Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.

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Tiger Stripes.

THIS POST HAS MOVED TO ITS NEW HOME: www.patreon.com/amymiller

The Thing Is

The Thing Is

by Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

Emotional Unavailability.

This is a great read that a friend sent me recently. It reflects what she's dealing with in her own life, but I think many of us can relate. We often find ourselves in these emotional loops where we are consistently disappointed by the reality of our relationship(s) and yet *endlessly hopeful* that things will change. The challenge is knowing when to keep hoping, and when to just let go. Even more difficult is taking responsibility for our own role in the pattern we've co-created, and seeing that we agreed to it by continuing to participate. It's easy to blame the emotionally unavailable person, but it is harder and ultimately more useful to see how our own stuff got us here. A gentle acceptance, coupled with the challenge to interrupt these patterns, is the kindest way to treat ourselves when we recognize what we're doing and wish to do it differently.

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/04/how-to-unhook-from-an-emotionally-unavailable-partner/

Make No Assumptions.

“If others tell us something we make assumptions, and if they don't tell us something we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and to replace the need to communicate. Even if we hear something and we don't understand we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don't have the courage to ask questions.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements

Assumptions are what get us in trouble when communicating with the people we care about. It is SO IMPORTANT that we ask direct questions and actually tell the truth to each other. Otherwise, we invent a million possible scenarios to fill in the details we don't know. We project our own insecurities and worries and biases onto other people's behavior and presume to know what they mean or meant by a thing they did or said. And sometimes we even act as if we are right about what was in the heart of the other person, without actually finding out. But if we don't go to the source and ask for clarity around what we don't understand, how can we know what was truly meant? So often, relationships get destroyed, or friendships damaged, by the passive act of allowing silence. By permitting assumptions to replace investigation and curiosity, we close ourselves off from the sort of true connection that is born of authentic communication. Much can be gained by mustering the courage to ask and listen and be able to hear the truth from the other instead of inventing our own explanation that suits us.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Butterfly.

...what goes around comes back around; this is nature's way.

be conscious of what you do, because you will be repaid.

if you put turnips in the ground, you will not harvest grapes.

you are what you attract, and this is why I say:

if you want a butterfly, you've got to be a butterfly. 

-(india.arie "butterfly")

*******

I say this to people a lot. Well, maybe not exactly in reference to butterflies, but more the gist of this lyric, which is that people will treat you how you let them. 

Let me say that a different way: what you think you deserve is exactly what you’ll get.  If you feel poorly about yourself, and believe yourself unworthy of being treated well, you cannot rightfully be surprised when you find yourself involved with someone who doesn't treat you particularly well. That's not to say if someone treats you like garbage, you deserve it. Nobody deserves anything less than to be treated respectfully and with kindness. But it's not enough to hope for that; you have to require it. You must be courageous and willing to walk away from a situation where you're not getting -and giving- respect and appreciation. If you plant turnips in the ground, you will not harvest grapes. Which is to say: you have a responsibility to be the best version of yourself possible, and to treat the people in your life as you'd like them to treat you. Be nice. Be patient, and kind, and not an a**hole. And sure, sometimes you have to teach people how to treat you, and sometimes they turn out to be worth the effort, but sometimes they don't. And that's okay. If you do an inventory, get right with yourself, start feeling good and knowing your own worth, you're more likely to attract the sort of partner you want and deserve.