Yogis Anonymous

Ask for What You Want!

A few years ago I was leading a weekend workshop and we were talking about clear communication. A woman in the group started talking about her mother-in-law and how she always needed to have this particular condiment when she would come for dinner. If the condiment wasn’t there, she would express her absolute disappointment and it would become the main topic of the night. The woman in the group said she had learned to be sure to have the condiment on hand, because it didn’t matter what else she might have done – it didn’t matter if she’d cooked dinner for twenty-five people, if she’d spent days cleaning the house in advance of the dinner, if she’d baked three different desserts – if she failed to have this condiment, that was it. It should be noted that this item was not easy to come by, and only one store in the area consistently carried it, a store forty-five minutes away from the woman in the group, but only fifteen minutes away from her mother-in-law, and along the route she needed to travel to come to the house.

I don’t know if this was a power-play on her mother-in-law’s part, or some kind of sad test she conducted to see if her daughter-in-law really loved her enough to travel ninety-plus minutes to get said condiment, but I do know this is unreasonable. If you know you need something in order to be happy or at ease, it’s your responsibility to bring it. It’s okay to ask for what you want, and, in fact, I would highly encourage you to do that when we’re talking about emotional needs. It doesn’t mean you’ll always get what you’re asking for, but it makes it a lot easier on the people who love you. No one can be expected to read your mind, after all. But things like a condiment you have to have? That’s on you.

Ultimately, we are responsible for our own happiness. Of course the people closest to us can increase our happiness quotient. But my happiness is not something I put in anyone else’s basket, that’s mine to work out. If I know myself and know I might like to have some support in certain situations, I can share that with the people closest to me, and maybe they come through, and maybe they don’t. But if I don’t share it, I can’t get upset when they don’t figure it out on their own. If I don’t tell my kids to make their own beds, but then I stew as I’m making their beds myself, and shake my head and wonder why they don’t do it, that’s on me, not them. If it annoys me that I’m the one picking up glasses and plates from all over the house, or the only one to throw in a load of laundry, but I never say anything to my family because I want everything done my way, that’s on me, not them.

Life is short. We can make lists of things we aren’t getting, things people “should” do without being told, things we would never do, things people have said in the past that were hurtful, things we wish someone wouldn’t do, reasons we’re amazing and other people suck, reasons other people are amazing but we suck…you get the idea. There are all kinds of lists we can make, but a list of resentments isn’t the kind of list you want to have in your head! Be responsible for your own condiment needs and ask for what you want! You won’t always get it, but at least you’ll know you advocated for yourself!

Wayne Gretzky: You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

Proverb: Don’t ask, don’t get. Ask, sometimes get!

Sending you lots of love,

Ally Hamilton Hewitt

If the posts are helpful, please find my books here and my yoga classes and courses here!

Stay in Your Own Lane

It is so easy and so human to get twisted up with this idea, but the more you can stay in your own lane, the better. Any time I find myself thinking I know what someone else ought to feel, say or do, I realize I’m avoiding my own work. I have yet to meet another human being who has their own stuff so dialed in, they’re in a position to start weighing in on anyone else’s behavior, choices or way of being.

But it’s so appealing, isn’t it? Don’t we love to think we have all the answers when we stand on the sidelines of someone else’s life? If only they would do this (insert your opinion here), everything would get better for them! A lot of the time, our tendency to want to manage another person’s path is coming out of love. We want to help someone avoid pain or steer around a pothole we can see in the road that they don’t seem to see coming. It’s natural to find it excruciating to watch someone we love suffer, but sometimes we all need to struggle in order to strengthen. I know there have been times in my own life during the gnarlier moments of my healing process when I knew full well I was getting on a train that was going to crash into a brick wall, but I didn’t have the strength yet to not get on the train. We learn the lessons when we’re ready, and not a moment sooner. No one else can do that work for us, and even if you drag someone off the train, the minute you turn your back, they’re gonna jump back on unless they are ready to choose a different road themselves. See also: you can’t save anyone. This is particularly tough to swallow if we’re talking about our children or our partners, but there are times when the most loving thing we can do is just be there to listen, to help pick up the pieces, to offer our hugs and our hearts and our belief in them.

Have you ever tried to manage someone’s reaction to something you desperately need to say or do for your own well-being, sanity, or ability to survive? Maybe you’ve swallowed your own feelings to avoid hurting someone else? That’s also not staying in your own lane. I have found that most people want to be dealing with the truth, even if it’s heartbreaking. Most people would choose dignity and respect over pity or avoidance. That doesn’t mean compassion and sensitivity aren’t key when you need to share something you know is painful or disappointing with someone you care for, but most people would rather have full-on love instead of half-measures. And everyone deserves full-on love.

When I find myself trying to manage another person’s path, I remind myself I don’t drive the big bus with the LIFE license plate, I drive a tiny little car with the Ally license plate. That’s the car I get to drive, and even then it isn’t easy. That alone is plenty of work, especially if I want to show up in the world with compassion, patience, empathy, understanding and a sense of humor. And I do want to do that! Even if I stay focused on that work, I still don’t control the road ahead of me. I still might find myself in a falling rock zone, or a sudden storm, I still might get blown off the road by a tornado I failed to see on the horizon, or I might get a flat or my AC might break on a really hot day. All I get to work on is how I respond to whatever happens. I get to check my oil, make sure my tires have enough air, clean my windshield, pick a speed that’s safe for me and other travelers on the road, use my turn signals, pay attention to the signs, use a map or find my own way…but I don’t control the rest (and neither do you).

Sending you lots of love on the windy road,

Ally Hamilton Hewitt

If the posts are helpful you can find my books here, or you can come practice the art of opening to everything (yoga) with me here!

This Is Everything

I had a really hard time getting pregnant with my son and tried everything. Literally. Acupuncture, peeing on sticks, boiling “tea” that stunk up the house and even allowing a giant Maori healer to “rolf” my uterus (from the outside, haha. Even at the height of my insanity I wasn’t that crazy :)). I couldn’t figure out a way to practice non-attachment at the time, I just found myself intensely missing a person I hadn’t even met, a person who existed only in my mind and in my heart. Eventually (after a year of needles, tea, sticks, tears and said rolfing session, I went to a fertility doctor who discovered my estrogen levels were a little low, and presto, the bigger kid in this picture started materializing. If you had told me during that year to try to relax and trust that the exact right human was going to show up at the exact right time, I wouldn’t have believed you or been able to do that. I really thought I had to keep “doing things” to “make it happen”, and maybe I did. Maybe he would not have shown up if I hadn’t tried everything known to woman to get there, or maybe he would have, or maybe everything was required. I don’t have any regrets because that kid seems to me to be the only kid who could ever have been my son (my sun), and that girl with him? She showed up with no help from tea or needles or giant Maori.

When I got divorced I was devastated and heartbroken. When there are children in the picture I don’t think it can be any other way. It was not the vision I’d had or wanted, but it became clear to me that it was the only path forward where there could be love and nurturing for everyone involved. It was not easy and it has not been easy. Letting go of the picture of How Things Should Be or how you want things to be for yourself and your children is so hard, and trying to trust that a new path will emerge is also really hard. I credit my yoga practice for any strength and grace I was able to muster through all of that heartache, and I know for sure that’s the thing that kept me sane and strong and able to be a good mama to these small people who have little protection in the world unless we, as parents, figure out how to move through our grief, rage, disappointment, bitterness and all the other feelings that come up (especially when they involve the other most important person in our children’s lives, namely, their other parent), without allowing it to spill over onto them. That is also hard, and for me, again, I credit having been a child of divorce and knowing what that’s like, my yoga practice, therapy (highly recommend) and great, supportive, strong and understanding friends to help me through.

I’ve been a single mom for eight years. A few years ago after I’d been trying to navigate the post-divorce, how-do-you-date-when-you-have-children jungle, I thought, “Well, maybe giant romantic love is just not going to happen for me.” It was sort of surprising and disappointing because I’ve always been a huge romantic, but I thought, “Well, that might just not be in the cards for me, and that’s okay. I have these amazing children and work I love and my life is beautiful and fulfilling and full of all kinds of love. I can be okay this way.” And I did my best to let go of that picture of romantic love, too.

Two-and-a-half years ago I met a man at a bar (feel free to laugh) and he said all of these interesting and funny things and four hours went by in a snap and we didn’t even eat. Last Friday night he proposed to me and I said yes because I am not dumb. We had talked about the idea of getting married a couple of months ago, and even that was a shock to both of us. Neither of us thought we’d get married again. I thought living with someone was as far as I’d go. When you fall in love hard, though, this is what can happen. Your vision changes again. We checked in with our kids about the idea, I talked to my two, he talked to his three. We didn’t want to go forward unless there were thumbs up all around. If someone had said to me years ago, “try to trust that there’s a 6’3″ Englishman out there who’s going to show up in your life with his giant heart and huge brain, his kindness, loyalty, affection and wicked sense of humor and turn all of your ideas about what’s going to happen in your life right on their head,” I would have laughed. If someone had said, “There couldn’t have been anyone else for you but him,” I would have laughed again. I might have even rolled my eyes. I’m sharing this because I know how hard it is to trust. To take your sticky hands off the steering wheel and let things unfold and emerge and allow people to show up and show you who they are, and to allow yourself to be heartbroken when the path takes a turn you didn’t want or expect, but also to allow yourself a tiny sliver of awareness and hope that maybe life has something in store for you you cannot even imagine.

I’ve had an insane week. An amazing Valentine’s Day, an incredible birthday. My heart is so full. Have you seen baby goats dancing around? Google that if not, that’s how I feel. Take care of your precious heart. Let it break when it breaks, but let the breaking open you. Sending you so much love and some trust if you can muster it!

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here and my yoga classes and courses here.

