Soulshine

Growing up, I attended Catholic grade school and high schools. In those schools I was verbally taught the words of Jesus Christ, "Turn the other cheek;" meaning when someone is cruel to you, return their cruelness with kindness. These were the words I was taught, but this was NOT the behavior that I witnessed. The behavior I witnessed from adult Catholics/Christians was "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." I witnessed those same people who were saying "turn the other cheek" choosing instead to return evil for evil when push came to shove-- to seek revenge instead of reconciliation. For many years, I followed their example because their words were worthless. Recovery has taught me that my word and my behavior must parallel each other. As a Christian, I now choose to "turn the other cheek" when people are cruel or unkind to me. Why? Because I know who I am now. And being cruel in return is not the real me. An eye for an eye is...

      Over the past 15 years I’ve come to value the power of setting boundaries. For many a year, I’ve joked about going home for my “annual dysfunctional family Christmas.” Family gatherings, for any reason (holidays, weddings, etc.), were often painful because I either didn’t know how to set boundaries, or didn’t feel worthy of setting them, much less having them respected. But in recent years that has changed. I decided a few years back that I would no longer be party to negativity at family gatherings. Our family has long been divided by religious beliefs, political leanings and various levels of self-righteousness, as many families are; and I no longer wanted to participate. So I set the boundaries that I would no longer participate in political or religious conversations. Instead, I urged that we talk about those things that unite us and bring harmony, instead of those things that divide us. Of course I couldn’t enforce these boundaries on anyone but mysel...

I remember talking with someone who was feeling smothered in her relationship with a man. The man had moved in with her and they were even contemplating marriage. But she started feeling trapped. Every time she wanted to do something without him, like get together with friends or even go to a support group meeting, her boyfriend was upset. He felt threatened by anyone outside of the two of them, and would go so far as to say things like “Why do you need to talk with him?” or “Why do you need to hang-out with her? We only need each other. We don’t need anyone else in our lives.” In other words, this boyfriend was extremely needy, fearful and codependent. So I explained to her that his behavior and statements were huge red flags. For whatever reason, he was not giving love to himself, so he had made her his sole source of love. As a result, he was sucking every bit of love, attention and life out of her. And apparently his neediness was so great that he needed her 24/7. This great ...

Setting boundaries is essential for everyone’s health. When we fail to set proper boundaries, we abuse ourselves and we abuse others by enabling them to stay stuck in unhealthy behaviors. Unhealthy codependents typically build their self-worth on their ability to do for others what those very others should be doing for themselves. This is called enabling. We do it under the guise of being helpful, but the only “help” we are giving to the other person is the “help” to stay stuck in their victimhood or addiction. Enabling results from good intentions and poor boundaries. We enmesh with others and we choose to own their problems. We then think we are justified in fixing their problems. Subconsciously, we also are eager to earn their praise and gratitude for having fixed their problems for them, so we engage in our great powers of enabling. In her book Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children , Allison Bottke has a wonderful checklist for identifying enabling ...

Oscar Wilde said it perfectly: “be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” We were created by God to be ourselves: The unique individuals that God empowered with a specific purpose for the betterment of our generation on this earth. So “rejoice” in who you are by choosing to see yourself in a favorable light, by retaining the personal power God blessed you with at birth and by using that power to bless humanity. No one can take our personal power away from us. Even our parents weren’t able to do so when we were children. We freely chose to give our personal power away to Mom and Dad because we believed they had to be right and we had to be wrong. As disempowered children, we developed victim mentalities that caused us to give our power away to most everyone. As a result, we never learned to build good boundaries. When other children bullied us, we ran instead of standing our ground; when people insulted us, we took it on the chin while we quietly died inside ourselves; and whe...

   Initially we approach boundaries as a means of reclaiming our own personal power; and as a means of protecting ourselves in relationships. This is where we have to begin in order to understand and to start building good personal boundaries.    But boundaries are also meant to be seen as bridges. They bridge the gap between us and others. In this way, boundaries exist not only to protect us but to protect others as well. Every relationship is a two-way street and boundaries must respect both individuals in every relationship.      This means that we must learn to respect other people’s boundaries at the same time that we are asking them to respect our boundaries. And for many of us, this is just as difficult of an assignment as learning to build our own boundaries. We are used to wanting to be in CONTROL. And our sometimes insatiable need to control others has taken us down the path of manipulation of others and thus a deep lack of respect for ...

We are all the salt of the earth. But when we fail to set proper boundaries, we lose our “taste” and we are then trampled underfoot. Likewise, we are all the light of the world, unless we refuse to respect ourselves by setting proper boundaries with others. We then whimper away, lick our wounds and hide our light under a bushel basket. Boundaries allow our light to shine before others. Boundaries show that we do love, respect and value ourselves. And they allow us to fully be who we are so that our talents flourish and add value to the world around us.   Simply put a boundary is:1) something (such as a river, a fence, or an imaginary line) that shows where an area ends and another area begins (in other words, where I end and you begin); 2) a point or limit that indicates where two things become different; 3) an unofficial rule about what should not be done; limits that define acceptable behavior. The simplest boundary we can set is saying “No,” and yet it is the harde...

“There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” Franklin Roosevelt    Fear, more than anything else, has kept us frozen and powerless to protect ourselves. From the time we were small, many of us learned incorrectly that we had no right to speak our truth, to own our emotional truth (our personal power) or to trust anyone to be truthful with us.    As a result, we learned to remain silent in the face of abuse perpetrated against us and we learned to stuff all of our feelings. We became possessed by our fears: 1) fears that we didn’t count; 2) that we deserved the abuse we received; and 3) fear that we were destined to be victims.      Today we are all here to prove to ourselves and to the world around us that we do count, that we deserve to be treated with proper respect and that we are not victims of life or anyone.    Today we are proclaiming that we will own our personal truth, that we will learn to experience and understand our ...

“Cause I'm only strong as glass They say I'm built to last but I could break Yeah I'm only strong as glass And I am all I have so if I break, there's no more.” Goapelle, Strong As Glass (2014) Most of my life I’ve felt as if I was only as strong as glass. And I don’t mean that in a physical sense, but in an emotional sense. Inside, my spirit or soul has always felt fragile. It was severely damaged in my childhood when I chose to give all of my personal power away to my parents and grandparents. This is a choice that most every child in an abusive home makes. Children basically have no other choice because they believe their parents and grandparents are infallible and all-powerful, like God. A child believes that his/her parents have to be right and that he/she has to be wrong. So when a child is shamed into believing that he/she is defective in some way, worthless or unlovable, he/she can reach that point of being emotionally devastated; even annihil...

I first posted this three years ago at Christmas. I think it’s worth re-posting this year and maybe every year as a reminder that we need to work at owning our own power at Holiday gatherings. It’s the only way we can truly enjoy them. Merry Christmas! “Christmas time is here, happiness and cheer”… OK well maybe not. I mean, yeah, it’s Christmas, but the happiness and cheer is debatable. This time of the year most everyone wants to be happy, but let’s face it, family gatherings sometimes play out like real Nightmares before Christmas. Across America most every family has an Uncle Eeyore, who makes the Winnie the Pooh character seem like the Sugar Plum Fairy; an Aunt Grinchella, who’s conniving and controlling; and a brother Ebenezer, who is bitter and angry at the world. So much for happiness and cheer-- unless we adopt a new attitude toward family and the holiday. First, we have to choose to accept Eeyore, Grinchella and Ebenezer just the way they are by empathizing wi...