Hi Yana

Well, we had differences in opinion. He felt like he could gossip to me and criticise my loved ones unfairly. That is a boundary for me. I expressed that I wasn’t going to accept that or indulge in it. He decided he didn’t want to speak to me anymore.

He still has issues, I hope he heals in his own time and way. ❤️

What do I do with the pain of losing a friend? Empathise with his struggles. Empathise with my own pain and live my life. ❤️

Hi
There has been accusations & acknowledgements, explanations & apologies, yet there still feels a heavy atmosphere here – let go of the past, allow wounds to be healed – a scab that is forever being picked at either by ourselves or others will only get bigger & inflamed.

Seek your own peace with each breath. We each have our own sorrows to a greater or lesser extent, but it is not a competition.
We are travelers on journey, we choose to cross paths with other Tiny Buddha pilgrims and walk a while side by side.

Jana (right above): “It is a hard conflict. It is! But it can bear fruit, as well. 😊”-

* I am adding this here after closing the post and deleting much of it because what I realized at the end makes makes much of the post I put together was defensive, somewhat argumentative and unhehelpful. So, this is what’s left:

…………. And now I will respond to the rest of your yesterday’s post:

“Hi Anita, Thank you for your message. I must admit, it’s a mixed bag of feelings, but I’m very happy you’ve realized that I haven’t tried to hurt you but that I actually tried to help, even if it didn’t end up being helpful”-

Thank you, Tee. Yes, you tried to help me, just as you’ve tried to help so many people in these forums, giving so much of yourself in your many detailed, thorough and empathetic posts. Unfortunately, I perceived invalidation and an intent to hurt me where there was none.

About the perceived intent to hurt me, as I remember it, I wasn’t thinking: “Tee is trying to hurt me!” It was an assumption I made without verbalizing it, not even in my own mind.

“Thank you, Anita, for realizing that I indeed didn’t intend to harm you but to help you, because radical acceptance (and a sort of detached compassion, which I’ve explained what I meant by) helped me heal from my mother’s abuse. I truly thought it might be beneficial for you. But I apologized when I’ve realized it was an ill-fitted advice.”-

Seems like you were not suggesting that I feel compassion for her (which I already have, in massive amounts) but that I feel detached attention.. which is a different kind of compassion that I didn’t yet experience? (IF so, this distinction didn’t occur to me until now.. AND I failed to understand your input back then..?)

“Thank you for acknowledging that my intention wasn’t to hurt you or invalidate you. And I fully accept your apology. Thank you.”- this is so gracious of you. Thank you so very much for accepting my apology. 🤍 🙏

In regard to whom I had in mind when I wrote that particular sentence, I spent about 20 minutes just now trying to locate that sentence and I can’t find it. But here’s the thing: you have better memory than I do, Tee, so if you say I was referring to you, to Alessa, or to the two of you in that one sentence then I truly believe you.

Maybe I felt so embarrassed when first confronted with that sentence that .. I tried to deflect responsibility by saying maybe it was someone else. I suppose.. not exactly a lie. There was no such thinking as: I am going to lie about not remembering who I had in mind. It was more like (not verbalized this way though): I don’t want to remember, it’d make me feel badly.

“I’ve already apologized for accusing you of lying that you don’t remember whom you were talking about (Sept 7): “If you truly didn’t remember whom you were talking about, I apologize for wrongly accusing you.”- I didn’t lie about not remembering.. I didn’t want to remember… hmm, there’s a difference. And I didn’t realize this until just now.

You are very, very detailed oriented and a very intelligent critical reader, Tee.. and you caught me there- the inconsistency, the avoidance.

“I’m sorry, Anita, but isn’t it kind of funny that I have to defend myself for assuming that you were less judgmental than you really were?”- ouch, this hurts a bit.

“I mean, I thought it could have been only 2 people whom you had negative feelings about, but now you’re saying it could have been 4 people in total.”- good point. By the avoidance I mentioned above, I made it worse.

“Please don’t take offense, but when we step back and see a bigger picture, it becomes a little absurd. I hope you see it too?”- yea, I suppose. Yes.

“Like you, I would also like to close my post on a positive note: I appreciate your realization that I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I also appreciate and accept your apology. I’m also glad that you’re experiencing some more healing thanks to this thread, including the ability to stay present with difficult emotions and stay in the dialogue, rather than withdraw and then express your grievances indirectly. I think it’s better if we can express what bothers us directly to the person. I appreciate you’ve returned to the conversation, even if not everything you’ve said has been easy to hear. I also appreciate you chose not to use Copilot in this post, because Copilot makes the answers a little mechanical, in my opinion. I prefer talking to a real person, not a machine, because it’s more authentic. So thanks for that 🙂”-

This paragraph I quoted right above, this is the first time I am reading it. Yesterday, when I read “Should we just stop sharing our experiences, so you wouldn’t get offended?”- I felt threatened- and angry, and stopped reading, focusing on what scared me (being talked badly about). If I read the paragraph above, I could have softened. It is a beautiful ending of your post. I simply didn’t read it, and based on 1 or a few sentences I perceived your post as hostile. I see it as .. goodwill on your part, grace, kindness- I COMPLETELY missed the good nature of your post, seeing nothing but a single perceived threat.

This is exactly how I misread your input in regard to my mother- taking one thing from the post that feels like a threat (a threat to mu understanding of things), and seeing ONLY that.

I feel ashamed for having misread and mistreated you, Tee. Looking back in regard to the communication about my mother- you did nothing wrong, but I reacted as if you did, feeling offended when there was no offense and I proceeded to attack- indirectly. And through all this, I didn’t see, couldn’t see what I was really doing.

* It’s amazing.. Like my mother who offended me but claimed that I offended her. She truly felt offended, I suppose, just like I did. This comparison is scary. Something I’ll be thinking about.

I apologize for not reading the closing of your yesterday’s post until just now. And more so, I sincerely and truly apologize for offending you to begin with, and then- adding salt to injury- for accusing you for the ways you reacted to being offended.

Yes, these are my posts now.. not Copilots. Copilot didn’t hold me accountable. You did, Tee. Thank you.

Anita