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Posted on Jun 18, 2013 in church stuff, healing, incarnational, leadership, relationships | 3 comments

safer people make safer conversations

log in your eye

this week is “healing the divides” week here at the blog, a few different posts centered on creating ways to love each other better despite our differences.  we started yesterday with 8 ways those from more liberal-progressive and conservative-evangelical persuasions can love each other better.  today, i want to talk about becoming safer people who can hold the space for safer conversations.

a really big thing that gets in the way of healthier-ways-of-living-in-the-tension-of-our-differences is unsafety.

it’s impossible to have unity and love when there’s all kinds of unsafe, unhealthy behavior going on.

to me, another word for “safety” is “healthy”.

safer, healthier people make safer, healthier conversations.

they bridge divides.

my take is that this skill of becoming safer people is under-developed ones in many churches. we are often good at bible knowledge & ministry programs & all kinds of other amazing tasks, but some of these basic healthy relationship skills are the lowest priority. maybe because they are much harder to practice!  in fact, a lot of our experiences have made church one of the most unsafe, unhealthy places on earth and that is part of the reason many people have given up on it all together. i understand. my experience has been that many systems–faith-based or not–stink at healthy relationship in community with one another.

learning how to be safer people won’t come in a rush, but it is so possible, especially when we are honest with ourselves about our own patterns. it’s always easy to finger point and call someone else “unsafe” but the truth is that there is always a way each and every one of us can become more safe ourselves.

part of bridging these divides is looking at the log in our own eye and working on ways to become safer people ourselves first.

as we do, our conversations will shift, we will become more graceful people, we will be able to hold a space with people who see things differently, we will learn some great stuff we need to learn, and in the end we will better reflect God’s image.

i wrote about these in down we go: living into the wild ways of Jesus in the chapter on welcoming pain and in different ways here the blog, but i thought it would be good to re-visit them this week as part of this series. many years ago i read safe people by cloud & townsend (really worth reading related to healthy relationships) and many of these ideas have evolved from there with time & experience. it’s been helpful to me to translate beyond individuals to communities as well.

i always need these reminders, especially when engaging in difficult conversations about hard things.

unsafe people (and communities):

  • tend to be extremely judgmental and defensive.
  • are quick to offer advice to others but remain unwilling to receive input or feedback.
  • think we have all the answers and reflect certainty that their opinion or perspective is somehow superior.
  • blame others for our mistakes but refuse to take responsibility for any of our own.
  • often demand trust as implicit in the relationship without having to offer any work on our end to earn it.
  • remain closed to change and are extremely rigid in our beliefs.
  • offer unsolicited advice, quick fixes, and do not take no for an answer.
  • use our power to make others unequal with them.
  • avoid conflict all together or create disproportionate conflict to somehow gain control in our relationships.
  • project that somehow we “have it all together” and rarely express our own struggles or weaknesses.

yikes! this is always such a convicting list! overall, i’d say that unsafe people & communities divide people. and they certainly can’t hold a space for the kinds of healthy, loving, honest, respectful conservations we need to have if we want to try to heal some of these deep divides between us.

but there is a better, healthier way to hold this space together.

safe people (and communities):

  • are good listeners, willing to sit with painful stories instead of fixing or giving unsolicited advice.
  • offer love and acceptance freely, without strings attached.
  • see beyond the surface to the good that’s within us.
  • help us feel comfortable being ourselves and challenge us to grow, stretch and practice.
  • value relationship over opinions or differences, and nurture a spirit of equality with those different from us.
  • receive help, input, and feedback instead of only giving it, and engage in healthy conflict instead of avoiding it.
  • are honest and kind, brave enough to say the hard things in love, while staying honest about our own shortcomings.
  • remain humbly connected to our stories and pain and are willing to share  our weaknesses and struggles with others who are safe enough.

safety should never be confused with comfort. they are two different things entirely, and that is such a misrepresentation of the word. safety is sometimes horribly uncomfortable. far harder. far trickier. far more mysterious and intangible.

but oh, becoming safer people would help create safer conversations and help heal divides that desperately need healing.

God show us how to be safer people. we want to learn.