What to Do When You Feel Really Vulnerable

standthere Ah, vulnerability. Sometimes it stuns you and brings you into a state of gratitude for being able to love so deeply, and sometimes it makes you want to run screaming from the room. I am often stunned into gratitude by my children, and the way that I love them, and the way that I am humbled in the face of that love. If you’ve been on this planet for any length of time, then you know that you do not call the shots, you do not get to decide what life is going to put in your path, or the paths of those you cherish. You know that the parameters are outside of your domain, you get no insight into the number of days or years you have here, and the same holds true for everyone you hold dear, and my god, if that does not make you acknowledge your own fragility, I don’t know what will. I’m usually inspired by that. I really try to leave nothing in the tank on any given day, and by that I mean I try to make sure the people in my life know how I feel about them without any doubt by the time I put my head on the pillow. That’s a day well spent.

I share anything I’ve learned along the way that might be useful (and was often learned as the result of a poor choice that led to a painful lesson), and even the stuff that is messy or not quite figured out yet, because I think we all feel better when we realize we are not alone in this thing. I am not drawn toward people who try to wrap things up in a neat little package because life is not neat, humans are not neat, and many of the things we feel cannot be tied up with a ribbon and deposited in the “isn’t this grand?” file. I want to know what your mess is, what your fears are, what keeps you up at night, or stuck in a job or relationship that’s crushing the soul out of you, because we have all been there, and when we talk about this stuff, it’s a relief; we realize everyone is human. Otherwise everyone walks around feeling alienated, like they’re the only loser who can’t seem to get this life thing “right.” When you lay your stuff on the table, you see it’s the same stuff everyone else unpacks, it’s just got your own fingerprints on it, your own particular spin. Think you aren’t worthy of love, that there’s something essentially broken about you? Yeah, I’ve been there. Think there are things that you’ve done that are so shameful you have to keep them hidden, even from your closest friends? I’ve also been there. Know what happens when you edit yourself because you’re afraid of what people might think? You feel like a fraud. I’ve been there, too.

Maybe you’re enraged and you feel like your pain is someone else’s fault, but that’s going to keep you stuck. You’re better off making friends with your pain, and dwelling less on how you accrued it. Regardless of whose fault it is, your pain can teach you a lot about who you are and what you need to be at peace. Nothing brings your pain and fear to the surface like an intimate relationship. When you start to get close to another person, when you start to share in a real way, in a deep way, in an unguarded way, you give that person the roadmap to hurt you if they wish. So you want to be careful about the people you draw close because your heart is precious and you don’t want to be reckless with it, any more than you’d want someone you love to be reckless with theirs. You cannot get close to people if you won’t drop your guard. This applies to friendships, familial relationships, and romantic ones, which tend to be the most triggering.

Self-study is part of the yoga practice, and it’s at the heart of any spiritual practice. If you don’t know yourself, you can’t be accountable for the things you do and say; you won’t know what’s driving you. Even if you do that work, it doesn’t mean your stuff won’t come up, it just means you’ll have the insight to recognize when it’s happening, and the tools to deal with it and sit with it, instead of acting out and having to clean up the messes behind you, if and when you can. You save yourself a lot of heartache when you can lean into your discomfort instead of trying to deny it, run from it, or numb it out.

I’m having one of those days today. Feeling weird about a situation in my life and like I want to jump out of my body for a little while, because I am just so uncomfortable. But since I can’t jump out of my body, I’ve just been trying to be kind to myself all day, and stay focused on everything that is beautiful and wonderful in my life, which is a lot, while also giving myself permission to feel confused and unsettled. Part of me can laugh a little because for f&ck’s sake, I’m not eighteen, and I’ve been through this so many times it’s not new territory. Getting close to someone new, or even thinking about doing that takes guts and a willingness to wait and see, and sometimes that is really hard, walking that line. Letting your guard down, but not too much. Feeling things out, and keeping your eyes open. Trying not to control the outcome, but just letting it unfold, and then watching as all your “friends” come out to wreak a little havoc. Fear of Abandonment wants to play hopscotch! Fear of Rejection just sat down on the couch and wants to have tea! Fear of Commitment wants to take a spin on the dance floor! Defensive Debbie thinks coffee with someone else is a fine idea, because screw this vulnerability thing! I just have to laugh and shake my head and feel thankful that I have a yoga practice and a meditation practice, and the ability to distance myself from my thoughts so I can look at them without necessarily believing them. Time solves most mysteries. People show you who they are, you just have to be willing to see them. When you feel vulnerable, the best thing to do is sit with that feeling. If you struggle with that, try this. It works for me!

Sending you lots of love, and a little chuckle. We humans are funny, aren’t we?

Ally Hamilton

Make the Right List

Find-a-place-inside So much of our ability to be at peace and to live life in a way that feels good, has to do with what we feed, and what we release. I have these two relatives, and I’ll call them uncles, although they aren’t uncles. One of them is the kindest, sweetest, most loving, joyful, affectionate, fun, generous person you’d ever want to meet. If you sit down next to him at a family function, he will share with you a list of all the amazing things you’ve ever done in your life from the time you were four, to the present. He will talk to you about the joy you’ve brought to his life, and how he knew you were special from the moment he laid eyes on you. You will tell him how much you love him, what an important person he is in your life, and how grateful you are that he is your uncle. You will want to make sure that he knows this. The family function will fly by, and you will leave feeling grateful and full and happy and inspired.

The other uncle, though, he’s a different tune altogether. If you sit down next to him, he will present you with a list of all the ways you, and every member of the family, have disappointed him over the years. If he adds alcohol to the mix, which he almost always does, he will even go back generations, and share a list of ancestral wrongs that predate you, him, and everyone you know. He will do this because he makes a hobby out of should. He’s something of an expert on what people should and should not do. If you let him, he will involve you in his should, and try to get you to should on yourself and everyone else. By the end of the family function you will feel drained and angry at the relative who did the seating arrangement.

These are two actual but disguised relatives in my family, but I’ll bet they mirror people in your own life. I’ve been watching this for years, and the kind uncle is living a life that is happy and fulfilled and full of family, while the other uncle is isolated and often feuding with family members, or writing them off altogether. He’s missed decades of time with certain cousins because he wasn’t speaking to their parents, but for him, this just adds fuel to the fire. Now he can be angry that these children were not brought to him as they grew up, and therefore do not know him, or have any real bond with him today.

The thing is, it’s really a choice. We all have heartaches and disappointments, ways we were let down, or in some cases neglected, abandoned, or abused. You know how the lotus flower grows in mud and muck, but emerges out of that as this gorgeous, white, stunning bloom? The same is true for people. We all have our mud and our muck, and it’s up to us to grow beauty out of the pain, or to wallow in it. Of course we can hold up our muck and show everyone how awful it is. We can excuse our poor choices or crappy behavior on the mess we’re coming out of, or we can get busy strengthening ourselves, and reaching toward the sunlight.

As a society and a culture, we are constantly encouraged to focus on what we don’t have, what isn’t going right, and all the ways we don’t measure up. Internally, we’re wired to worry, thanks to negativity bias, and the days when we had to avoid being eaten for lunch by saber tooth tigers. Externally and internally, we’re trained on lack, but that leaves us stuck in the mud of envy and despair, and that’s no way to live. You can point fingers like my angry uncle, or you can dig your way out of the mud like my happy uncle.

What are you focused on? Upon what do you place importance? Is it your looks? Your bank account? Your house, car, size of your boobs or biceps? Is it the latest, greatest vacation your friend took that you didn’t? Is it whether you have a partner, or whether you should get rid of the one you’ve got because s/he isn’t making you happy? Do you keep lists? If so, what’s on them? Do you have a list of ways you’ve been wronged, betrayed and let down, or a list of ways you’ve been amazed by the beauty in this world?

Whatever you feed will grow and strengthen. Is it important to acknowledge that your past has shaped you? Of course. You cannot be at peace if you don’t know yourself, and part of that work has to do with recognizing your wounds and figuring out what you need in order to heal. That doesn’t mean you dwell on your past and drag it into your present and future, it means you glean the meaning from the pain, and you allow it to open your heart and your mind so you have empathy for other people. Being human is a tough, but wonderful gig. You have to embrace your vulnerability if you want to be free, so that fear and rage don’t rule your life. Be the happy uncle. Sending you love, Ally Hamilton

Work That Doesn’t Belong to Us

There-are-things-that-we (1) Much of our pain in life comes from our inability to let go and trust. Often, we’re so attached to that picture in our heads of “how things should be”, we contract against things as they are. You may have noticed, life doesn’t feel great when we’re hunched in a little ball with our eyes squeezed shut, and our hands over our ears.

Sometimes we’re trying to do work that doesn’t belong to us. Maybe we’re attempting to save people, which is different than loving them. We might think we know what’s best for the people closest to us, and we might even be right, but everyone has to do his or her own journey. You cannot keep someone else’s side of the street clean. I mean, you can cross the street and sweep all you want, but if a person is committed to making a mess, the minute you walk away the debris will start flying again. You have to open your mind to the idea that sometimes a person has to make a mess in order to learn something essential. We’ve all experienced that.

Also, the truth is we never know what is right for other people. What seems obvious to us might not be obvious to someone else. There isn’t one path to happiness, there are about seven billion. People are complicated and messy and we all have our histories, stories we tell ourselves, ideas about things that we’ve learned from our experiences, and tendencies that help or hinder us. Most people reach a point when they have to reckon with their pain, anguish, heartache and disappointment; this is part of knowing ourselves. Some people are terrified of that work, or committed to finding ways around it, like numbing out, denying or repressing. Those are not solutions that lead to happiness, but you can’t force a person to come out of hiding. People do that if and when they’re ready, and not a moment sooner.

You might create a lot of fear, anxiety and suffering for yourself by thinking it is your job to manage the path of your children. When they’re little, of course you want to create stability, a nurturing and loving home, a solid base from which they can grow and flourish. If you start to “future-trip”, however, and think that your current choices can somehow protect them from future heartbreak, I think you’re fooling yourself. I don’t know too many people who get through life without some heartbreak along the way. Of course we want the path for our children to be full of sunshine and flowers, joy and love, and a profound sense of belonging in the world, and hopefully we give them the tools to set them up for their adventures in the best ways possible. It’s not always in your control to make everything perfect, though. Some people stay in abusive marriages thinking it’s best for the kids, but is it? Is it good for our sons and daughters to model their relationships after the one they’re seeing day in and day out, if it’s full of pain and violence?

