Brave Enough To Be Bliss

I am truly sorry if I hurt your feelings.

Meeting you has been one of the best things to happen to me. I will keep learning, growing and being honest. I appreciate your patience and hope you’ll stick with me.

Sure, verbalizing those things would have been ideal, but I couldn’t have. If I gave him the card and he wanted to talk about it, I could have answered questions about my feelings and it could have opened the door for a more honest and open conversation about our relationship. Notice the words in that card, like all the words in this book, come from my heart, not my brain. My heart is where my feelings live, and feelings are rarely the things that create real conflict. It is generally when we speak from our thoughts, our brains, that conflicts arise because the brain is seeking to protect versus share the real stuff, the feelings that live beneath the thoughts. When my daughter or friends talk with me about conflicts within their lives, recently I ‘ve been asking the same question. What do you feel? Not what do you think about that situation, but how does it feel beneath the thought(s)? When we dig beneath what the brain tells us, we usually get to the fear that lies beneath it and that leads to real conversations about real feelings where the real solutions in relationships lie. It takes practice to get there on your own, but it is possible and interesting to figure it out. It’s sort of like a puzzle. E ach layer reveals another secret that helps uncover the ultimate solution and that’s where the real prize lies: understanding ourselves and those we love . I haven’t met anyone yet who hasn’t experienced the benefit of improved self-understanding and interpersonal communication. Ginger’s journal exercises where I had to write without thinking, without reading or editing, is an excellent example of writing from the heart. That is where the wisdom lies. In this digital age where writing can immediately be edited, deleted, rewritten , there’s little sense of permanence. It’s about how quickly something can be done instead of doing things with meaning and purpose. I don’t think people remember what it is like to write strictly from the heart , or maybe we’re not connected enough to our hearts. There’s just no way digital communication will ever compete with handwriting, because it’s less effort, less personal and therefore less meaningful. It will do the job when that’s all that needs to be done , but it won’t touch hearts like a card specially selected to reflect that specific person or relationship. It takes time and effort to make meaningful connections with other human beings. It doesn’t have to be through a card, but perhaps to reconnect with other human beings on this feeling level, Real cards could help bridge the gap that currently exists in our society. We could all benefit from slowing down and truly feeling whatever we feel so we could begin expressing those feelings openly with others. And what if these cards were not expensive additions to a bigger gift, but rather, the card itself was an inexpensive gift of the heart? What if the cards weren’t thrown away, but instead were held closely as useful, lasting meaningful representations of a connection for both the giver and the recipient? It's just an idea and I’m OK if it never takes off because at least I had the courage to share it. Perhaps it will lead someone to handwrite a note and put it in a child’s school lunchbox, or handwrite a note to leave it on the counter for a spouse, or handwrite a note in lipstick on the mirror for a husband, or handwrite a note and put it in a backpack or duffle bag for a teen heading out to school or a sports practice. Just like some people struggle to find words verbally, others struggle to find words when writing and that’s where cards can come in, if they’re written to reflect actual relationships in life that aren’t always as flowery as generic ones tend to be. Relationship experts Julie and John Gottman conducted research and found that a minimum of six hours per week helps foster and maintain connection within a relationship. Psychology Today published an overview of this research.

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