Tag: promise

It’s Never Too Late: Part Two

On By JenniferOzgurIn Love, Relationships, Uncategorized, ValidationLeave a comment

So, how is it that I can now have a relationship with the same man — my father — who caused me so much pain that I had put a gun to my head?  The answer is in my acronym for LOVE.

He listened to how much pain I had been in.  He observed what I was doing with the rest of my life as an adult.  He validated my position by not making excuses, and he empathized by making a change in his behavior from my perspective.

That last step took several attempts, I gotta tell ya.  He had to say he was sorry several times until I actually believed him.  The reason being, he’d sometimes revert back to his behaviors when I was a kid.  As a child, I didn’t say anything.  But as an adult, it would HIGHLY trigger me and I’d blow up and estrange myself from him… for years.  I was not the most graceful about it and I’m sure I caused him pain, as well.  I will own that piece.  It’s not an excuse, but it is an explanation for my behavior when I say that I had developed CPTSD from my childhood so I had difficulty regulating my emotions… I still do.  But I’m much better with it today.

We’ve been okay for the past three years or so, and I think it’s pretty stable now.  I’ve learned; he’s learned, and we’ve moved from living in the past to trying to stay in the moment.  (He is a big worrier about the future.)  There was a big symbolic moment when I knew he had actually changed.  My son was two at the time.  He had picked up a candle.  I could tell it made my dad nervous: would my son break the candle?  Would he bang it on something and break that other thing?  I just held my breath as I looked to my dad and what he’d do…  He just looked at me, looked at my son, took a deep breath… and laughed!  He got it!!!  He understood the present moment and what was most important.  Not the candle, not the table or whatever… his daughter and his grandson.

So that’s how it can happen.  If you have a history of a strained relationship with someone due to unresolved tension in the past, go to that person.  Tell them you’re sorry.  List what you did so they know that you “get” it.  Then say that they deserve better and you are going to do better.  Admit that you need help in doing that by asking them what you can do from now on.  Then listen to them.  Don’t defend or excuse.  Observe what they do- not only what they say.  Validate their point of view.  And finally, empathize and make decisions from their perspective.  Ask yourself, “What would they want me to be doing right now so they know they are loved?”  Then do that thing.

Granted, this is NOT easy to do.  You have to put your heart on your sleeve.  They may not be ready because trust has been violated in the past.  But if you make the 153Promise to do things in a loving way, they’ll come around.  I did… because my dad did.

If you get rejected at first, make the 153Promise to love YOURSELF every day by working on improving your own life.  Do the work.  After a while, they’ll notice the change and they’ll come to trust it because they’ll see that you are doing it not to get anything from the deal, but because you realize it’s just the healthy, right thing to do.

You may need outside resources.  Seek out therapy.  If you can’t afford it, find group meetings in your area.  Research online.  Join an internet forum.  Get a self-help book on Amazon, or go to the local library and ask for a good book to check out.  I’ll even make a list of books/resources on a page here… I’ll update it as I get suggestions, so if you know of a great resource, email me at jennyontheshelf@gmail.com.

You’ll notice that I don’t mention my mother in part of this healing process.  That’s because even though she was not the active abuser, she’s always maintained that she was a good mom.  MY version of reality is that a good mother’s first job is to protect… and in that respect, she failed.  Cleaning up the mess after the damage does not win any awards in my book.  She’s failed to convince me that she’s really listened, observed, validated, or empathized.  I’ve heard the word “love” come out of her mouth countless times, but I’ve never felt it the way I need to in order to believe it.  It saddens me to say this, but she may not even be capable of that due to her own issues.  I’ve stopped interpreting this as my shortcoming, and I’m working on making my peace with this.  In that way, I’m making that 153Promise to her… to stop judging her for her inabilities.

It’s my wish for all of you reading this post that you are inspired to acknowledge the past to those you love, make positive choices in the present, and look toward the future with hope and optimism.  I sincerely believe that in taking this approach, we can heal a lot of our own wounds and help in repairing others’ we may have contributed in causing.