 

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Posted on Jun 17, 2013 in church stuff, healing, incarnational, jesus is cool, relationships | 24 comments

8 ways those from more liberal-progressive and conservative-evangelical persuasions can better love each other

colossians 314

* it’s going to be a busy 2 weeks on the blog and then i’m going to take all of july & august off so i can enjoy my kids home from summer, work on faith shift, and focus on refuge stuff that really needs some attention. i am going to miss you and it will be freaky to not think in blog for that long but after 2 weeks with lots of posts, you’ll probably be sick of me and ready for a break, too!  i’ve got two different series of posts for this week and next week. this week is “healing the divides” week, centered on ways to heal divisions between us from all kinds of angles & next week is “grief week”, centered on some experiential exercises to grieve church & faith losses, and other kinds, too (yeah, just a little light summer reading!). there are all kinds of divides between people, but one of the deepest and most apparent in blog-land, wider-church-conversations, and real life is the deepening chasm between those from a more liberal-progressive persuasion and those with more conservative-evangelical views.  here’s a start at healing some of what separates us; i thought it would be a good one to kick off this week. 

//

while i’m a firm believer in inter-faith dialogue, i think a far-overlooked topic is how hard intra-faith dialogue really is–especially the tricky conversations between those of a more liberal-progressive persuasion and those more firmly committed to conservative-evangelical roots.  i can’t stand labels, and i am at risk here by naming these two groups, but let’s face it–we are having a hard time living in the tension of our differences!

and we make up a big part of this crazy beautiful thing called The Church.

some of you are so over it, thinking why even bother, there’s no chance we’ll ever be able to figure this one out so we might as well spend our energy elsewhere. i feel it, too, and all this talk about theology when the world is crying out for hope makes me a little crazy. i think sometimes it’s a great distraction  and i have some pretty serious doubts that Jesus would be excited about the time, energy, resource and heart that is often spent this direction. i kinda think he’d say “get off facebook, stop reading blogs, and go offer some cups of cold water for Christ’s–i mean my—sake!”

at the same time, i can’t bury my head in the sand and hope for the day i wake up and we’re all getting along.

we are stuck with each other in this mess.

and there’s only one way out–Love.

love hurts.  love is hard.  but it’s what we are called to.

the world is watching.  those hanging on to their faith by a thread are watching. the future generations are watching.

and  so far what we’re offering them are deep divides, angry answers on the internet, homogenous churches and ministries, fear, and disdain.  we’re either fighting or fleeing.

i believe there’s a third way-a more mature way, a harder way, a better way.

but it will require so much freaking humility and work and God’s crazy-supernatural-help to get there. on our own, we’re toast, but maybe God could help us learn and practice some better rules of engagement for both strains, ways to hold this space more safely, to live in the tension of our differences, to break down walls instead of build them.

here are some thoughts off the top of my head, ideas for those with a more liberal-progressive and conservative-evangelical persuasions to better love each other.

1.  remember first, that other person is a child of God, made in God’s image. dignified dialogue always starts with this.  it doesn’t hurt to also remember, they’are also probably fighting some kind of battle (because we all are). we need to lay down our stereotypes of each other that cause us to often close our hearts and our minds to each other from the get-go.

2.  respect each other’s biblical conclusions.  the Bible is a unique and amazing book, but the most damage gets done over claiming our individual biblical interpretation is “God’s truth.” none of us can see with God’s perfect x-ray vision; every view we have is “through a glass darkly.” let’s be more honest, the truth we believe is the truth we’ve decided to believe, and we must respect each other’s conclusions without just shredding each other’s biblical scholarship.  we may see the Bible differently, but folks on all sides of these conversations are somehow honestly wrestling with it. it is important to respect that.

3. lay down our “if they would justs…” this means trying to get the other person to see it the way we see it or change our position or confess the error of our ways or grasp that one other point that we’re sure will shift everything. if our agenda is mutual love, respect, and understanding, we’ll be okay. if it’s about winning, managing, out-bible-versing, or out-smarting each other, we’re just going to inflict harm and still get nowhere.