The more you can release your grip on the story, the more life flows. It’s not just your story, you are not the only writer. You don’t get to edit out the parts you don’t like, or force the other characters to do, say, or feel what you want. This isn’t a piece of fiction, this is life, and the other characters get to forge their own stories and do things that might surprise, infuriate, delight, scare, enrage or depress you. You don’t have to allow other people’s desires to affect you at all, but if you’re close to people and you’re human, they probably will. Nonetheless, it’s wonderful and mysterious and interesting to be human, and who’s to say what the right way is to go about this thing? Obviously, we don’t want to move through life intentionally hurting other people, that would be a really crappy way to go. Short of that, following your heart seems the clear choice. We’re here for such a burst of time. There’s never been another you, or me, there’s never been another any of us, nor will there ever be. The more space we can give each other to be who we are, the more the artwork of life shines through. We all have a particular color to splash all over the canvas. Trust in yours, and celebrate the splashing of those around you. We can figure out who was “right” after we die 😉 Sending you a ton of love, Ally Hamilton

The Perils of the Poker Face

brenebrown When we don’t speak up about what we’re feeling, it comes out in other ways. This is particularly true in any intimate relationship, whether familial or romantic. Things we hide from ourselves will also swim to the surface to bite us in the a$$ and demand our attention, but you can multiply that bite by at least two when we’re talking about the way we relate to others. It’s not surprising that clear communication is so difficult for the majority of us, because we’re taught to edit our feelings from an early age. “Don’t cry”, “Don’t be sad”, “Don’t be scared, “Don’t be angry”–these are like cultural mantras we hear as early as we hit the playground, and often sooner, in our very own homes. Loving parents say these things, so I’m not throwing anyone under the bus, I’m just saying we need to understand when we love people, we have to teach them that it is okay to be sad, scared or angry, it’s what we do about the feelings that matters.

It’s never easy to watch someone we love as he or she grapples with difficult feelings. We know the pain of it from having grappled ourselves. Of course we want to spare those we care for, pain, anguish and discomfort, but these feelings are part of life, and they’re an essential part of knowing ourselves. If we learn to push down the feelings that make those around us feel uncomfortable or inadequate, you can safely bet we will also have no clue about how we feel as we reach adulthood. When we cut ourselves off from what is true and real for us, we also cut ourselves off from our intuition, and that is the surest way to get lost on the path. And when I say “the path”, I don’t mean there’s one path for everyone, I mean the path that will lead any of us to our deepest joy.

Recently, I was talking with good friends of mine who were laughing about a heated game of poker they’d played. Apparently, my friend’s wife and his mother went head-to-head, and his wife wondered if she should go easier on her fairly new mother-in-law, but my friend assured her this made her an official part of his family. Friends of theirs chimed in, and said things also got crazy and competitive in their house when the cards or board games came out. The woman turned to me and said, “You should try playing with THIS heartless prick”, and pointed her thumb at her boyfriend, whom I’d only just met. I knew from our mutual friends that she adores her boyfriend and thinks the world of him. I knew she was just trying to join in on the “heated family games joke”, but the words “heartless” and “prick” came out with a lot of force, and I watched his face change from the happy, social mask we wear when we’re meeting people for the first time, to a closed one that was obviously covering hurt and surprise. She turned to him with her eyes dancing, and saw that her words had landed in a way she didn’t intend, and she immediately apologized. He recovered but they walked away shortly after, and my heart went with them. I knew they were probably in for a difficult conversation at best, and a rough night at worst.

There’s always a little truth in a joke. I don’t think this woman believes her boyfriend is either heartless, or a prick, I think she’s in love with him. But I’d also guess there’s some anger swimming underneath the surface of whatever is happening between them, and it reared its head for an instant. If there’s anger there, it’s coming from some kind of pain. Either she perceives that he’s hurt her or disappointed her in some way, or he actually has. Either way, her pain has not been acknowledged and dealt with in a way that’s satisfying for her (maybe she hasn’t brought it up, doesn’t know it’s there, etc), and so it’s popping up at parties over card games. Isn’t it amazing how these tiny little things can turn into land-mines? Something as innocent as poker can bring up a well of pain neither party sees coming. And now he’s hurt, and probably angry.

Why do we hurt each other? We have pain, and things arise as they always do when two people are close, and we either deal with these things in the moment, or we don’t. When we don’t, it’s because we’re afraid. Maybe we’re afraid of confrontation, rejection, or heartache, but it’s fear of some kind. Our fear causes us to hurt each other. If only we could give one another the benefit of the doubt, if only we could breathe and consider whether someone we love is intentionally hurting us, or whether there’s a chance we’ve misunderstood, taken something to heart that wasn’t intended that way, are dealing with their pain that’s coming to the surface in a way that’s hard to understand, or are bringing some of our history into the present, we’d save ourselves and those who love us a lot of feelings of alienation, frustration, sadness and anger. And we’d save ourselves, as well.

It feels terrible when someone we care for deeply won’t forgive us, or is so ready to doubt our love. That alone feels like a betrayal. I saw it between those two people I barely know—he felt betrayed she’d said something hurtful to strangers in a social situation with zero provocation from him, and she felt betrayed that he would doubt her love over something that was supposed to be funny, but ended up coming out badly. Again, maybe there’s some unresolved pain on both sides there. I have no idea what’s happening inside their relationship. But I’ve seen that moment they had a million times. I’ve been in that moment myself, and I’ve watched it happen between other people more times than I can count, and it’s always the same moment with different words. It’s never about poker, that’s for sure.

The more we learn to acknowledge and deal with our own uncomfortable feelings as they arise, peak and subside, the more we can do that for the people we love. Not every feeling in life is like unicorns or leprechauns or stardust. Some feelings hurt us to the very core. Rage, grief, shame, guilt, fear, loneliness—none of these are easy, but they’re all normal human emotions we are going to deal with at some time or another. Denying that is futile. If you don’t learn to embrace and examine your painful feelings they are not going to magically disappear, they’ll just keep trying to get your attention, because that’s all we want when we’re struggling or suffering. We want someone to say, “I see you, I feel you, I understand why you feel the way you do, I’m so sorry you’re hurting. Hang in there, it won’t always be this way. “ We just want understanding. We want to be seen and held without anyone telling us that what we feel isn’t true. And the sad thing is, we can do this for ourselves, but so many people run from their feelings, or numb them, or deny them, and so pain rules their lives. It doesn’t have to be that way.

One of the main reasons I teach yoga is that it changed my entire life for the better. I was one of those numb-ers and deniers myself. I tried to manage my pain that way for years and I was anxious and depressed a large majority of the time. I kept trying to fix things from the outside. Maybe if I met the right person, or got thinner, or had a perfect job, then I’d be happy. None of these things ever worked. Until I sat down and faced my pain head on, it owned me, and at a certain point I decided I did not want to be owned by pain, I wanted to be owned by love. And then I found out love doesn’t own you, it liberates you. And so I teach, because I think if it worked for me, it could work for anyone. It’s not a magic bullet. Change is hard. It’s a practice, and it has eight limbs, and you have to work every one of them. But it’s doable and beautiful and eventually it’s inspiring and you want to see how much you can open, and what it means to really love and release your grip on the story. Sending love to all of you, Ally Hamilton

Don’t Date Steve

josephcampbell Part of our misery comes from our constant striving to be happy. Culturally, we seem to have this expectation that once we get all the pieces of the puzzle to fit, we’ll solve the happiness equation. Those puzzle pieces might vary from person to person, but they usually include someone to love, something to do that feels meaningful, and something to look forward to (which might include anything from a 2-week vacation to this idea we have of a utopia that will occur “when things calm down” and we can reap the rewards of our efforts).

The thing is, life is full of everything, and we are inherently vulnerable. It might be interesting, exciting, unpredictable, heartbreaking, exhilarating, and often full of joy, but no one would argue that it’s easy to be human. Expecting to reach some mecca where everyone is happy all the time is like following a mirage in the desert. I know I used to buy into this delusion that if only I could “get things right”, I’d be happy. Those things included graduating from a good school, dieting until I was “thin enough”, finding the right person, having children, and finding something to do that was going to bring me joy.

In retrospect, I can tell you that three out of five of those pursuits set me down the wrong path. I mean graduating from a good school is wonderful, but it’s not going to miraculously set you on a meaningful path without your own experimentation and soul-searching. Searching for the “right person” is funny, because all you need to do is look in the mirror. Once you get right with yourself, you’ll have a much easier time finding someone you might like to share your life with. Dieting and obsessing about the way you look is an utter waste of your time, energy and resources. The way you look is the result of a genetic lottery, and it’s the most fleeting thing about you. If you love yourself, you’ll feed yourself well, and you’ll take your body for a spin on a regular basis because sweating and getting your heart pumping and stretching and embodying your beautiful body will take care of everything. Throw out your scale, and anything in your refrigerator with more that two syllables, anything that contains aspartame and/or high fructose corn syrup, find a way to move your body that feels good to you, and you’ll be off to a good start.

For me, finding something to do that brought me joy turned out to be the essential thing. I’m not saying it’s like that for everyone, because there’s no formula to this, it’s personal. But for me, that created an environment for everything else to fall into place. When you feel like you’re getting up and contributing something that might uplift someone else, you are bound to have a great day. Giving to other people is a shortcut to your own happiness. Also, when you make it your business to try to help other people, you realize you’d better know yourself well, and deeply, so that anything blocking you from giving everything you’ve got is not unknown to you. Basically, the motivation to heal yourself increases greatly when you recognize that you can never nurture other people to the best of your ability until you nurture yourself. If you have tendencies that cause you to doubt your worth, seek approval, or place more importance on other people’s opinions and desires than your own, you start to understand all that mess is going to get in your way and prevent you from offering up what’s in your heart, so you get busy cleaning it up. At a certain point, your history is just that. There’s no need to drag ancient pain into your present possibilities.

