The ideas I have been suggesting for Living Closely Indefinitely are challenging. Celebrate Together, Honor Separate, and Expect Less - topics covered in my last three blogs – invite us to operate in ways that may not be our first-choice ways of being. Maybe we generally like to have our own space and are not happy about always being around others in our family. Maybe we have trouble leaving others in our household alone when they disappear into their rooms or go off on a walk and don’t invite us along. And certainly suggesting we lower the bar for what we can hope for or expect from our self and others is not the direction we often go.

Learning to Respect Different can be equally challenging both in understanding what this means and in living in this way.

Respect Different is acknowledging that we each have different thoughts, beliefs, emotional responses, choices we make, and actions we take. We are different people with different natures and nurtures interplaying within our self.

First we do well to be anchored in our self, to know what we are thinking and feeling and why we are choosing what we choose. This self-discerning process can be rich and calming. It helps us to be aware and intentional and to act in ways that are consistent with who we are.

Then, as we encounter Different in the next person we see, we want to listen to them and understand them. We do not have to agree with them. We are only seeking to hear them and for them to feel heard by us. Rather than interrupting and jumping in with our ideas and beliefs, we listen and make sure we have heard them accurately. We may find that we want to respond with some of our own thoughts and ideas, even our concerns for safety and justice. We can do this after we have heard and understand what they are saying.

The caution for us as we speak up is in knowing when to stop, to not go further, to agree to disagree perhaps. Our mental health is helped by not getting too entangled with trying to convince or change someone else.

I can only control my self, and I am grateful to know this reality.  I can speak my truth, explain my truth, and then the best thing I can do is go live out that truth in ways that are consistent with my beliefs. I may have to set boundaries as a result of these differences. That’s okay and important to do. Those boundaries further clarify where I stand, and they show respect for both my self and the other person by not having endless, unproductive, and self-eroding arguments over our differences.

Know what is true for me, live what is true for me, and respect the differences in others. That’s what these peppers from my Covid Garden did.  I took this picture long before frost, anticipating this blog. My little basket overflows with green peppers, red peppers, sweet peppers – large and small. Each pepper grew according to the interplay of its nature and nurture. They are all peppers, but each is different.

We are all together in an overflowing basket, too, so to speak. Our mental health and our relationships with each other can be helped by the lessons from this beautiful assortment of peppers who grew together in my garden.

 

We are lucky here in this part of the Shenandoah Valley - frost has not yet hit us. It has been around us, but not yet here at our home on the James River. I am glad, because the tomatoes and peppers keep producing along with the basil and the beautiful zinnias. In fact, it appears that the zinnias like these cooler temperatures. They are still growing and blooming, offering their beautiful colors and smiling faces.

We continue to live closely here at our country home. Our ages have my husband and I being particularly careful to not expose ourselves to the Covid virus. I know that I have been enjoying this time together as I wrote about in my previous blog. And we each are also honoring when we want to be away from each other. Our separateness usually is in the form of being in different places in the house or on the property.

Honoring the need for the other person to have time for themselves is very important to good mental health and balanced relationships, thus this second living-together suggestion: Honor Separate.

I teach relationship dynamics through the use of circles. In this case of two individuals, each person is a circle. In a healthy relationship, the two circles have a dynamic relationship where the circles can intersect each other as much as is agreeable to each individual. They can completely overlap. And when one person wants to separate and have time for self, that person is able to slide their circle away from the other person’s circle without an issue. Mutual respect for both the relationship and the individuality of each person makes this possible. Trust does, too.

So when my husband goes to work on his writing or is busy with notes he may be jotting down for his work, I respect his space. I try not to interrupt, not to insert myself in what he has going on. He has not left me. He is just doing things which are part of who he is and what builds him as a person. I leave him to his thoughts and work and trust that we will intersect again and again in natural ways as the day moves on.

Honor Separate works both ways. Not only do we want to be in a relationship which honors each person’s needs for time alone, we want to be able to offer this same opportunity to our self to take time away from others and activities. I know that when I step aside to write or play in my gardens, I become calmer and more centered. When I go for my walk, I prefer to go alone so I can be quiet and appreciate the sights and sounds of the world I am traveling through.

Allowing our self to have this separateness can be a challenge. We may feel selfish not inviting the rest of the family to walk with us. We may feel guilty taking time to look through catalogs or read a book when our child is waiting for us to review their homework. We may feel too pressed to get other things done to allow our self to stop and step away.

My experience is that I can always put these obstacles to Honor Separate– these thoughts and feelings - in my way. It’s not that someone else is stopping me from exercising, watching a show, or napping. It’s me. My recovery often has me noticing such self-imposed obstacles and making efforts to remove them. Things that help me to do this include creating a pause in my activities to notice if I would do well to be on my own for a bit, tuning into what I would really like to go do for me for these separate moments, and reminding myself of how restored I feel from time alone.

Looking at the photo of the zinnias still growing in my garden, we see beautiful color and form. Reaching to the sun on their strong stems, each zinnia has its own distinct life and character. The flowers are separate and yet they are all rooted together. Separate and rooted together. What a masterpiece!

 

Those of you who have worked with me know that I am visual. I like to draw diagrams and illustrate things I am teaching.  I still use a flip chart in my workshops and retreats. If you look inside of the 2^nd edition of Disentangle: When You’ve Lost Your Self in Someone Else, you will see what has been described as “a visually appealing book.” It has my lists, illustrations, and diagrams interspersed throughout. They are there to help teach.

So it will be with this blogs series on “Living Closely – Indefinitely.” As I said in my previous blog about my COVID garden, that sweet kitchen garden has been productive as have some of my thoughts on how we do this living closely indefinitely. I have four suggestions: Celebrate Together, Honor Separate, Expect Less, and Respect Different.  As we look at each of these ideas, I will be using photos and metaphors from my COVID garden to explain how these ideas may be helpful to us.

Celebrate Together suggests that since we are in this situation of increased time together and more shared everything, we choose to appreciate this as an opportunity. Yes, I know we can have too much of a good thing, nevertheless, I suggest we choose to see this as a time to really see, listen to, and understand each other more fully. It is a time to enjoy meals together and various safe forms of entertainment. It is an opportunity to cultivate patience and calm within as we are with others. It is a time to practice compromising and limit setting.  It is a time to practice the Serenity Prayer – sorting what we can and cannot control and letting go of what we cannot control.

It is not likely to be a good time to discuss major issues with each other or make decisions about whether to leave an important relationship – unless we are in danger. In the same way that in early recovery, we are advised to not make any significant changes in our lives for the first year, so it is with learning to live with this pandemic. We are adjusting to many changes in our lives at this time, and Celebrate Together - learning to be with who we are and who we are with - can help bring needed stability and growth.

I know I have been glad to have more time at home with my husband. Our time together in this life is limited.  I was becoming more aware of that as I ran in and out of the house to work and activities, always on the go with a calendar full of things to do away from the house and away each other. This pandemic has me at home almost all of the time with him.  I am plenty busy still, and I am glad we are here together – not glad every moment – but most of the time. I am trying to Celebrate Together in the ways I write of above and consider this time together a blessing.

The photo above is from my garden. The cherry tomatoes are clustered together on the vine. Side-by-side they grow, sharing the nutrients of their vine. If that vine breaks, none of them can grow further and over time they will each rot. Day-in-and-out these little tomatoes hang out together allowing space for the growth of each other and sharing the benefits of the soil and sun on their  precious spot on this Earth.