4. never pull the “but God says” or “but it’s clear in the Bible” card. seriously. this one has got to go if we are going to bridge these deep divides. walking humbly with God includes being humble about the way we’ve come to understand things about God.  a much better alternative is, “i feel like God is stirring this up in me or leading me to this conclusion or i’ve wrestled with this with in scripture and here’s where i’ve landed…” but let’s own it instead of pulling a trump card which immediately shuts down every conversation.

5. acknowledge our own blind spots.  we all have them. i am a crazy justice & mercy person and have faces of certain friends always in front of me, and sometimes it prevents me from seeing the bigger picture. i am allergic to anything that smells of judgement of me and can sometimes close myself off to honest critique. i can be prideful and smug and sure.  we all have different blind spots that are important to notice, acknowledge, and respect how they are playing into these conversations.

6. celebrate what we do agree on. sometimes it’s just a little bit, but like the power of a mustard seed to move a mountain, a common thread can strengthen and sustain relationships more than we might expect. underneath our differences are some real gems. i’ve seen it happen, and it is so pretty.

7. always put relationships above our positions. positions aren’t worth it, people are. this means staying friends, agreeing to disagree, tabling conversations, laughing at the ridiculousness of what we’d let divide us, and honoring hearts above personal convictions.

8. trust that God is big enough for our differences. in fact, maybe that’s what he’s trying to tell us. while our small brains focus on theological differences, maybe there’s another story that is harder to embrace–that Christ’s love could bind us all together in perfect unity and is wide and deep and strong and high enough to hold all our best-shots-at-all-this. that real peace, shalom, is all of our differences held together and tangled up together to make something beautiful, diverse, and powerful.

this is tough stuff.  i am so sad at our easy way out–to build walls, to force people to be in or out, to demand answers, clench fists, to harden hearts, to fight, to flee, to make groups-that-are-a-bunch-of-people-who-believe-all-the-same-thing.

yeah, i am hopeful and crazy enough to believe we have a shot at doing this better, but goodness gracious we’re going to need God’s help.

what would you add to this list?

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Posted on Jun 5, 2013 in healing, incarnational, injustice | 39 comments

everyone’s fighting some kind of battle.

be kinder than necessary

a few weeks ago a dear friend from high school posted this picture of me on facebook. i’m totally embarrassed to share it here, but i thought i’d be brave to make a point.

homecoming queen pic

yes, i was the basketball homecoming queen my senior year of high school. don’t hold it against me. and yes, homecoming queens and cheerleaders can be nice people, ha ha.

i hadn’t looked at this picture in years, but when i did, this thought crossed my mind:  if they only knew.

yeah, that was a terrible night for me. 4 months before that homecoming game i had an abortion and was still healing. i was a mess inside, like a big hot mess, and no one except for my very best friend knew what happened to me. i was so adept at hiding my pain that everyone around me never saw anything but my smiling face, my  kathy’s-got-it-all-together-ness.  they had no idea that i was filled  to the brim with shame and self-hatred, that i could barely breathe. my insides and my outside are completely opposite of each other in this picture, but no one knew. they didn’t have any idea of the battle i was fighting inside my soul.

it made me think of how easy it is to judge others, to look on the outside and be jealous, to be judgmental, to think of ourselves as better-than or less-than others because of what we see on the outside. we do it with homecoming queens, we do it with co-workers, we do it with people at church, we do it with people on the streets, we do it with people sitting next to us on buses, on trains, on airplanes, we do it just about everywhere we go.

we assume.

but the truth is, every human being–every human being–is fighting some kind of battle.

addictions to drugs, alcohol, porn, work, food, unhealthy relationships, gambling, spending.

mental illnesses

chronic pain

the fall out of painful divorces

cutting and self-harm

struggling children

caring for ailing parents

past abortions

cancer

legal troubles

longing for a child, a spouse 

shame, shame, and more shame

eating disorders

the trauma of sexual abuse

the deep wounding of physical and emotional abuse

confusing sexuality

hurting marriages

shattered dreams

broken relationships

death of a spouse of a kid of a friend of a family member

loss of jobs

debilitating fear

homelessness

near homelessness

being bullied

insecurity & unworthiness

church woundedness

financial distress

pressure to succeed

you  name it, someone’s struggling with it.