Before I realized I wanted to spend my days teaching and writing, I was pretty lost. I was also depressed and anxious a lot of the time, and convinced most of my feelings about myself and life in general had to do with other people. When I had relationships, they became the center of my world, and when you don’t have any other passion in your life, and your sole focus is on what this other person needs, wants, feels, thinks, or doesn’t think, when you have nothing to fill your time except obsession over whether things are heading in the direction you want them to, or not so much, it’s a drain on both parties. You aren’t showing up as your best, most inspired and fulfilled self.

Lastly, on my list of things I thought would bring me joy, it turns out having children brought and brings me more joy, fulfillment, meaning, purpose, gratitude, excitement and motivation than I ever could have imagined. Again, there’s no formula to this, I’m just sharing my own experience. Loving people is the best stuff in life, whether those people are your best friends, your family, your partner, or a total stranger on the street. Shared connection, the feeling that we are all in this together, all part of this mystery, all experiencing the same sense of wonder, confusion, fear, anxiety, loss, joy, excitement, empathy, laughter and hugs—I just don’t know of anything better.

If I could go back and talk to my twenty year old self, I’d say, “Get off your a$$ and stop blaming other people for your unhappiness. Stop devoting all your time and energy to romantic relationships and people who don’t know how to do anything but hurt you. Figure out why you’re attracted to those people, and heal that. Find something to do where you can give something essential of yourself. Direct your attention to using whatever you’ve got to try to uplift the people around you. Trust that things will happen in their own time, and that trying to force or rush life won’t get you anywhere. If you want to be happy, that’s an inside job, and it’s a feeling that can overtake any day, if you focus on all the abundance instead of all the lack. And don’t date Steve.”

Anyway, maybe some of that will help you. Sending you love, and wishing you peace! Ally Hamilton

Don’t Die on the Inside

If you want people to know you, you have to be willing to show yourself. You can’t lie, deflect, manipulate or play games, and also expect to feel close to anyone. But for so many people, fear seems to get in the way. Most of us long for connection, for shared experiences, for genuine intimacy, but then we sabotage any hope for those things by hiding our true selves, our real needs and desires. People do it in relationships all the time. They fall in love with someone, or they get hooked on an unhealthy dynamic and think it’s love. And they accept far less than what they truly want, and pretend to themselves and to their partners that it’s okay. That less is enough. That all is well.

A lot of people struggle with self-doubt. I’d say that’s a normal part of being human, and if you never doubt yourself, you’re probably in some trouble. Uninterrupted confidence that you’ve got everything figured out is not a great sign. But if doubt is an overriding issue, if you aren’t sure you’re lovable, if you fear you might not be worthy of respect or consideration, or you ask yourself questions like, “Who am I to do anything extraordinary?”, then you’re going to have a very hard time being close to people. Because in order to be close, you also have to be brave enough to expose the parts of yourself that aren’t pretty. If you fear you aren’t good enough, that you don’t measure up in some important ways, you’re going to be motivated to hide those deficiencies, not highlight them. Fear doesn’t make you brave. Of course, what you really need to do is puncture a hole in the idea that you’re less than. Because that is not real. Sometimes we learn things because they’re taught to us, and sometimes we learn things because those around us don’t have the tools to love us well. We internalize the lack as our own. Those are all lies you’ll need to unlearn if you want to free yourself from ideas that imprison you. How can anyone get in if you’ve blocked them with walls?

We all have our stuff. Our histories, our pain, our tendencies, and the way that we deal with them. If you’re constantly trying to put up a good front, or be the way you think people want you to be, then you’re going to feel alone, and rightly so. Before you can feel comfortable sharing who you really are, you have to feel comfortable with yourself. People avoid that work for years sometimes, and some people avoid it for their whole lives. You can’t solve it from the outside. No relationship will fix it if you think you might be broken. No job will ease your fears, no amount of money, no house or car or dress size. If your main house is not in order, you will take that mess with you wherever you go.

I know people who spend an inordinate amount of time promoting themselves, but underneath it, right underneath the surface, you can feel the need. “Love me, see me, tell me I’m here and I’m wonderful.” If you need that affirmation every second of every day, you are in pain. And no amount of external reassurance will solve that, because that’s what you call an inside job. No one can crash your internal hard drive but you, and that’s what you’ll need to do if you want to rewire your system. Of course that sounds scary. Most people try to keep the system running, even if they have to shore it up with denial, or numb out or keep themselves so distracted they don’t realize the system is failing. Better off to let it fail, and start doing things a different way. Some of the best stuff in life includes connection. Feeling comfortable in your own skin. Being able to love and live with your heart wide open. There are so many tools available if you need to create a new way of being, and start living your life in a way that feels good. Doing this work won’t kill you, but avoiding it makes you die on the inside, and life is too short for that. Sending you love and a hug, Ally Hamilton

Choose the Lesson

shannonlalder Recently, a close friend of mine was left suddenly and without explanation by her husband of less than a year. They were having the normal struggles of any newly married couple, exacerbated by the fact that neither of them had lived with romantic partners before. Just the normal communication issues, and the push-pull we all go through when we’re shifting our perspective from “I” to “we”. They’d talked about going to counseling, and about making some other changes, too. He’d expressed a desire to move to another part of the country, and she’d been open to that. Throughout the relationship, right up until the day he took off, their text messages were loving, flirtatious and affectionate, their time together was mostly fun, and she had no reason to imagine he’d bail. One morning he got up, kissed her goodbye as they left the house to go to their respective jobs, and that was the last time she saw him.

When he didn’t show up for dinner, she texted, and he said he was out with friends and that he’d probably crash with one of his buddies. She asked him where he was, but he just said he was out having fun, and he’d see her in the morning. And then he didn’t show up in the morning, and she called and got his voicemail. When she texted, he said he’d be home later in the day, and that he was running errands. It turned out he’d gotten on a plane and flown across the country. She found out from his friend’s wife, when she called to see if he knew what was going on.

She flew across the country to see him and sit down face-to-face, but he refused, and his family told her to go away. He wouldn’t even respond to her texts, his mother texted to let her know he did not want to see her. She’d spent three years with him, she’d spent plenty of time with his parents and siblings, and not one of them would meet her for a tea, or even get on the phone. Her family and all her close friends, myself included, told her to come home. When there’s no communication, there’s also no hope. And when his family also shunned her, we all understood this was their modus operandi.

Two weeks later, he served her with divorce papers, citing irreconcilable differences. Then he proceeded to make demands about all the wedding gifts and furniture he wanted. She told me when she saw the list he sent with the movers, the nine-page list of things he wanted them to collect, it finally sank in. He cared about kitchen knives, but not her heart. He wanted the garbage can, but he didn’t want to know if she was okay, or how she was coping. He just didn’t care.

And so she was left in the dark, trying to figure out what had happened. Was the whole thing a sham? Had he ever loved her? Was the huge wedding he’d wanted just for show? Had he meant anything he’d said on their wedding day, or any day? She told me she felt like she was in the “Twilight Zone”, and that at any moment, Rod Serling would step out from behind a closet door, or from around a corner, and tell her she’d entered another dimension.

Life is like this sometimes. We’re going along, and BAM! A bomb goes off in the middle of our lives, and everything we thought we knew is just blown to pieces. Sometimes it happens because we’re abandoned, like my friend, and sometimes we lose people because they’re ripped from us too soon. Sometimes circumstances create the boom. Maybe we’re fired, or our house burns down, or we’re facing some other huge turn of events we could never have seen coming.

We’d never wish that on ourselves or anyone else, but it happens. And once you feel all the feelings around the experience—the shock, the grief, the confusion, the rage—you have a chance to begin again. Some things are so brutal, you have to accept you’re never going to be the same. Some things will never make sense, some things will never be explained, some things will rip your heart out of your chest and eat it with a fine chianti. So be it.

The question is, what are you going to grow out of those ashes? People and circumstances can hurt you, but they can’t defeat you unless you let them. You can’t rush through your feelings when you’re in turmoil; in fact, I’d say that’s the moment to use every bit of the support system you have in place, or to get busy creating one. That’s when you figure out who in your life is really going to be there for you. And that’s really good information to have, because then you know where to invest your time and energy, and with whom.

All you can ever do, is start where you are. We learn and grow from every experience, but we have to choose the lesson. My friend doesn’t want anyone to speak badly of her ex, and she isn’t fighting him for stuff or money. As she said to me, “The more he takes, the less he has.” How’s that for choosing the lesson?

There are confounding things that people do to each other sometimes. I get emails from people going through divorce with children, and one partner is using the kids as pawns against the other. Who do you think pays in that scenario? But again, those kids will grow up one day, and they’ll choose the lesson. There’s a lot of power in that, so if you’re in a situation that’s making you feel weak, try looking at it from that perspective. No one can take that away from you. Pick the lessons that strengthen you and open you. We have enough hard, closed people in the world. And when things happen that you don’t understand, do your very best to have compassion and recognize there’s probably more going on than you know. We can only know another person’s interior world to the extent that they allow us access. Many, many people have pain and they don’t know how to work with it so they lash out or they take off. Some people suffer from personality disorders that render them incapable of empathy. Some people have been taught that their feelings are the only ones that matter. Imagine how life must be for them. The more they take, the less they have. Sending you love, and wishing you peace and strength,

Ally Hamilton

Let Love do That

A big part of being at peace involves our ability to sit with discomfort. Not everything in life feels good, or is easy to deal with or comprehend. Sometimes we are the source of our greatest discomfort, and sometimes other people or the events around us give us an opportunity to lean into our fear, our rage, our guilt, grief or shame. It isn’t easy, but it’s how we learn and grow.

We all have our stuff, and even if you do the work to heal, to become intimately acquainted with the source of your pain, the things that trigger you, or the thoughts and tendencies that weaken you, it’s likely that you’ll have to grapple with them from time to time, because you’re human and this is no easy gig. But a lot of the time, we resist and contract against our own experience, especially if it’s messy, complicated, disappointing or uncomfortable. Maybe we’ve made a mess—said something or done something we wish we hadn’t in a moment of weakness or anger or confusion, or maybe we’ve been on the receiving end of poor treatment. Perhaps it’s circumstances that have us pushed to our edge; mostly, life does not unfold according to the vision we had in our heads of “how things should be”.

