Don’t miss my Blogtalk Radio show tonight at 8:30 PM! I’ll be discussing the six critical factors to evaluate when looking at how healthy or viable a relationship may be, and how people often delude themselves, thinking love alone will get them through. Here’s news for you: love is not enough!!!!
Call in toll-free at 877-497-9046 to be able to join me live on the air with questions or comments or stories. I welcome all of it!
If you can’t make the live show, simply catch the recording at: www.BlogTalkRadio.com/SusanLager
One can’t escape the incredible news about Casey Anthony clearly looking like she’s gotten away with murder. People everywhere are outraged, disenchanted with the American legal system, and also sadly feeling cynicism and resignation about the lack of fairness and justice in the world. Murderers get set free, while Willie Nelson gets probable jail time for possession of 3 ounces of marijuana. The world is upside down! Spouses who lie and cheat fare no worse in court than spouses who have been loyal and true. Life-long, diligent employees get muscled out of companies to make room for cheaper “twenty somethings” with questionable skills. Parents abuse their kids verbally and often physically without consequences. Drunk drivers slaughter innocent victims en route to work or a family picnic. What does one do to avoid pessimism and utter despair??
It’s really a matter of where you put your attention. Focus instead, each day on all the goodness, generosity, kindness, and love in your everyday life. Connect with the toll-taker, the clerk, the server, the mechanic, the teller, the boss, the neighbor, the friend, the co-worker. Be intentional about finding innocence, decency, good will, courage, humor, creativity, humility, compassion, and joy in all the people you encounter. You will find an abundance of all those things if you just look for them. Then, even with all its injustice and cruelty, the world will feel like a safer, happier home to you.
Goodnight,
Susan Lager
PS. Tune in to my next BlogTalk Radio show, “Communication Problems Gone With Simple Five-Minute Fixes” on Wednesday, July 13th at 9PM. Call in live to participate in the discussion at toll-free 877-497-9046.
Hello Reader,
We’ve all been glued to our TVs, watching with horror the unfolding tragedy in Japan in the aftermath of their most powerful earthquake ever. As I write this, I dread finding out about the death toll, the human suffering, and the likelihood of a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima power plant. Some of the aftershocks of the earthquake have also been huge with as yet an unknown toll on life and the Japanese landscape, and infrastructure.
I’ve been thinking about the dread and anxiety related to aftershocks, as a kind of re-traumatization. It’s reminded me about “aftershocks” in marriage and partnerships, and how an initial traumatizing event tends to reverberate in a way which can be entirely overwhelming, as I imagine the aftershocks are for the Japanese now. (I’m aware that a life or death catastrophic event is, in many ways incomparable in the degree of suffering to an event which is emotionally traumatic). The concept of “aftershock”, however, is familiar to anyone who’s spouse has had an affair, leaving a residual breach of trust, and “reverberations” in the way of new information about the marital history, which contradict history as it has been known. My work with couples who are wrestling with some emotionally devastating event, often centers on these “aftershocks” and how they jar the landscape of a marriage.
For anyone who is trying to repair the damage caused by some emotional or trust breach, my hope is that you appreciate the devastating impact of these “aftershocks”, and that you don’t rush to closure for your own purposes.
With much sadness,
Susan Lager