it’s probably the guy at the grocery store or your neighbor or the woman you are standing next to at a soccer game or your mom or your dad or your kid or the person on the pew next to you or the one with the microphone or the one opening the bible or the one with big letters behind their name on their business card or the one holding a sign on the street corner or the one writing you a ticket or the one annoying the hell out of you for some weird reason or the one teaching your kids or the one fixing your car or the one you are sitting next to on the bus or the one standing in line in front of you at social services or the one who just came out as gay or the blogger who just wrote something that pissed you off or the one who signs your paychecks or the one who leads your small group or the one who stumbles out of the bar drunk or the one who keeps posting irritating things on facebook or the one picking up the bag at the food bank or the one paying for their groceries or the one smiling as they walk across the basketball court in a gold dress and wave to the crowd.

yep, everyone’s fighting some kind of battle.

God, give us eyes to see beyond what’s on the surface.

give us ears to listen beyond what we hear.

help us learn to live without assuming, without judging. give us hearts filled with compassion because of our shared humanity, our shared experience, our shared trying-to-make-it-through-the-day-as-best-we-can-despite-the-obstacles, our shared desire to be known and loved and accepted not for what’s on the outside but for what’s on the inside, too.

no less-than, no better-than.

no less-than, no better-than.

let’s be kinder than necessary.  everyone’s fighting some kind of battle.

//

ps: june down we go column is up at sheloves magazine. the theme all month is “reclaim”–what’s under the rubble.  may we reclaim God’s image in us and help others reclaim theirs, too! 

 

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Posted on May 28, 2013 in church stuff, dreams, healing, identity, incarnational, relationships, spiritual formation, the refuge | 23 comments

corrective experiences

when we love and respect people jean vanier

“you’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. we’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. if i make you light-bearers, you don’t think i’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? i’m putting you on a light stand. now that i’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! keep open house; be generous with your lives. by opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.” - matthew 5:11-16, the message

//

i have a lot of amazing therapist friends. it is a gift and they help many people grow, heal, and become better people. the other day i got an email from one of them who shared  a story with me about how part of our messy, crazy, putting-our-money-where-our-mouth-is community is creating “corrective experiences” for people.

in therapy, corrective emotional experiences are when we have an experience that repairs the traumatic influence of previous experiences.

i’d say it’s when we have an encounter that somehow heals, repairs, or shifts a previous trauma, assumption, or wound.

many of us have a lot of pain related to life and faith. we’ve been used, abused, hurt, cast aside. others have been unvalued, ignored, dismissed. some have specific experiences we remember vividly; others are a blur of a whole-bunch-of-hard-things strung together that create a pervasive feeling that we live with day to day.

feeling unloved, “not enough”, unworthy, or unvalued are probably the top ones for most people i know.

in my opinion, feeling unloved, “not enough”, unworthy, or unvalued should not be the primary feelings for God’s kids.

seriously, something is really wrong with this story if that is what it has consistently produced.

i believe in every part of my soul that the biggest work of the body of Christ is to help create “corrective experiences” for people to heal old wounds and begin to find new life and hope. to repair a bridge to God that has been blown out.

one of my biggest sorrows is that i have had very few corrective experiences in my interactions with the wider traditional church. in fact, more often than not, some of the old wounds get re-opened–that theology trumps relationship, that sin is measured, that there are levels of real christians, that faith needs to be controlled and managed, that leadership is about power-and-strength (not the good kind), that women are less-than.

so many people have given up on the possibility of the church being a safe place, of christians accepting them just-as-they-are, of feeling dignity, respect, and value.

this makes me so sad.

i know i can’t change the world, but i can do play my small little part in creating corrective experiences for people.

where instead of passing judgment, i can pass on love.

where instead of subtly or directly expecting people to change, i can accept them just as they are.

where instead of cementing the message that they don’t belong, i can welcome all people freely to the table.

where instead of shutting down someone’s painful story, i can listen and resist my urge to fix.

where instead of expecting people to believe what i do, i can honor their theologies and trust God is at work in their lives as much as he’s at work in mine.

where instead of seeing myself different from people, i can notice what we have in common.