The source of addiction is this feeling that we can’t take it. We can’t withstand this temporary feeling, we have to do something, now. The best thing to do is have a seat and breathe. Because if you drink the feeling away, or pop a pill, or go shopping or hop in the sack with someone, that feeling will just arise again in the not too distant future. It won’t go away unless you face it down. Unless you examine the root of your discomfort, it will direct your life. And no feeling is forever. If you practice leaning into your painful feelings, you’ll find they arise, peak and subside like every other living thing.

The very best thing you can do when you feel “pushed up against it” is to breathe. Fighting reality will not change it. You don’t have to put everything in the thank you column, you don’t have to be grateful for every experience in your life. Some things are devastating and will never make sense. But you can always grow from your pain. You can use your suffering to become softer, more open, more empathetic. That’s so much better than resisting, denying, numbing out or running. The longer you do that, the longer your pain owns you. And you know what? I wouldn’t let pain own you, I’d let love do that. Sending you some right now, Ally Hamilton

You Can’t Control the Tides

smaraboli Sometimes we’re trying to control things. It’s understandable; we’re on a spinning planet and we each have our unknown expiration dates, as do the people we love. We don’t know for sure what happens after this, so it’s a gig that makes us all inherently vulnerable, and some people have a very hard time with that. Most of us suffer great losses at some point or another, because the loss of someone we love is like the loss of a whole, gorgeous universe. It’s not hard to understand why you might want to put your mat down in the same place when you come to yoga, or why most of us thrive on some routine, some rhythm, something to count on.

Here are some other realities. We are in control of very little. We don’t control what life is going to put in our paths. We don’t control other people, nor should we try. We don’t control what anyone else is going to do, or say, or want, or need, or feel. All we can work on is the way we respond to what we’re given, and there’s tremendous power in that. Sometimes people do things that are incomprehensible. I know someone who was just abandoned in a cruel and heartless manner when it would have been just as easy to end things with dignity, and to honor the love that was there. But “just as easy” for who? For me? For you? I mean, from the outside, I can look at the situation and feel astounded. Why would someone do it like THAT? With no communication, respect, tenderness? But for me those things are obvious. And probably for you, too.

That’s where we get into so much trouble. We start to project what’s clear to us onto other people. Shouldn’t this be totally obvious to them, too? I’d argue that certain things are indisputable. You should treat people the way you’d want to be treated. You should treat other people’s children the way you’d want your child to be treated. The thing is, people can only have the tools they have, and they can only be where they are on their own journeys. Some people are so full of fear, they can’t imagine trusting and being kind and compassionate, because some part of them feels if they do that, they’re going to get screwed. I mean, you can’t project your world-view on anyone else, that’s my point. It’s easy to take things personally, especially when an intimate relationship comes to an end, and we’re left with no explanation or chance for closure, but honestly, if that’s the way your partner operates, then they aren’t ready for a real relationship with anyone. Relationships require a willingness to listen and understand, to communicate and to try; without that, there is no relationship. Someone who lacks those tools doesn’t lack them because of anything missing in you.

The very best thing any of us can do is work on inner steadiness; confidence in ourselves to hold and examine whatever life throws in our paths with strength and grace and breath and curiosity. This is how it is right now. Let me lean into it. Let me allow myself to feel whatever I need to feel, whether it’s rage, or grief or confusion or shock, or all of those things. Let me remember that how it is now, is not how it will always be. Let me understand if I missed something along the way, if I sailed by red flags because I didn’t want to accept what I knew in my gut. Let me understand if I often override my intuition, or I just got burned this time. Let me know myself. Let me honor and cherish myself. Let me learn and grow from this pain so I have that much more empathy to share when other people in my life suffer. Let me use the heartbreaks to soften and open, so I’m also ready to receive the love and the joy and the astounding beauty when it shows up. Life is full of everything. You have to be ready. Sending you love, and wishing you peace,

Ally Hamilton

Swim with the Fishes

alextan Sometimes what we think we know prevents us from seeing clearly. In “Making a Friend of the Unknown”, a talk by one of my favorite poets, David Whyte, he shares about how he studied marine zoology before he dedicated himself to writing full-time. He went to the Galapagos Islands, and got in the water with the fish, and he said he was very disappointed to discover the animals had not read the same books he had, and that they had “lives of their own.” Awesome, right?

Our ideas and opinions and frame of reference color all of our experiences. We like to think we have things figured out, we have certain people “pegged”. Did it ever occur to you that your mother has a libido, and this is one of the reasons you exist? I’m not suggesting you have to dwell on your mother’s sexual drive, I’m just saying, do you think of your mother as a complete woman, with a life and feelings and mysteries all her own, heartbreaks you may know nothing about, secret hopes, dreams, longings, or do you have her in this box labeled “mom”?

We make snap judgments all the time, and let’s get clear on this–judgements are not bad; the mind is a tool of judgement. You pull up to a red light and make a judgement to stop your car. It’s pre-judging that gets us into trouble, and yet we’re so used to categorizing everything. We’re taking in so much information all the time, but we’re also missing so much. Maybe we see someone with a yoga mat slung over her shoulder and we think, “She’s like me”, or we notice someone’s cool tattoo, or their smile, or the way they’re carrying themselves and we think, “confident”, “charismatic”. Do you know a lot of sociopaths have those characteristics? I’m just saying.

I’ve been teaching so long at this point, mostly the room is full of people I know, with new faces showing up all the time, and I love that. It’s rare for me to deal with a room full of people I don’t know, who don’t know me, unless I’m traveling to teach a workshop somewhere. Sometimes in those instances, I can feel the energy in the room. The withholding, the resistance, the pause before the judgement. “Am I going to like this? Am I going to be happy I chose to spend my afternoon this way? Am I going to sweat? Is it only going to be about whether I sweat?” The mind is constantly pulling us out of our experience so we can make decisions about the experience we’re having, but the minute you label how you’re feeling, you aren’t feeling it anymore, you’re thinking.

My mother today is not the mother of my childhood, and my father today is not the same father I grew up with; people change and things change but sometimes our ideas do not change along with them. I’m not the same teacher I was ten years ago, nor do I want to be. We’re always learning and growing, and hopefully we’re allowing life to open us and strengthen us so we have more to give, but we stunt that process when we place our ideas and opinions all over everything. It’s like a grid or a screen we can’t see through. We’ve decided things have to be one way, and we reject anything that doesn’t match our vision.

There was a time, years ago when I’d first moved to L.A., when I took over the classes of a very popular teacher at a very popular gym. For a few weeks, I had to deal with that resistant and withholding energy in the room, until everybody decided it was going to be okay, and I had made the grade, so to speak. Except for this one guy who always stood at the front of the room, rolling his eyes at me throughout class, or shaking his head, or sighing loudly. It was clear to me that he couldn’t stand me, but that he was there because the time slot worked for him, and he liked the workout. This went on for months, and though I wanted to speak with him about it, he always came right on time, and left right after.

One day I ran into him on the way to class, and I said hi. We spoke for a few minutes. He seemed shy, maybe a little aloof, but not like a person who despised me. Nonetheless, the eye-rolling and huffy breaths continued, as did the head shaking. Then, one day he asked if we could go for a hike, and it turned out he’d been shaking his head at himself. The things I was saying were hitting a nerve, and resonating with him, and he had been rolling his eyes because he couldn’t believe he hadn’t been dealing with his deep need to heal. So this whole time, I’d thought he couldn’t stand me, and it turned out he followed me all over L.A. to take class, even after I left the gym and moved to a studio in Santa Monica. He’s since moved away, but once in awhile he’ll surprise me and show up in class. He’s my oldest regular, this guy who couldn’t stand my guts.

The more you can drop what you think you know, and just open to things as they are, the less you’ll struggle. Moving through life and interacting with people with curiosity is such a great way to go. We aren’t here to peg people, or to compete with them. We’re here to see, to share, to learn, to understand, to grow, to celebrate, to cherish. Life isn’t about surviving, it’s about thriving and shifting and opening. A lot of the time, we get in our own way and become our own obstacles. Drop the stance, remove the blinders, try not to cling to a picture in your head of how things should be or how people should be. Don’t be so sure that you already know what someone will say. Do not assume you’ve gathered all there is to know about your partner, even if, and especially if, you’ve been together for years. Try not to make snap judgements about people based on one conversation, one interaction, no matter how wonderful or miserable. Get in the water and swim and observe all the animals having lives of their own.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

What We Do with What We’re Given

Sometimes things happen that turn everything we thought we knew upside down and inside out. Recently, a woman wrote to me because she found out her husband had another family “on the side”. She and her husband have a son who’s five. She believed their son was her husband’s first child, but it turns out he has a daughter a year older. She told me she’d been impressed with her husband’s ability to change diapers and his ideas about breastfeeding, and just generally how comfortable he’d been when their son was an infant. She didn’t realize he’d been through it before. And when she approached him about wanting a second baby, he told her he really felt he was a “one-and-done” kind of guy, but it turns out he has another son, too. He had a second baby with the other woman.

You might wonder how he was able to pull this off for so many years, but he travels on business all the time, and she never thought to worry. She said she believed they were happy. That in their social circle, they were the couple everyone envied because they were still so romantic and seemingly in love with each other. College sweethearts, the whole nine. She found out because the other woman called her. She didn’t want to live in hiding anymore. She wanted to be able to have a normal life. She wanted to post pictures of her kids on Facebook, and go to school gatherings with the father of her children. I mean, it was only a matter of time before this whole thing exploded. The kids are getting older. He has three children calling him Daddy, in two different states.

Anyway, it’s a total mess. And clearly, this man needs some serious help. I don’t know enough about him, his background, his pain, his mental condition, and nine hundred other factors to even begin to comment on what could drive a person to wreak havoc on so many lives, including his own.

The wife is reeling. She’s trying to keep it together for the sake of her son. She told her husband to get out, and she called a lawyer. But it’s the emotional part that’s brutal. A lawyer can’t help you negotiate an earthquake that shakes the foundation of your life. That makes you search back and relive every moment that didn’t quite add up, to replay every conversation, to find the thread that began to unravel when you didn’t notice. In addition to a lawyer, she also called a therapist, her entire family, and her closest friends. She asked me to write about it. She needs support, and she’s reaching out, which is good.

