Soulshine

      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...

In his book The Power of Kindness , Piero Ferrucci speaks of “the soul wound.” Coined by Thomas Yeomans, the soul wound is “what we feel when as children we are not seen for who we are—a soul full of marvelous potential for love, intelligence and creativity—but instead perceived as a difficult, headstrong child, or a lovely showpiece, or as a great nuisance—or not seen at all.” Those of us who grew-up in addictive households known the pain of the soul wound and it is something that we have carried with us into adulthood and into the rooms of recovery. This is the primary wound that our inner-critics zero in on. It’s the wound that bleeds with the belief that we are a nuisance, or worthlessly stupid, or hopelessly unlovable. And it fuels the merciless voices of our inner-critics. I’m often amazed at how active my inner-critic is every day. When it isn’t hammering me, it is hammering someone else in the same manner in which it hammers me—shamelessly. More and more I am aware of...

“You saved Richard Callahan’s life. You can’t live it for him.” Helen Pryor, American Dreams We codependents tend to want to live other people’s lives. And it seems to be especially difficult for codependent parents who are now facing the fact that their children are no longer “kids”—they’re grown adults themselves. I gave a series of talks to mostly baby-boomers last week and a recurring theme was their need to control the lives of their adult children, in particular when it comes to God or church. Many baby-boomers are church goers. They grew-up believing that it was sinful to miss out on attending church on Sundays. Now they are faced with children and grandchildren who don’t believe it’s important to attend church. And so these baby-boomers have an intense need to rectify the situation by trying to impose their beliefs onto their adult children and grandchildren. In effect, these baby-boomers want to live their children’s lives for them and so they coerce and n...

   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 ...

“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 ...

“Would you like to see the Lord?” Eknath Easwaran , Timeless Wisdom In his book Timeless Wisdom , Eknath Easwaran shares a childhood story involving a New Year’s Day tradition in his homeland of India . He says that every New Year’s Eve, while most of the family is sleeping, someone erects a shrine made of “yellow flowers, brassware, gold jewelry, ripe fruit, lighted oil lamps” and garlands. On New Year’s Day, the family is then led to the shrine—eyes closed—and asked “Would you like to see the Lord?” They are then invited to open their eyes: “and shining in the midst of this bright setting” each individual sees his/her own face reflected through glass. Sometimes we need to be reminded that we are all unique reflections of the image and likeness of God— especially when we’ve screwed-up in some way and we’re really being hard on ourselves. Today, when you look in the mirror, remember that you are seeing the Lord reflected back to you in your own unique represent...

There’s a reason why the term “Angel Eyes” has been popular for many years. When you look into the eyes of another person, you see through to their soul, to the angel inside of them. As you peer into the eyes of another, you touch their divine humanness. And in doing so, you allow them to touch your own soul as you open up your inner-angel to them. It takes a great deal of honest, naked vulnerability to look someone deeply in their angel eyes. And it takes loads of courage to keep your eyes focused on theirs as they look you right back in your angel eyes. Sadly, many of us fail to have such courage or naked vulnerability. We’ve been taught to refrain from looking people in the eyes for fear that we will somehow make too much, or too deep of a connection. The supposed fear is that we will then owe the other something, but I think the real fear is that we will have to acknowledge their sacredness as a human being. It’s easier to treat a person like they are a disposable obje...