to me, this is light. this is keeping open house. this is being generous with our lives. this is what will heal wounds and help crack open a door that has been slammed shut out of pain.

more than ever i believe this is the work of the church–to create corrective experiences for people.

so when our past indicates that by sharing the truth about who we are we might be met with judgement, we are met with love and acceptance instead.

when we risk bravely asking for help even though every part of us fears being shamed, we actually get some without condition.

when we mistreat someone, we received honest feedback from that person instead of anger or rejection.

when we let our guard down and share some of our real feelings, we are heard and treated with kindness and respect.

when we say no, the person on the other end accepts it without shaming or blaming.

when we get angry or do-all-kinds-of-weird-things-that-we-are-sure-will-cause-others-to-reject-us, we talk about it openly and no one leaves.

when we are sure that church couldn’t ever be safe enough for us, we encounter loving people who are part of a church and stir that possibility for us.

this week, i saw some of these corrective experiences in action; oh, it is always just so pretty!

it gets me all fired up about what could be if we focused less on programming and more on relationship. less on theological correctness and more on practice. less on the surface and more on the deep places of our hearts.

yeah, my dream is that the body of Christ was widely known as an army of healers, people who…

blow minds and hearts away with Jesus’ radical love and acceptance.

spark some freaky feeling inside hurting people where they go “huh, that’s weird, i thought christians were judgmental”

ignite a flicker of a flame inside that says “maybe God does love me”

restore dignity where it’s been stripped.

build worth and value where it’s been destroyed.

are safe and healthy and embody what so many of us didn’t get in our broken families.  

may we play our small part in creating corrective experiences where others feel God’s love, hope, mercy, dignity, justice, and heart for them through us–his flawed but willing ambassadors this side of heaven.

there’s a lot of work to do.

but Light is powerful and a little goes a long way.

imagine what a lot could do.

 

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Posted on May 14, 2013 in church stuff, healing, incarnational, leadership, synchroblog, the refuge | 36 comments

what seems to help in the midst of pain

pain is a treasure rumi quote

“when we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. the friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” – henri nouwen

this month’s synchroblog is centered on pain & how to love & care for others who are in pain.  i laughed this morning because today’s my birthday and it’s a little ironic that somehow even on this day  i ended up talking about pain!  there’s an awful lot of grief & loss & hard stuff in this world and for some reason it feels like it keeps ramping up. so many hard things every direction. what is our responsibility in it?  what should we say or not say? what helps & what hurts?

in our human DNA is a deep desire to avoid pain, either in our own life or in the lives of others.

it’s hard to hurt.  and it’s hard to be around other people who are hurting.

at the refuge, our little faith community, there’s a high degree of pain. but i always tell everyone that really, we are no different from almost any other church or group (except that others might have health insurance & live in bigger houses). we just have a culture of raw honesty, where what’s on the inside is freer to come out on the outside. we are trying to be people who welcome pain to the table instead of run from it.  most humans share many of the same troubles & woes, but many don’t have a safe place to express it out loud.

pain and struggle often create shame. i remember when i first started sharing more of my real story; every part of me wanted to run for the hills, move away, do anything i could to not have to live with relationships where all my stuff was out on the table, exposed.

i’m always learning, too, but here are a few ideas that seem to help in the midst of pain:

1. less words, more presence.  i have a theory that we often have an unconscious hope that if we could  say the right words in the exact right way, it would radically help another person. most people aren’t one sentence away from feeling better when they are in pain.  presence seems to matter more than words.  long-haul-ness goes the furthest for those in pain. many people are eager to help and support at the beginning of pain eruptions, but over time many people drop off and quit wondering how we’re doing. safe people don’t do drive-by pain relief.  they are in it for the long haul, which i keep realizing is sometimes the hardest thing of all.

2. less statements, more questions.  along with the one-sentence-away-from-changing-everything theory, it’s a natural default to talk instead of listen. i don’t mean interrogation (although i can be guilty of asking too many hard questions in one sitting, ha ha), but questions usually save us from advice giving and fixing. they help people process out loud and take a lot of pressure off us coming up with the right words that can’t be found anyway.

