Dear Anita,

Thank you I look forward to speaking with you further tomorrow in the morning as well. In fact, tomorrow around 9 AM is one of the first times that I don’t have any plans to be away, and so I look forward to sipping my tea and reading your response and writing back to you in real time, those moments when we are able to do that are very precious. Of course no pressure as always.

The more I write to you as always the more I think. I submitted my last post and laid on the couch thinking about what I wanted to watch on television. I scrolled through some titles and of course – There are an array of different genres, heartbreak, grief, murder mystery, silly comedy at Cetera. But so much of TV is based on the concept of love. So much of Hollywood is based on this concept, so much of our radio songs are, in fact almost everything in the entertainment world does revolve around the concept of romantic love to a certain point. It is the strongest driving factor for a human being to do many things so it seems based on what we watch and hear. There is also the love between a mother and child, which is not always portrayed as dramatically on the television, as it is always understood. It is simply understood often, of course the love between a mother and child is amazing and wonderful and a bond that cannot be broken, and of course it is not taking advantage of as often romantic love is. This is quite common, and the case for most human beings.

As I was browsing through some channels mindlessly, not really focused are committed to March, I realize something, if all of this is focused on adult love, romantic relationships, it is based on the premise that the person learn to love already based on the interaction with their first love, the love with their mother.

Of course I am on able to love as an adult appropriately as the love with my mother was way beyond screwed up, as an understatement!

Sometimes when I humble myself by realizing things like this, and saying them out loud, I am more gentle with myself. And my work with you over the last few months has taught me that no progress comes from self cruelty or self hatred, and being gentle with yourself is not the same as being to wax or having a weakness. It is actually quite the contrary it is actually loving. To be gentle with myself doesn’t mean that I am giving myself a pass. In the world of my mother where everything is win win or lose lose it may seem this way, to be gentle means that you didn’t learn the lesson, or you didn’t receive your punishment. But back to what I said, I am on able to love appropriately now as an adult given so many of these factors, so if I allow myself to learn it as a student from fresh- if I allow myself that time and respect – I can begin somewhere.

I want to generalize when I make the following comments so bear with me. Most people by the time they reach teenage years or adulthood, entering their first romantic relationships in high school, college, and beyond, already have a strong foundation of what it means to love someone. It is not because they have studied this actively, but they have possibly and subconsciously been taught these things by what may seem is appropriate parenting. And these don’t have to be amazing parents, parents of the year, parents who will do anything and everything. They simply have to be non-abusive. It really is that simple and away. I didn’t think of this before I thought that my parents were amazing because they sacrificed their life for us so to speak. Oh my. But all it takes to have a healthy understanding of love, is a parent that is simply not abusive. A gross over simplification I know.

The exercises that we have done over the last month or so have shown the both of us that all I heard as a young girl was my mothers roaring voice, her lion roar constantly day in and day out, if she made me upset I may run off, she may run to me, out of her own guild, to get her own needs met. She never asked me how I felt, she never cared about how I felt, how she made me feel was never of concern to her, but only if it made her feel bad inside about herself, everything she did was to escape any distress in her own self, whether that meant to lash out at myself or my father or whether it meant To lay screaming on the floor acting like a victim from an earthquake.

To be good as to be loving. Where did I see anyone who is truly loving? Let’s fast-forward from my childhood to my adulthood. If they were so loving when they were young, when I was young, turn off or what, to create a bank? We spent 30 years of being loving towards you so now it’s time to pay up. You have a crude a lot of interest with our actions, so how dare you not do as we say. Pay up, do you think this is all for free? You foolish stupid girl, look at you how useless you are you deserve a slap in the face with how ungrateful you are, pay up.  Look at you, just taking from us your whole life, and now this amazing wedding and all of that, you just want to drain our bank dry don’t you putting us in the negatives, we paid so to speak our whole life to you, and now you just want to suck us dry leave us poor and homeless out on the street don’t you. Look at you you have nothing to pay us do you?!??

So Nyra, no I do not know what it means to be good – if to be good is to be loving. In the most simple way.

I know everything in the more complex way, I know how to do -I know how to seek to run and lash out

But to be good is to be loving, and listening, and supportive. Nope that is what needs to be worked on