In doing this work, it’s not too late to attain “One Million Kisses” with those whom you want to show healthy love.  Who’s to say you can’t “kiss” retroactively???  Maybe taking that one step to make it right can get you half way there!  Maybe doing your work on the past while making changes today can double up your “Kissing Kounter!”

When I first thought about the possibility of literally kissing my child a million times, I thought it would be impossible; NOT SO!  The secret lies in taking one day at a time… it’s best way to live life, isn’t it?

Make that first step today…  It’s NEVER too late!

 

It’s Never Too Late! Part One

On By JenniferOzgurIn Health, Love, Relationships, Uncategorized, Validation1 Comment

This is the companion post to “It’s Never Too Early.”

Yesterday, I had posted about making the commitment to love your child even before your child is born; you can begin to prepare to start the journey of “One Million Kisses” way before the birth of your child.  But what if that ship has said long ago and you already have a child- be it a toddler, teen or adult?  Today, I am focusing on how to start the “Kissing Kounter” TODAY and make the 153Promise to that person before you go to sleep tonight!

I’m not planning to use this site as a space to vent about my own personal issues, but this is a time where I think it’s important to use my life as an example: I grew up in dysfunction.  Granted, it wasn’t all bad- we had food and shelter.  We went to church on Sunday and out for dinner after.  My parents gave me music lessons and went to all of my concerts.  But I was not thriving.  I was not getting the kind of love I needed.  (I posted what my definition of love a few days ago… scroll down if you need.)

Here’s my childhood in a nutshell-

Mom and Dad constantly fought.  My dad was very demonstrative, and my mother was extremely submissive.  I’d witness him saying horrible things to her to the point where she’d cry.  When you are a little girl, your mother is your world.  You are an extension of her.  So if SHE’s crying, it’s like the universe is ending.

Once I got older, I became part of his wrath.  He’d work at his job (he never really told me what he did there), come home and go on a war path.  I remember hearing the gravel on the driveway pop underneath his tires and my mother saying to me, “Quick- your father’s home,” which basically meant “Don’t give your father a reason to yell.”  This meant scrambling to clean up the house in 30 seconds before he came though the door.  I have memories of my hair being yanked right out of my scalp as he led me around the house, rubbing my head in any items that were not put away.  Like a dog.  One image remains burned in my mind.  It was a wash cloth at the bottom of the shower.  I hadn’t wringed it up to dry.  I don’t know which was worse: my father bellowing my name as he shamed me, or my mother’s judgment when she said, “You think you’d learn by now.”

There’s many more instances I could site, but I think that’s enough to give you an idea of our home climate… And then I’d go to school…

Let’s just say that I was not one of the cool kids.  While my dad called me a jerk and a candy @$$ at home, my peers would bastardize my name so it had an unfortunate crude word in it.  My dad never bought me the cool clothes (a necessity in the yuppie 80s) and my mother used to cut my hair on the steps in the basement.  (Note to self- insert pictures of my awkward class pictures here.)  As a result of all of these social epic fails, I was at the bottom of the popularity food chain.  I was called “Freak.”  In fact, the greatest regret I have at that time period was the ONE time on the bus I was not the subject of teasing, I joined in on it.  So to the blonde-haired boy on the bus with me going to Fogelsville Elementary School in Orefield PA, I am sorry from the bottom of my heart.

My self esteem was on the floor.  All of this led to me being withdrawn.  It was a good day when I didn’t get noticed.  As a result, my grades began to suffer, despite me being in the “gifted/high potential” classes.  I was at the bottom of the top intellectually… It was a very weird experience.  I find myself wanting to chronicle all my pain, but I have to remember where all of this is going…

Cut to my senior year, right around this time- a few weeks before Christmas.  I had applied to college with no hopes of getting in.  (My father was a master at instilling fear.)  My 8 year old brother was also in the process of being diagnosed with leukemia- something I didn’t fully comprehend at the time.  At a result, I had a meltdown.  I had what can possibly be described as a temporary psychotic break.  I like to call it my “Freak of the Week.”  All my pent up anxiety came loose at once.  It’ll make for a great post one day!

