Dear Alessa:

Thank you for your thoughtful message. So much of what you said really spoke to me—especially the part about how the brain treats emotional pain like physical pain. That explains a lot about why it can feel so overwhelming.

I also really connected with what you said about blaming yourself when there’s no clear cause. I’ve done that too—thinking, “It must be me.” But like you said, it’s not true.

Your words about accepting reality, even when it’s hard, felt calming. And the idea of shifting from fixing to simply coping and enduring—that’s something I want to hold onto.

Thank you again for sharing. It helped me feel less alone. ❤️

With warmth, Anita

Hi Peter:

I wasn’t aware of your post before I submitted my latest SOCJ earlier this morning, half an hour before I came across your post. These are the parallels I see:

“a butterfly emerged, the cocoon breaking open…”—that is what I experienced in the last day or two: separating from my mother mentally and emotionally, undoing a decades-long enmeshment.

In my SOCJ, I wrote: “It feels like I extricated my mother from the parts of my brain where she does not belong… There is Me, and then, there is She, separate entities… The enmeshment is gone (what a relief!).”-

So yes—the cocoon splitting open, the emergence—that’s me.

You also wrote: “If you’re like me, the challenge becomes how to turn insight into being.”- That’s another parallel. What I shared in my SOCJ wasn’t just a realization—it was a felt shift. Insight finally becoming embodiment. Finally, the internal separation happened, and I am feeling like a teenager forming her own sense of self, excited, joyful.

“A voice beneath the Silence spoke “You asked how to become your insight, ”You are invited to sit in the tension, not solve it. You are invited to feel the disorientation, not flee it.”-

I did try to solve the tension and the disorientation for a long, long time, but I didn’t sit with it.. until I did. Your post puts words and imagery to what’s just happened inside me.

Thank you, Peter! And again, I didn’t see your post until half an hour after submitting my own. The timing feels sacred.

Warmly, Anita

Extending grace towards others means having courage to open our hearts and consider others perspectives. Needs of people are often different. This means that people are often hurt if things aren’t handled very carefully.

Hi Peter:

Your story is brilliant.

“He knew which ones needed shade, which ones needed space, and which ones thrived with a little neglect.”-

In human terms, he knew that some people thrive when you offer steady presence and care—like giving shade. Some need freedom and autonomy—space to find themselves without pressure. And some find their strength when you step back and let them wrestle with life on their own—neglect not as abandonment, but as trust in their resilience.

The neat garden is the temporal existence: measurement, labels, separation.

“The second garden lay beyond the wall, wild and boundless.”- That’s the eternal—no separation, no labels, no measurement.

“The first seed grew because I tended it. The second grew without me. One needed boundaries, the other needed freedom. Which is compassion?”- Before reading his answer, I knew it was “both.”

“(Compassion) knows when to build walls and when to walk beyond them. It speaks the language of care in many dialects.”- Compassion doesn’t mean being endlessly open or available. Sometimes, the most loving thing you can do is set a boundary:

* Protecting your well-being from emotional harm

* Saying no to toxic dynamics

* Creating space for clarity and healing

These “walls” aren’t punishments—they’re acts of care. Like fences around a garden, they preserve growth and protect what’s tender.

Other times, compassion asks us to soften, stretch, or step beyond the boundary:

* Offering understanding after someone sincerely admits fault

* Letting closeness deepen when trust is earned

* Choosing grace where judgment might be easier

It’s not contradiction—it’s discernment. Compassion knows the difference between self-sacrifice/ self-erasure, and heart-expansion.

Compassion isn’t one-size-fits-all—it changes based on what’s needed. For one person, care might mean sitting silently beside them. For another, it’s calling out a harmful pattern. And sometimes, it means walking away without apology.

“Boundaries are not prisons. They are invitations to know where you begin, so you may know where you end… and then forget both.”-Boundaries often get mistaken for walls that shut people out or isolate us. But in truth:

They’re not punishment—they’re protection. They’re not rigid—they’re responsive. They’re not fear-driven—they’re clarity-driven

Boundaries invite authenticity, not restriction. They create a frame where your true self can move freely, without being overrun.

Without boundaries, it’s easy to lose your sense of “me” in someone else’s chaos, urgency, or projections. To know where you begin is to reclaim agency and voice. Boundaries help you identify where you stop and the other begins:

* What’s mine vs. what’s theirs? Where does my responsibility end? When am I merging, absorbing, or abandoning myself?

Boundaries guard against emotional enmeshment and relational self-erasure… against the belly-up posture I habitually took.

“Zahir smiled, ‘It is the gardener who listens to the seed, not the wind of old words that tries to shape its bloom.’”- The gardener here is the one who nurtures life attentively—not by imposing, but by listening. They hear the potential whispering from within the seed. They honor the seed’s unique rhythm, rather than forcing it into a mold

They recognize that growth requires presence, not control

To listen to the seed is to be guided by what wants to become—not what others expect it to be. It’s a metaphor for relational attunement—parenting, mentoring, or loving with patience and curiosity.

The “wind of old words” symbolizes, for me, the voices of shame, doubt, or cultural expectations. These winds try to dictate how the seed should bloom—how a person should grow, speak, love, exist. But wind is external. It may be loud, persuasive—but it doesn’t truly know the seed.

This line is a radical act of compassion: It urges us to cultivate from the inside out, not the outside in. To be the kind of presence that listens instead of labels. To trust what’s emerging—even if it doesn’t match what the winds once declared.

It’s about tending the seed instead of yielding to the wind.

“’Do not seek to name the dance. Just feel its rhythm.’ And the mist did not explain. It only embraced. ‘The path is chosen before the mind draws its map.’ And the heart did not argue. It only opened.”- This speaks to the urge we often have to define, categorize, or make sense of what we’re experiencing emotionally, or spiritually.

But some things, especially the most profound, can’t be named. They’re meant to be felt, not explained. Like: a moment of connection you didn’t plan for, a truth that arrives without words, an instinct to choose grace instead of retaliation

Naming is the mind’s attempt to control. But feeling the rhythm is the soul’s way of moving with life.

And that final line—“The heart did not argue. It only opened.”- That’s when we stop trying to explain everything and simply walk forward.

WOW, Peter!

Anita (and Copilot)

I find that a lot of people even those who try their best and are genuinely good people are completely unaware of unhealthy behaviours. It isn’t really possible to know something that hasn’t been taught after all. It takes a lot to seek to move past what we know and be open to learning a new style of communication. These things are genuinely hard because they are not taught unless you are in a helping profession or are simply interested in learning about communication techniques for whatever reason. It is a bit of a minefield learning to communicate in healthy ways. ❤️