My Brother and Mother's Death's

I wrote this last Christmas and had some requests to re post

 so here it is.  Peace and goodness to all.

Life

It’s Saturday night after a week of listening to stories in therapy and reflecting on who I am as a therapist. We carry our experience with us and it contributes to how we interact with each other. Often the stories I hear are painful ones. Many times people find it hard to let go. I find it hard to let go. It’s been nearly five years since I watched my brother die at 49. Held his hand as he took his last breath. Then four months later my mom died. Died, I guess, of a broken heart. She shut down and went away.

It doesn't mean I know what you feel. It doesn't mean that I understand. Instead it informs my ‘Toddness,’ my sense of ‘I am’. Their deaths as painful as they were became a part of the tapestry which is me. And in that me I can be happy. Happy that they are a part of the fabric of my life. So when I listen I do not know what you feel, but all of me which is colorfully made listens with a careful ear.   Peace. Todd

Wonderful Albert Ellis Teaching

The Solitary Human Being

On occasion I have said to clients that we are all spiders on the same web---we are all connected.  Even when loneliness and sadness seem to drive us into a 'corner of despair.' We are, really, never alone.  It is simply impossible.   TJS

"In Africa when you ask someone, 'How are you?' the reply you get is in the plural even when you are speaking to one person.  A man would say, 'We are well' or 'We are not well.'  He himself may be quite well, but his grandmother is not well and so he is not well either...The solitary, isolated human being is really a contradiction in terms."  ---Desmond Tutu