A few months later, I was so depressed, I really didn’t care about living anymore.  I was in so much pain and I was so frustrated with my failed relationship with my parents, I just wanted to make some sort of statement to them.  I was angry, but I couldn’t possibly say anything because I had no voice at this point, so it had to be drastic.  I thought the best idea would be to kill myself so my suffering would be over, yet in a grand, poetic, ironic twist, their suffering would just begin.  My dad was a hunter, so he had guns.  I knew a shotgun would be clunky, so I went for the hand gun.  But before I actually went to do it, call it the Grace of God or just morbid curiosity, I went to the bathroom mirror just to see what my final moment of life would look like.

I realized that I looked REALLY stupid.  And then I realized that if I died, THEY would win.  I’d be dead, and they would survive.  So I made the decision that day to never give up on myself, even when the world certainly seemed to have given up on me.

Why am I telling you this?  Because despite ALL of that — plus more dramatic, dysfunctional crap I’ve had to deal with in my life — I have made peace with my father and we are okay.  We may not be super close, but we’re cool with each other.  Why?  Because it’s never too late.

*Next Post: How to start Day One of the 153Promise.

 

It’s Never Too Early

On By JenniferOzgurIn Love, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Yes, I wrote “One Million Kisses” with the idea of reading it to your children from the time of them being very young.  I had the image of a mother or father when I shopped it around to a publisher… or a grandparent or aunt.  Even a beloved babysitter.

But what if you don’t have children yet?  Does that mean that making the 153Promise does not apply to you?  Absolutely not.

The 153Promise refers not just to the literal 153 kisses a day for 18 years in order to reach One Million Kisses.  It’s the vow you can make to ANY person in your life that you will honor them on a daily basis- not only by showing physical affection, but through kinds acts, respecting and valuing them as a person, and generally fostering an emotionally healthy relationship with them so they feel safe to be themselves and generally feel better about themselves and their place in the world through daily interactions with you.

So if you don’t currently have a child, you can begin setting the stage to be a great parent by reading up on the topic now.  You can learn what skills are needed to nurture a well-adjusted child and start to cultivate those skills at this time.  Once a baby comes into your life, it will NOT get easier, that’s for sure.  So it’s really a perfect time to begin researching this noble pursuit.

Compare raising a child to buying a house or car, or even a meal… isn’t it common sense to look into the neighborhood or school district of a home you are considering buying?  And you most likely at least go onto the internet to learn about which car gets the most gas mileage or has the best crash impact tests.  Chances are, you at least read a few online reviews before booking reservations for Date Night.  Why wouldn’t you want to do the same thing regarding starting a family?

But what if you aren’t even in the “market” for a kid… how does 153Promise affect you?

Presuming you aren’t monk sequestered away from society, you do interact with people on a daily basis.  Therefore, it’s wise to want to learn how to best interact with the individuals you come in contact with on a daily basis.  Your boss and coworkers; your roommate; your dentist or mechanic… anybody who has the potential to affect your life… which is pretty much everybody you meet!

So whether you are a son/daughter, brother/sister, cousin/friend,  or partner (business or romantic), you can benefit from making the 153Promise to dedicate yourself to showing loving appreciation to the people in your life on a daily basis.

Are you in???

 

 

What is “Love,” Anyway???

On By JenniferOzgurIn Health, Love, Validation2 Comments

What a crazy question, right?  Yet I find a lot of instances where people do not know what it looks or even feels like.

Yes, there’s romantic love, familial love, platonic love… but what they all should have in common is respect for the individual.  It is not about controlling the other, or giving into the other person’s desires despite your own.  That enmeshment creates a very unhealthy, dysfunctional relationship, also known as codependency.

Rather, there should be a very clear boundary between where one person ends and another begins.  (The only exception is in very young children, before they even have a sense of themselves verses the outside world.  More on this later in a post about “Attachment Parenting.”)  These boundaries should be clearly articulated with expectations and follow through when they are violated so the love is not given or withheld as punishment.  That would be very cruel and would teach someone that your love is conditional to meeting certain criteria.  It would damage someone’s self esteem to think that they are not essentially loveable enough just for who they are as a person.

It’s been said by relationship gurus that “Love” is a verb, not a noun.  It’s what we DO to show love to the other person.  And how we love tells a lot about who we are as a person.