3. less anxiety, more trust.  pain creates so much anxiety in us.  this is why when people are hurting, we have an instinct to “fix it” or do-something-anything that will help the hurting person feel better in that moment. i feel it all the time. it’s a weird innate control thing and in so many ways, it’s about us playing God and taking on more responsibility than we need to. it’s why i have a love-hate thing with 12 step groups. i  love that there’s no cross-talk, advice giving and fixing, but inside i sometimes feel a little crazy that we just thank people for sharing and go on to the next person.  however, it models something we need to learn–we can’t fix anyone else.  the best thing we can do is listen, honor the pain ,and trust the long healing path.

4. less perfection, more grace.  relational dynamics like hanging-in-the-thick-of-pain-with-people is not formulaic.  we will screw it up, we will say lame things, we will fail people.  recently i gave unsolicited advice to a hurting friend.  yikes, as soon as the words tumbled out of my mouth, i knew they would hurt instead of help. i was reminded, yet again, how we need grace as friends, as leaders, as people. we’re imperfect people trying to stay present in hard places; we won’t be able to master every moment.  this is messy and sometimes we will have to apologize & ask for grace (and give it to our friends), too.

maybe the best thing we can do to hold the space for others’ pain is to learn to hold the space for ours.  if we are people who push our own pain away, we usually will do the same for others.  if we are hard on ourselves for feeling certain feelings, we will usually be hard on others, too.  i love what the apostle paul says in 2 corinthians 1:3-4, that we comfort others with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.  it’s why i don’t think most people need another Bible study or church service; there are plenty of those.

we need places to practice getting in touch with our story.

i’m going to quote henri nouwen twice in one post because it’s a great reminder:

“the christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.”

yeah, our biggest strength is our weakness, our pain. 

in the end, that’s all we’ve got.

//

other bloggers writing about pain this month:

 

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Posted on May 11, 2013 in healing, identity, incarnational, mommydom, relationships | 10 comments

there are lots of ways to mother.

there are lots of ways to mother

it’s mother’s day weekend in the USA, the time where a bunch of women feel special and extra-loved, and another group of women often don’t.  like so many other holidays, many who feel great about it  sometimes forget that there are others who really struggle this particular weekend. church is extra sucky if they make all the mothers stand up and get a flower and you’re the one still sitting. in divorced families, the reality of what’s been lost creeps up.  others have lost their mothers or significant women in their life and it’s another year of grief.

i promise, i’m not trying to ruin the holiday for anyone, really!  as a mom of 5, it’s not a half bad weekend for me. i love all the spoilage.  but i feel really passionate about making sure we don’t equate mother’s day with only birthing babies.

having children often becomes the ultimate pinnacle of womanhood, especially christian womanhood.  this pushes an awful lot of women to the margins and dishonors all that we were created to be beyond making babies.

sure, having babies is one way to mother, but there are countless other ways, too.

all women are mothers.

it’s how God made us. it looks different for each of us and we have to break down the crazy stereotypes and ways we’ve been boxed in, fenced in, and limited in order to get to the essence of our awesomeness as women.  just like there are lots of ways to love God,  there are lots of ways to mother, to bring things to life, to create, to nurture, to build, to protect.  

women mother when we: 

call out God’s image in someone.

cultivate art & words & beauty. 

advocate for another. 

build friendships and life-giving relationships.

midwife spiritual shifts.

make new families who come from our wombs & orphanages & foster care

influence change.

hug a friend.

listen to a friend. 

weep with those who weep.

rejoice with those who rejoice.

start something. build something. create something. 

protect what’s good. 

lend hope to someone who needs to borrow it.  

inspire dreams & new ideas.

nurture pockets of justice & love & freedom in small or big ways. 

lead teams.

care for our coworkers, our neighbors, someone else’s child

care for parents.

care for ourselves.

yeah, women are awesome–strong, tender, wise, beautiful, compassionate, creative, powerful, brave, messy.   kids, no kids, single, married, gay, straight, rich, poor, educated, uneducated, divorced, widowed, young, old–it makes no difference.

the one thing we have in common is that we all somehow mother.

and i’m really glad there are lots of ways to do that.  

that’s fun to celebrate.  i hope we all tell a woman today how you are grateful for her mothering.

happy mother’s day!

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