, or the earth beneath you. Let it remind you: you are supported.

* Reach out gently — Talking to someone who listens without fixing—just witnessing—can be incredibly regulating. Even this space can be that.

You don’t have to figure everything out right now. Maybe just stay close to what feels real, comforting, and honest in this moment. Let clarity come slowly. It will. 🤍

Anita

Dear Peter:

This one sentence stood out for me ever since I read your 2nd post this morning: “When I see I am you, how can I harm you?”-

My thoughts this late evening: one has to see one’s own INNOCENCE in another to ask this question.

But when a person feels like a bad person deep inside.. then what is projected to another is that perceived badness. And then.. it’s easy to harm the other.

It’s that perceived self-badness passed on from one generation to the next (figuratively, starting with Adam and Eve), that gets projected to others, leading to harming others. And it being easily done.

And so, I will adjust this sentence: When I see my innocence in you, how can I harm you?

Back to the garden of Eden.. it wasn’t badness.. Eve and Adam were not bad for eating the apple, or fruit.. for crying out loud!

Yet, they were made to believe they were bad, punished, expelled from the garden of Eden.. for eating a g** **** apple!

My point: many of us get to believe we are bad people for such innocent acts- or thoughts- of well.. nothing deserving of punishment.

Innocence distorted into Badness.

Anita