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Reflection

Listening – by Dr Robert A Hatcher

October 27, 2014 By Just Loving Life Leave a Comment

How often have you started to recount your day or some incident that has happened to a family member or friend and they immediately want to jump in as start giving you advice on what you should have done and how you should have handled the situation.  Well I think “Listening’ by Dr Robert A. Hatcher, sums it up very well.

LISTENING

When I ask you to listen to me
and you start giving advice,
you have not done what I asked.

When I ask you to listen to me
and you begin to tell me why I shouldn’t feel that way,
you are trampling on my feelings.

When I ask you to listen to me
and you feel you have to do something to solve my problem,
you have failed me, strange as that may seem.

Listen!
All I asked was that you listen –
not talk, or do
just hear me.

Advice is cheap:
20 cents will get both
Dear Abby and Billy Graham
in the same newspaper.

And I can do for myself,
I am not helpless.
Maybe discouraged and 
faltering,
but not helpless.

When you do something for me that I can
and need to do for myself,
you contribute to my fear and inadequacy.

But when you accept as a simple fact
that I do feel what I feel,
no matter how irrational, then I can quit
trying to convince you and can get about the business of understanding what’s behind this irrational feeling.

And when that’s clear,
the answers are obvious
and I don’t need advice!

By Dr.Robert A Hatcher
May 24, 1974

Filed Under: Reflection

Words For Reflection

March 27, 2011 By Just Loving Life Leave a Comment

reflection

I love these words and it really makes me think about what I do and say. Sometimes; often, I forget the wisdom of these words, so I like to come back an re-read them to keep me on track. I don’t know who wrote them but I send my grateful thanks to them.

Is anybody happier because you passed by their way

Does anybody remember that you spoke to them today

Were you selfish (pure and simple) as you rushed along your way

Or is someone mighty grateful for a deed you did today

Can you say tonight in parting with the day that’s slipping fast

That you helped a single person in the many that you passed

Is a single heart rejoicing over what you did or said

Does a man whose hopes were fading now with courage look ahead

Did you waste the day or lose it

Was it well or poorly spent

Did you leave a trail of kindness or a scar of discontent

As you close your eyes in Slumber do you think the Universe would say

You have earned one more tomorrow by the work you did today

 

 

Filed Under: Reflection

How it Felt When My Daughter Left Home

August 1, 2009 By Guest Author Leave a Comment

woman-weeping,sad,

Five weeks ago, my daughter left home to go to University.  I had to check the calendar to see how long ago she left and was hugely surprised that it was only five weeks ago.  It feels like a lifetime.  I miss her so intensely that the pain of it still takes my breath away.

For weeks before she left, I was tearful and in a state of ‘countdown’.  Three weeks until she goes, two, one, seven days, six…it was agony.  For such a long time, it seemed as if the departure date was on a very distant horizon.  Then, as these things tend to do, it swung into sharp focus and I couldn’t ignore it any more.  I began to watch her – really watch her.  Like some sad stalker.  Drinking in the things that I knew I wouldn’t be able to see so easily for a long time.  Often, she caught me doing it and teased me…”Making memories, Mum?” and we would both laugh but my heart was already breaking, bit by bit.

She seemed so much stronger than me, on the surface at least.  I held myself together as best I could for her sake as much as mine.  On one occasion, I had taken her to College to see a Tutor and while I waited outside in the car, I played with her iPod.  She often teased me because I couldn’t work it but I got it going and played a song.  “Patience” by TakeThat.  It completely undid me and I still can’t listen to it now although it was one of our favourite songs.  I pulled myself together and tried another.  It was the same for “My Immortal” by Evanescence.  I turned off the iPod and just howled, trying to let the piercing physical pain out while she wasn’t there.  It felt like letting the steam out of a pressure cooker.  I had to let some out or I felt I would burst.  Agony.  She came back to the car, saw my tearstained face and laughed.  So did I.  What else could we do?

It was a busy time, which helped.  She was busy packing boxes and I was busy trying not to cry.  At every opportunity, we went in my car to a tiny local harbor and sat with baguettes and good coffee from our favorite shop.  Talking, listening to music, chatting about celebs, TV, Facebook, relationships, weight, trying to give up smoking…making memories.  How I miss that.