Obviously, this is an extreme example, but most of us have experienced betrayal of some kind. Or we’ve been blindsided when something ended and we just did not see it coming. Or we thought we knew someone and it turns out we didn’t, not really. The hardest part in all of that is feeling like you cannot trust your own judgement. Do you remember that inane conversation about the color of that dress a few weeks ago? Was it black and blue or white and gold? What an extraordinary amount of time we wasted on that. But that’s what it’s like when something rocks the foundation of everything you believed you could count on. Was my marriage real? Was anything he said real? Was the love real? Was the family real? I’m looking at this and it looks purple, but is it? I mean, you just can’t trust anything anymore.

The key toward putting your world back together in times like those is just to take it one breath at a time, and to allow yourself to feel whatever you need to feel. Heartbroken. Enraged, Astounded. Depressed, scared. She told me she feels ashamed and humiliated, amongst many other emotions. We talked about the shame part. I told her there’s never any shame in loving all the way, and trusting and giving. There is a clear lack of self-respect when someone lies and betrays and sneaks around, and I told her those are things her soon-to-be ex-husband will have to grapple with, but she has nothing to feel ashamed about.

Humiliation is another thing, though. That word comes from the Latin “humus”, which means ground, soil, or earth. As if we’re being returned to the ground, to the dirt. And I’ve felt that way before myself. As much as we wouldn’t wish it on ourselves or anyone else, there’s something freeing about being returned to the earth. And about questioning everything. I’m definitely not suggesting this is some blessing in disguise, although clearly she’s been building her life with a person who has deep-rooted problems, I’m just saying once she allows herself the time and space to grieve and heal, she can start to build something new. She can begin again, from the ground up. And there’s no doubt this experience is going to make her grow and open and strengthen in ways she wouldn’t have without out. It always comes down to what we do with what we’re given.

Life is full of curve-balls, and many people are in unfathomable pain. There are also beautiful people in this world who would never, ever betray you, and there are experiences that take your breath away with the sheer force of their awesomeness. We never know what life has in store for us. It is humbling, but it’s also interesting and amazing. Whatever’s happening in your world, remember there’s only one you in the known universe. Only one. Feed your spark, and try to trust in your process. Leave room for life to show up with the joy, too. Sending you love, Ally Hamilton

Don’t Consent to Poor Treatment

eleanorr Not all friendships or romantic relationships will stand the test of time, and that is okay. Of course it hurts, but it’s just the way of things. People change, circumstances change, everything in the known universe is in constant motion. Sometimes we think something is “for life”, but it turns out not to be. Certain people are going to turn out to be “somebody that you used to know.” Yes, you can thank me for having that song stuck in your head for the next little while. But it’s really the truth.

Of course it doesn’t feel good when someone rejects us or ditches us or treats us with very little respect or concern. Especially if there’s a history of kindness and shared memories, of times when you really went out of your way to show up or to help, but if you are suddenly discarded, you’ll probably look back and realize you were dealing with a mostly one-way street. Someone who genuinely cares about you will not treat you carelessly, no matter how caught up he or she might be with other interests.

If someone is behaving in a disappointing way, that’s no reflection on you, it’s a reflection of where that person happens to be on her or his own path. You don’t have to take it to heart. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting or hurt, it just means you don’t have to take it as a sign that you’re easy to discard. There’s another great Eleanor Roosevelt quote, “You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”

Generally, you’re dealing with one of two things: either you have some part in the dissolution of what was once a beautiful bond, but the other party is unwilling or unable to communicate in a respectful way so you can understand a differing point of view, and apologize if the situation warrants that, or, you’re dealing with a person who truly doesn’t give a sh%t. And either way, it takes two to make a “thing go right”. There’s another song for you, you’re welcome.

If a person won’t tell you what’s up, don’t lose sleep over it. I mean, in order to own your end of a thing, a person has to be willing to tell you what the thing is, and if they won’t, it really has to go in your, “no time for this” folder. Because that’s okay in high school, but otherwise, not so much. If a person doesn’t care enough to communicate, why waste your precious time and energy on it?

The thing is, life is so short. All you can do is manage the way you show up, and pay attention to what you do. If you blow it, own it, apologize, and take some time for self-inquiry so you can learn and grow and do it better the next time. Try not to hurt people. If you’re the person doing the leaving, whether we’re talking about the end of a friendship or a romantic relationship, communication is always a good way to go. I mean, if you went on one date with someone and it wasn’t a match, I’m not saying you have to spend an hour talking about why that is, but don’t say you’ll call if you have no intention of calling, because that’s also only okay in high school, and not really even then. If someone is into you and it isn’t mutual, don’t leave them hanging in the wind. People are precious and the human heart is tender. Take care of your own, and be kind to others.

Sending you love, lovers,

Ally Hamilton

Compassion for the Compassionless

How do you have compassion for people who seem incapable of having any for you? How do you practice patience with people who are full of venom and rage? First of all, you have to make yourself safe. If this is a person who has to be in your life, like a family member you’re unwilling or unable to cut off, then boundaries are your priority. Once you’ve made yourself safe, then it’s a matter of figuring out how to communicate in a way that feels okay to you. That might mean email only, or it might mean that you never leave yourself vulnerable. For example, if you grew up with an abusive parent, maybe it means you stay at a hotel when you go home to visit (assuming you want to visit at all). You don’t put yourself in a vulnerable and powerless position. You protect your tender heart, and you put a high value on your own well-being, physically, mentally and emotionally.

I get a lot of emails from people who’ve been through an acrimonious divorce, and are unable to communicate with their exes in a healthy way. If you have children with someone, that’s such a heartbreak for everyone involved, but sometimes there’s no way around it. There are personality disorders that render people incapable of understanding how things are for anyone but themselves. There are people who cling to their rage because it’s the only shield they’ve got. There are people who truly revise history so it resembles something they can live with, where they get to be this wonderful person, and you get to be the villain. Again and again I’ll remind you, you cannot save anyone. You’re not going to “show someone the light” with your logic or your pleading or your version of history. Sometimes you’re dealing with narcissism or borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder or depression, sometimes you’re dealing with addiction. In any of those cases, trying to reason isn’t going to get you far.

The way to find compassion if you’re dealing with someone like this, is to understand they are in pain. Underneath all that rage and venom and instability, is a giant well of pain and anguish. And a lot of the time, people who are suffering this way truly believe their version of reality. There’s nothing you can do except hope they’re going to find relief at some point, and keep yourself at a safe distance in the meantime. Obviously you try to find help and support for people, but a person has to be ready to accept it, and then they have to be willing to work. That isn’t always the case. And let me just say that having compassion for someone does not mean you allow them to harm you, or you excuse their cruel or abusive behavior. It means you recognize the pain, you understand you cannot fix it for them, and you find a way to deal with them while you also honor your own tender heart.

A lot of the time, we try to make things black and white, but they rarely are. So much of life and human behavior exists in the grey area. We like to make people “good” or “bad”, but very few people are all one or the other. And sometimes we take things personally that have nothing to do with us. Sometimes you just represent something to someone. You’re a convenient target because you seem happy or together or responsible or inspiring, and this other person feels none of those things. There’s no need to engage or defend yourself when a person creates a fictional character and says that’s who you are. If you know who you are, and you feel comfortable with the way you’ve handled yourself, or maybe you’ve apologized for your end, there’s nothing more you need to do, except release yourself from the drama. Life is really too short for that. You can feel badly that someone is so stuck they have no recourse but to lash out, but you really don’t have the time to participate in unraveling the fiction. It’ll burn out eventually, anyway. There will be a new target, a new injustice.

As for strangers who do or say things you find totally incomprehensible, I’d say the same holds true. When people do things that are cruel or inhumane, you can bet they’re coming out of a very unhappy environment. Maybe they were abused, neglected, abandoned. There are so many stories out there that just break your heart. When I see someone doing something or saying something I find repugnant, I also remind myself that that cannot be a happy way to move through life, filled with rage. And I wonder what happened to that person as a child, what went wrong along the way. I wonder how he or she learned to hate, or learned to close down or lash out. And on my good days, I try to send some love. That’s all we can do, really. Sending you some right now, Ally Hamilton

When to Hold On, and When to Let Go

Sometimes it’s so hard to know when to hold on, and when to let go. This comes up in all kinds of relationships. Often, we’re dealing with people who simply do not know how to love. Maybe there’s a history of abuse, and they’re continuing the cycle of what was done to them. Maybe there are personality disorders, and we’re dealing with people who don’t feel empathy, and are incapable of communicating in a compassionate way. There are people who go up and down…sometimes they’re rational, and other times there’s no logic at all, no possibility for understanding. Those are often the most challenging cases, because we get lulled when things are good, and blindsided when the tides turn. The thing is, after you’ve been through a few cycles with someone, you have to stop allowing yourself to think things are going to be okay every time they have a good week. Your heart is tender, and it can only take so much battering. Also, you are the steward of your own ship, and if you keep sailing into tsunamis, you can’t expect things to go well. There are also cases when we’re dealing with betrayal, and it’s hard to know if we should try to open again, or cut our losses and move on. Sometimes we’ve just grown in different directions and need something else, maybe something we’ve never known before. Like belief in ourselves.

Here’s the thing. If someone has a history of treating you badly, you have to distance yourself. I mean, if it’s not a relationship you want to end completely, then boundaries are your only option. I’m talking about familial relationships here. Most people do not want to cut ties with their parents, siblings, or exes when there are children involved. I really consider that a last resort. There’s a deep pain when we have to walk away from people who were meant to love us, and didn’t or couldn’t. There are cases when ending the relationship and cutting off ties is the only option, so I want to acknowledge that, but short of instances of abuse, boundaries will usually get the job done. We can love people who have a hard time being consistent, while still loving ourselves.