Therefore, I think it’s necessary to define my version of love since the 153Promise is all about reminding your child/significant other or anybody else in your life that you love them.  I’ve thought about it, and I think I can boil it down to a very simple acronym… LOVE.

(As if you didn’t see that coming…)

Love is: Listening     Observing     Validating     Empathizing*

Listening is a lot harder than you think.  It requires time and attention.  It means stopping what you are doing and really making them top priority.  It’s not multi-tasking, like letting them talk while you are folding the laundry, or patiently waiting while they talk so you don’t interrupt them, all the while trying not to forget what YOU want to say next.  Rather, listening requires taking yourself out of the equation while you only regard what they are saying.  It is trying to learn who they are as a person as they share their thoughts with you.  It is silently communicating with your eyes that you care what is coming out of the person’s mouth.  (Has anybody ever said to you, “Are you even listening to me?”  Chance are, you violated one of my definitions above…

Observing means realizing that to really love a person, you need to regard not just what they say, but how they say it, what they look like, and all the other clues they leave for you… either consciously or unknowingly.

Percentages differ upon the research, but it’s widely accepted that the vast majority of communication is non-verbal.  Therefore, we need to be hyper vigilant in reading all the signals in a relationship. If a husband asks the wife if it’s okay to go out with the boys instead of making good on his promise to take her out for dinner and she says, “That’s fine,” look at her face.  If she’s not sincerely smiling, and you take her response as a green light, you will be one sorry husband.

If you ask your son at the dinner table if anything interesting happened in school that day and he keeps looking down at his plate and is covering his peas with his mashed potatoes, you should know that he’s withholding something.

Or if you teenage daughter suddenly starts doing her own laundry when she always used to complain about it as a chore, you may want to beat her at switching it over to the drier.  Chance are, she’s wearing things you didn’t buy.

I’m not suggesting being a helicopter parent or a controlling partner.  But it’s important to acknowledge that there’s a lot more to showing love than giving them a chance to talk to (or at) you.  You do NOT want to be that parent whose kids say to their friends, “Nah… my parents won’t even know/notice” when confronted with a temptation.

Validating is one of my favorite words.  It means that you respect their point of view because you took the time to empathize with them.  They feel like you really “get” them and that true communication occurred.  It can be done through using phrases like, “What I hear you saying is…” or you can confirm that you understood by respecting their wishes or honoring their requests, as long as they are healthy and reasonable.  It also establishes trust because if they come to you and you basically say, “I understand,” they will keep coming back to you.

Think of how many times couples fight because one comes to the other just to vent about a problem and the other responds with, “Well, you should have….” or “Here’s what you should do.”  Did the person with the problem ask for a solution or criticism?  Of course not.  And the other person gets his or her feelings hurt because they thought they were helping, and it was not well receive.  Double invalidation.  Really, the first person should say, “I really need you to be my support right now and hear what happened to me.”  And the other person only needs to say, “I’m so sorry you are hurting.”  To which the first will say, “Thank you.  I knew I could come to you.”  Warm fuzzies all around.  The same holds true with toddlers.

A little kid just wants validation that they are being heard.  It’s not even that they really need to get what they want; they just want to know that you understood what they said.  Once you validate a person, everything afterword becomes less crucial.  There are not more battles of will or hurt feelings.  It’s actually pretty magical when you start making validation a top priority in a relationship.

Encouraging has the word “courage” in it.  (I am a self-confessed Word Nerd!)  But that’s not all- “courage” has its roots from the French “couer,” or “heart.”  That means when you encourage someone, you are actually helping them to believe it in their heart.

If your daughter doesn’t make the volleyball team, you encourage her that she’s still a great kid and that if she practices over the course of the year, maybe she’ll make it next time.  Or you can encourage your friend to keep looking for a job, even though he’s not getting any bites and you may even introduce him to your neighbor whom you know is hiring.

So, that’s it: listening, observing, validating, and encouraging.  If you do practice those four verbs, I truly believe that you will be fostering a healthy relationship and be well on your way to your daily 153.

*In later posts, I changed “Encourage” to “Empathize”