And then suddenly there it was.  She was going tomorrow.  Now the countdown began in earnest.  Twenty four hours, twenty three…I couldn’t sleep that night and couldn’t hold back the tears.  I wanted her to go.  I’m so proud that she has gone and hopefully will start her course soon.  I want her to have her own place with her boyfriend.  They had lived in one tiny room in our home for eighteen months and it was time.  But I was taken by surprise by how much it hurt and still does.

I was never one of those women who dreaded the thought of their kids leaving home.  I always had a list of things I wanted to do, space I wanted to reclaim.  My husband tried to cheer me up by telling me how great it would be when I could finally lay my hand on my hairbrush, my make up, my tweezers.  How tidy the Lounge would be, how the washing machine would be free much more often, how there would be enough hot water left for a shower…all those things are true but I can take no pleasure in them yet.  I would so much rather she was here.

I remember back to when I worked on a woman’s magazine in London.  I was the Personal Assistant to the Beauty Editor.  She was poised, attractive, beautifully made up, perfectly groomed, highly intelligent, a good friend and hysterically funny.  One day, I found her in the Ladies Rest Room.  I thought she was having a heart attack.  She was pale, sweaty and shaking and obviously trying not to cry.  Her son, her only child, had left home that morning for University and she was a mess.  I was shocked to see her like that.  I am that mess now.

To complicate matters, my husband (my daughter’s Stepfather) lost a child from a previous marriage.  His son was eleven when he was knocked over by a car.  He was on life support for a week while they found recipients for his organs.  It gave some pitiful sense to the dreadful tragedy.  I can’t imagine what he went through and my own ‘little drama’ seems so pathetic by comparison.  I can pick up the phone to my daughter, I can Skype with her.  I can see her on her webcam and if I ever get mine working, she will see me too.  My husband doesn’t have that luxury and so I keep as quiet as I can.  But sometimes it’s too much.  I have lost both my Father and Mother and so I know that this feels like bereavement, even though it’s not.

The day she left, we were all falsely bright.  All horribly aware that the moment of parting was getting closer.  We had joked that when it came down to it, we would probably just hug and say “See you!”  and that’s almost what happened.  We hugged in a jokey fashion and I should have left it at that but I couldn’t.  I craved one last, proper hug.  And of course, I started to unravel.  I told her to go then.  Just go.  She could see by my twisted face that I couldn’t do it anymore and turned to go – but exchanged a joke with her Step Dad on the way out to the Ferry.  I don’t remember getting back to the car but I do remember  hearing a very strange noise and then with a shock, realising it was me.  Howling.  Like an animal in pain.  The noise jolted me back and I pulled it together once more so that I could endure waving the Ferry off.  It wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined, mainly because I was so exhausted and felt as if I was in an altered state.  Just like bereavement.

The next day was the worst.  I woke up and then remembered that she was gone.  Even when I managed to stop crying, my eyes carried on – all on their own.  Bizarre.  My husband wasn’t well but selfishly, I felt horribly panicky and just had to get out of the house.  It was so quiet.  Too quiet, painfully quiet.  I really couldn’t stand it.  I drove to our tiny local harbour and sat and cried.  For hours.  Non stop.  It helped but it hurt, so very much.  Then I went home, mindful of my husband’s loss and my need to just get on with it.

Since then, I have reclaimed her bedroom as the Craft Room that I always dreamed of having.  Doing that was intensely painful.  I can’t love it yet since I’d so much rather she was in it.  I’ve stumbled through the weeks.  Some days, it’s all I can do not to fall apart.  Anything else is a bonus.  I know I will see her again but it won’t be for a long time as we live so far apart now and finances are tight for all of us.

Time heals.  I know that.  The trouble is, I also have a son who is about to leave.  So I have to go through it all again.  A friend who has two girls told me it gets easier the second time, but hers left years apart.  Who knows?  I can’t and won’t even try to imagine how it will be.  I will just have to live though it and come out of the other side, like women all over the world do every time a child leaves home.

Filed Under: Reflection

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