If your parent or parents have never been there for you, if you’ve had a fear-based relationship and doubted your value to them, I do think you need to step away. Sometimes that’s incredibly difficult. If you rely on your parents financially, or you come from a culture where you don’t leave home until you get married, it’s not as easy as just moving out and starting your own life. Obviously, it’s very hard to heal and to create boundaries when you’re living under the same roof with people who’ve let you down in all the important ways. You can recognize that perhaps your parents are repeating what was done to them, but that does not lessen the impact on your own gorgeous heart. It’s beautiful if you can see that it isn’t about you, or anything lacking within you. It takes strength and insight to understand that some people, even your parents, might not have the tools to love you well, and that it isn’t a reflection on you. You’re lovable. You’re made of love and you’re full of love, and if your own parents can’t see that and receive that and embrace that and nurture that, that is very sad for them, and a heartbreak for you all. That doesn’t mean you can’t or won’t have love in your own life. I would say removing yourself from the situation is ideal, but if you aren’t in a place where you can do that yet, protect your heart in all the ways you can. Nurture yourself, be kind to yourself. Mother yourself.

If we’re talking about romantic relationships, betrayal is a tough one, and I also think it’s a case-by-case situation. Let me say that if you are unhappy in the context of your committed relationship, bringing another party into the mix is a very bad idea. If there are children in the picture, you’re putting your whole family on the line. You’re also making troubled waters murkier. If you’re at the point where you’d even consider going outside your relationship, it’s time to grab your partner and head to therapy, because the answers to the problems do not reside in a third party. That isn’t going to fix things, it’s going to confuse them further. Maybe you and your partner have gotten off track. Maybe you’ve dropped the thread. Maybe you’re so convinced you know everything there is to know about one another, you don’t even pay attention anymore. Perhaps you’re out of balance. Maybe there are little ones in the picture, and you haven’t figured out how to nurture them, keep a roof over your heads, and still find time for romance. Maybe you’re full of rage or resentment, or a list of ways your partner isn’t showing up for you. Maybe you’ve shut down. The things is, relationships need our time and attention. Human beings thrive on love and connection and communication.

Sometimes people blow it. They get desperate. They feel lonely or unseen or unheard, or they feel unwanted in every way, and they act. Maybe they’ve felt rejected or disrespected, and someone at work is making them feel amazing, like everything they say and do is brilliant. Like they’re hot and desirable and hilarious. You know how it goes. A flirtation starts to build and then there’s emailing or texting and the next thing you know, something has happened. I mean, you can’t play with fire like that and expect to walk away unharmed. When there are other people in the mix, like your family, that hurt has deep and far-reaching consequences, and now, instead of focusing on the problems that existed between you and your partner, the number one priority will be fixing what you’ve done, if your partner is even open to allowing you to try. You’re going to have to be patient, and understand you broke their trust. You’re going to have to be transparent, and also compassionate. Basically, you’ve just created a bigger mess for yourself, and you’re likely to feel resentful, because all the other issues are going to take a backseat to your making things right, which might not be possible. Having said that, people can recover from betrayal. It takes two people who are willing to fight for the relationship. If there are kids in the mix, I hope you try. If it’s a pattern, and there’s a history of cheating, you’re probably not in a good situation, but if it’s a one-time thing, and you can recognize that both parties contributed to the deterioration of the relationship prior to the betrayal, you can come out stronger on the other side.

Sometimes there are no kids in the picture, but there’s a long partnership. People sometimes write in and ask if it’s okay to leave someone just because they feel pulled to do so. Usually, these are people who are very used to putting other people’s feelings, needs and wants ahead of their own. I don’t believe anyone would thank you for staying in a situation out of pity or guilt. We all deserve more than that, don’t you think? It’s never easy knowing what to do when our heart is in the mix, and other people are involved. I do think people tend to walk away from their families too easily these days. I think it’s heartbreaking when parents and children don’t speak, when brothers and sisters aren’t in contact, when people walk away from the families they’ve started without giving it everything they’ve got, first. I also think life is short and precious, and that we don’t have time to waste. If you know a thing is dead, release yourself, and the other party. If you’re holding on to something toxic, by all means let go, or get yourself help doing that if you need it. Love is worth fighting for, and sometimes that means we hold on, and sometimes it means we let go. Trust your instincts.

Sending you love, and wishing you peace,

Ally Hamilton

Letting Go with Love

anin How do you let go when everything in your being, every cell in your body, has been wired to hold on? The loss of a child, no matter how old, is as bad as it gets. Losing people is the hardest thing we go through as human beings. It’s devastating when we’re lost from people we don’t know how to live without. It’s crushing, it’s hard to breathe. There’s a hole where a universe once existed. It seems impossible the world keeps spinning. Or that people everywhere are getting up and brushing their teeth or driving to work or sending a text as if everything hasn’t changed.

I want to say up front that some things are never going to be “okay”. There are some losses that are so great, you’re just going to carry them. That doesn’t mean that joy cannot exist again, or that you won’t experience great love, or be filled with gratitude for those moments that come out of nowhere and leave you with tears of appreciation. It’s incredible to be alive. It isn’t always easy, but it’s wildly interesting and life is full of the potential to surprise us and help us to grow and open. Of course there are some ways we’d rather not grow, and some lessons we’d rather not learn, but we don’t get to choose. When your heart breaks, it opens and softens and expands, or it hardens and contracts. I highly recommend you allow the pain to open you, but I do not believe you have to be thankful for the opportunity to grow in that way. Not everything in life has to go in the “thank you” column.

Sometimes we lose people because they choose to leave us. This kind of pain happens between parents and children, between siblings, between best friends. I think it’s incredibly sad when family members stop speaking to one another. I recognize sometimes that’s the only way to heal and move on. If there’s physical or verbal abuse, if there’s addiction, if there’s a personality disorder that renders a person unable to empathize or communicate with any kind of compassion, then you may not have a choice. Short of that, it breaks my heart when I hear about families ripped apart.

I met a woman at a holiday party one year, and we started talking. Before long, she’d told me she has two sons, but she’s only in contact with one of them, her youngest. He was also at the party. She said her other son had married a woman who just didn’t like her. From the beginning, no matter what she did, it was wrong, or not good enough, and her son was in the middle, and his wife got pregnant, and the longer they were together, the less he found ways to communicate. She’d tried apologizing to her son, and owning anything she could think of, she’d told him how much she missed him. She’d never met her grandchild. She said she had been a single mom, she’d raised the boys on her own. She certainly hadn’t been perfect, but she’d always done her best. Her younger son came over at one point. He put his arm around her, and kissed her on top of her head. When she went to get food, he told me his brother had married a very unhappy woman, and that he was sure his brother wasn’t happy with the situation, but he also told me his mother was one in a million. Always there for them. Working her ass off to make sure they always had what they needed, and most of what they wanted, and that he was furious his brother was treating her so poorly. So it had taken a tremendous toll on their relationship as well. He’d asked his brother what their mother had possibly done to be in a situation where she doesn’t even get to meet her grandchild? And his brother’s response was to shut down their relationship as well.

What do you do in a mess like that? It’s heartbreaking. You cannot force people to communicate or be rational or kind or compassionate. They are those things, or they are not. Sometimes people are weak, or they’re insecure, or they doubt their worth on a core level, and then they get involved with a strong personality who takes over. Controlling people are attracted to fragile people. I don’t know enough about the woman and her sons to have any real sense of what was going on there, but you have a grown man who was abandoned by his father as a small child, and maybe some part of him has always felt doubtful about his worth. If your own parent can leave you, you must be pretty unlovable, right? Like I said, I can’t swear that was this guy’s thing, but I’ve heard from so many people over the years, and I can tell you from my own personal experience, if you don’t heal your deep wounds, they bite you in the ass again and again. They break your heart until you can’t see straight, and you become so lost to yourself, it’s easier to let other people make decisions for you. Tell you where to go and how to be, and how to think, and who to see. I mean, that isn’t a life, that’s a fog, but a lot of people exist that way, and you can’t march into the center of that fog and wake them up. They do that on their own, or they don’t.

It hurts like hell when someone revises history and turns you into a person you don’t recognize. It’s even worse when your own child does that. The person you bathed and fed and strapped into car seats. The person who’s lunch you made and breakfast and dinner, too, for years and years and years. The person who’s hand you held, and knees you bandaged and face you gazed into and saw the moon and the stars and the sun, all at once. The little person you read to and laughed with and fought for and sat up with through sickness and heartbreak and mean kids at school. Of course it hurts to have that person discard you. Deny you. Reject you. And it isn’t easy to go through the day and know that person is going about his business. That you could pick up the phone and hear his voice, or get in your car and see his face. Except you can’t, because you’ve been invited to disappear.

All you can do is communicate your love, your pain, your confusion, and your desire for connection. Once you’re sure you’ve done that, I think you have to do your best to let go with love. Hopefully, your child will find his or her way back to you. Hopefully, eventually, the fog will lift. The pain of being in a false reality will outweigh the pain of healing and making things right. Until then, you have to do your best to remember who you are, to forgive yourself your imperfections, because we all have them, and not one of us gets it right in every moment. You have to do what you can to remove the onus of guilt and blame if they don’t belong to you. That woman at the party told me she must have failed as a mother, to have a son who could do this, but I don’t agree. Maybe he needed help. Maybe he was in more pain than she knew or understood. Maybe she was so stressed out trying to make ends meet for herself and two boys, she missed some signs. Being exiled is a harsh punishment. After twenty-five, we are responsible for how we behave and what we do, and I’m being generous. Really, twenty-five is old enough to know how to treat people. It’s old enough to get help with your healing process. It’s old enough to recognize that you need help. It’s old enough to tell your boyfriend or girlfriend or spouse that no one comes between you and the people you love, and this guy was way over twenty-five.

