From Nancy Ross:

Harville Hendrix, author Getting the Love You Want and founder of Imago, with Nancy and Clo, June 17-21, 2010 Imago Conference in Toronto.

Late summer, early fall. The light changes, the sun weaving lace through green summer leaves. A soft cool breeze. There is a stillness in the air that holds promise of lush colour and ripe fruit soon to offer itself up in abundance for our taste pleasure. A peaceful time of year. Nothing powerful or traumatic yet. Just moving toward change, completion, and the magic of new beginnings. Absolutely a time to put away swim suits, poolside drinks, and short shorts and turn toward the excitement of what the next welcoming unknown has on offer.

A perfect time to commit to healing and learn to love again.

I have been reading Dr. Sue Johnson's book Hold Me Tight. She has done a stellar job of bringing Bowlby and Ainsworth's work into the now. As far back as the 18th. century, it was believed that children who were only fed and housed, but not loved and touched, would soon die of emotional starvation. In the 1960's John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth published research that showed children who have not been touched, loved, and kept safe do not thrive. Research today, no surprise at all, says that adults who are not touched, loved, and able to feel safe, also do not thrive. There is a significant connection between not feeling loved and being afraid, and high blood pressure and heart dis-ease.

Of course! Makes sense. When love shrivels and disappears, sadness, hurt, disconnection, fear, loneliness take over. We all thrive in a safe loving environment. We all long for safety and connection. We all fear aloneness. We were meant to be in connection. In the womb we were one with the mother/one with all that is, the safest we ever will be. Our life journey is about fulfilling the longing to be safe and fully connected in that same way again: one with the universal spirit/earth mother.

The work Dr. Johnson does is called Emotionally Focused Therapy. The work I do is called Imago. There are significant similarities. Especially in terms of knowing that connection, safety and love are key for a healthy and prosperous life. I am currently expanding my work to include families with adult children who want to heal their wounds and move forward together in a life  of peace and hope. Finding love. Comforting the aloneness. Families, and individuals in those families, lose track of themselves and each other. Fear and loneliness  turn into anger. Angry and hostile feelings are expressed in ways it is impossible for family members to hear because they shut down their ability to take in what is being sent their way. Mean feelings, shared in a mean way are ineffective. Hurt feelings said in a respectful way can open the door for connection, forgiveness, growing stretching and understanding.

I am offering an opportunity to create together, with me as a guide, a safe place for you and your adult siblings and your parents, to share, to listen, and to learn to understand each other. Further destruction creates war on the soul. Gentle facilitation can bridge the anger and hurt gap between you and help co create what you are longing for: a safe and connected place for your soul and spirit to rest.

I have been invited by the interfaith director at University of Toronto to participate on a panel talking to young couples about interfaith and intercultural relationships. I am so delighted! I am excited to have an opportunity to share what I have learned in my own personal spiritual journey, as well as with my many brave and creative couples who are consciously or unconsciously creating a path toward world harmony and universal acceptance of differences, exactly as they courageously struggle with integrating their differing spiritual and cultural values in their primary love relationship.

I believe people who are in a conscious and mindful relationship with someone of another faith or culture are on the leading edge of change and healing for our world. As each couple learns to understand and respect their partner's differences, they are helping all of us move forward toward sharing the world in peace and participating in keeping everyone feeling safe and realizing the profound depth of our connection to each other and to nature. These courageous path finders are our teachers and are helping all of us to understand.

Love makes the world go 'round! It sure does! Feeling safe makes it possible to love openly and with your whole heart and to risk thinking and feeling differently and to know those differences enhance the relationship while simultaneously strengthen the earth and all of us who live here.

It is a perfect time, right now, to begin the journey of trusting love. Check my web: www.couplerelationshiptherapy.com for some of the options I offer for us to work and learn to love together. Or think up with your partner what you might want and talk with me about it. I am always open to co creating how to learn and grow together.

In the meantime, remember to give each other at least one appreciation every day for something said or done that touched you, pleased you, helped you feel safe, or felt significant for any reason at all. Keep it in the positive. There is absolutely NO room or need for negative. That only hurts and pushes away the very person you long to be closer to. Welcome with open heart, the small things your partner does, like make the coffee in the morning, phone or text during the day to say I love you, or pick up the kids from school. It goes a long way to pave the road to connection, when you lead with the positive.

Enjoy this spectacular season and be in touch. I look forward to hearing from you.

Warmly, Nancy Ross

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