Blaming and shaming and pointing fingers is a sad way to go through life. Being so unsure of your worth that you allow someone else to dictate the terms of your day and your relationships is a prison sentence. Having your heart broken by one of the two people you treasure most in the world is incredibly sad, but these things happen. All you can do is try your best to build joy around the fracture. The fault line is there, there’s no denying it, but doing your best to be kind to yourself, to gravitate toward love, to reassure yourself of reality when you need to, these are all things you can do. If the situation permits, maybe every so often you reach out. You stick with the through line of love, and leave it at that. You take your life day by day, which is all any of us can do, anyway, and you figure out what you can do to nurture yourself on this day. What you can do to uplift the people around you. What you can do that will bring you joy and peace and fulfillment, and you carve out some time for those things. Talking to people really helps. Sharing your story, finding support, being with people who know how to hold a space for your grief without trying to make it better, those things are all helpful. Hopefully one day your child or your parent or your sibling will realize life is short and time is precious. Holding on to rage when you could be opening to love is a poor choice.

Sending you strength, and wishing you peace,

Ally Hamilton

Happily Ever After…

stephenking A lot of people do life like a movie. You know how it is when two characters come together, and then a conflict arises, and they separate, or they fight, or there’s a misunderstanding, and then some other event pushes the story forward and there’s a shift, and maybe the two people come back together and we have our “happy ending”, and then the credits roll? Like, they get married, and ride off into the proverbial sunset?

Really, in life, that’s the beginning of the story, not the end, but a lot of people think that way. If I just meet the right person, I’ll be happy. The end. If I just graduate from a good school and get a great job, I’ll be happy. The end. If I just buy a big house and have a few kids, I’ll be happy. The end. Did you ever see those National Lampoon’s Vacation movies, where the Griswolds head to Walley World, and have this insane journey to get there, only to find that it’s closed when they arrive? Or the one where they head to the Grand Canyon, and are so furious and frazzled and exhausted when they get there, they look for two seconds and go? This is pretty much what happens when we get so caught up in our destination, we forget to enjoy, or even take in, the experience of traveling and connecting and observing and being, and when we finally get to wherever it is we’ve been going, we don’t really know what to do.

The chapters are always unfolding. If you think the happy ending begins when you say “I do”, you’re forgetting that a relationship is a living, breathing, entity that needs to be fed or it will die. So many people get wedding fever, and then they experience marital depression the day after the big event. Or kids work like crazy to get into a good college, and are burnt out by the time they get there and end up partying for four years. Maybe the graduation day from said college is exuberant, the key-note speech is poignant, but the year after is like ice-water in the face. Often, the way we’ve envisioned something is not the way it turns out to be, and when reality fails to meet our expectations, we freeze, or we numb, or we panic or we internalize the experience. We think it must be just us flailing and floundering around, confused and surprised and, weirdly, unprepared, because college doesn’t really give us the tools for life, any more than dating prepares us for marriage, or pregnancy prepares us for that first year of motherhood. Most of the biggest, most dramatic changes in our lives require on the job training. We learn as we go, and there isn’t a lot of time to process our inexperience or fear or surprise.

Life is not waiting for any of us. It’s happening right here, right now, and we are in the flow, or we’re out of it, but the flow doesn’t stop and it doesn’t care if it’s meeting your expectations or mine. I think there are some life skills it would be smart for us to teach, like how to balance a check book. Just practical, necessary stuff. How to create a budget. How to be a good partner. How to listen, and how to communicate with kindness and compassion. How to recognize the voice of your intuition. How to nap with your baby when you have a newborn. How to ask for help when you need it. It would be great if these things were taught at home. The other night I took my kids to see “Into the Woods”. It turns the classic fairytales on their heads. They loved it, and I enjoyed it, except for the part where (spoiler alert!) Prince Charming cheats on Cinderella with the Baker’s Wife. And the Baker’s Wife, it should also be noted, cheats on the Baker, who happens to be caring for their newborn at the time. Anyway, I talked to my kids about this after the movie. I told them I wanted to be sure they understood it’s not cool or okay to be kissing other people when you have a husband or wife, girlfriend or boyfriend. They assured me that they knew this, and my daughter, who’s five, then said, “Don’t worry about it, Mommy. You can’t find a real prince in this world, anyway.”

Of course, she meant we don’t have royalty in our country, but I thought it was pretty hilarious, and I told her that, actually, you can find a real prince in this world, but you have to look carefully, and that people show you who they are by what they do. Anyway, I don’t get it right in every moment, or anything, but my point is, a lot of this stuff does have to happen at home. We can’t hope our kids’ teachers are going to take care of the difficult or awkward conversations, or that they’re going to teach our kids to be compassionate and kind and fully present. Many of them do. Many of our teachers are absolute godsends. I’m just saying, none of us can afford to shirk our responsibility when it comes to creating a generation of people who, hopefully, do it better than we have so far.

I really do feel there’s a shift happening. I think a tremendous number of people are recognizing the old formulas we were sold and taught just don’t pan out. They don’t lead to that happy ending. I think a lot of people are hip to the fact that nothing external brings long-term peace and fulfillment. We all have to work for that, we have to dig for it. But just in case anyone reading this is still thinking that happiness is something you chase, I figured I’d go ahead and turn that fairytale inside out. We are always in process. We are always changing, and so is everything around us. If you want a happy ending, you really have to figure out how to live each day well. Then the days will end well, and so will the weeks and months and years, and one day, hopefully one day way out ahead of us, the happy ending will come because life has been so full of love.

Wishing that for you,

Ally Hamilton

It’s Not You, It’s Me

motivating It’s hard to see clearly when we’re in the heat of a thing. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations or relationships that are disappointing for whatever reason, and we take it personally. If people aren’t wanting what we wish they would want, or things aren’t unfolding in a way that matches the picture in our heads, we think it must be something that’s lacking within us, some way we aren’t measuring up. This is very common when we’re children, for example. If you were born into a home where you weren’t cherished for any number of reasons, including the timing of your arrival in your parents’ lives, there’s a good chance you internalized your experience. A lot of people grow up trying to earn love or praise or affection or approval. Those can be difficult habits to break.

The thing is, people can only be where they are, and they can only use the tools they’ve got. I can look back on relationships in my life, and recognize thanks to time, distance and healing, that very little is personal. Most people are not setting out to hurt us or let us down, and recognizing that is liberating, and it tends to lead toward forgiveness. You can’t really be angry with someone who doesn’t have the tools or desire to commit to you. I mean, you can be angry if you want to, but it’s not about you, and the only part that’s personal is the healing you’ll have to do around the heartache. For example, the much older man I dated in college who cheated on me throughout our relationship, did not change his stripes with the next woman. He cheated on her, and the woman after that, and the one after that, too. If he still has the energy for it, that behavior likely continues to this day, unless he’s undergone some huge transformation, or gotten himself some help (assuming he wanted any).

At the time, I was so young I thought for sure his extracurricular activities were a reflection of something lacking in me; that I must not be pretty enough or smart enough or something enough to make him want to devote himself to only me. I was seventeen, and I had low self-esteem and I was trying to rewrite my own history. It just didn’t occur to me that the lack was within him, and most painful interactions fall into that category. Most parents, for example, do not intentionally screw things up. Maybe your mom and dad were really young when they had you, maybe they suffered from abusive backgrounds themselves, maybe they struggled with addiction or depression—there’s no end to the possibilities that might prevent a person from being a present and nurturing source of love.

A lot of it has to do with a shift of perspective. If we experience the world and other people and the things that happen only as they pertain to us, we’re probably going to take everything personally. If someone cuts you off in traffic, they become a person who’s disrespected you and singled you out. No matter that they’ve already done it to twenty people behind you, and will do it to countless more before the day is over. The colleague who doesn’t smile and say hi in passing obviously doesn’t like you or think you’re worth the time of day. It might not occur to you that perhaps they were up all night with a sick kid, or that they’re stressed out about their finances, or that their partner just announced it’s over. It goes on and on.

The reality is that most people are just doing what they’re doing. Constructing stories and explanations for other people’s choices and behavior is a dangerous game. Everyone has their stuff, their fears and pain and raw, unhealed places. We all have our worries and obsessions and dreams and occasional absurdities. We’ve all had our particular life experiences which have shaped us and informed the way we feel about the world and other people. If your partner has experienced betrayal in the past, you don’t have to take their trust issues personally, and the same holds true for each of us. Look back at the times when you’ve hurt other people. Did you do it on purpose? Mostly it happens because we don’t know who we are yet; we’re unacquainted with ourselves, and we don’t yet know what we need to be at peace. Other times it happens because we’re young and we lack the tools to show up for ourselves or other people. Maybe we don’t know how to communicate honestly and with compassion just yet.

Rage is an enormous burden. Blame makes you powerless. Grudges weigh you down and suck the joy out of life. They take up space where love could be happening. Take yourself out of the center of the story, and consider yourself from the side of it, or as a strand of it. When we’re the main character, it’s all about what we’re putting out there, and what’s coming back to us. When we recognize that our stories overlap with everyone else’s, and that we might cross paths with people at unfortunate times, it frees us up to understand and move forward openly. What you need in order to heal, is personal. Everything else, not so much. The main thing to remember is that we are all worthy of love. If you don’t believe that to be true of yourself, it’s time to reach out and get some help. Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Time is a Gift

tomrobbins Because our time and energy are finite assets, it’s really essential that we’re careful about where we invest them. It’s so easy to get caught up in other people’s dramas, or to allow the mind to get snagged on some thoughtless or unkind thing someone said or did. We can lose hours, days or years dwelling on choices we’d like to do over, differently, or sad tales we tell ourselves about why we are the way we are, or why life is unfolding the way it is.

We can find ourselves trying to chase down love, approval or acceptance, we can allow the sting of rejection to overwhelm us, we can spend time trying to defend ourselves against lies, but it’s time we’ll never have back again. Life will bring us enough ups and downs; we really don’t need to create suffering for ourselves, but so many of us do. I am not someone who believes that there are no tragic events, or that it’s just the way we’re thinking about an event that makes it unbearable. In my view, there are things that can happen sometimes that bring you to your knees and make you doubt everything you thought you knew about heartbreak and pain and the ability to go on. Those same events remind us that there isn’t any time to waste, and that the best use of our energy is to love the people in our lives with everything we’ve got, and to follow our dreams and believe in ourselves. Life isn’t going to hand you five or ten years to be pissed at your parents or your ex or all the people you’ve ever worked for, to boil yourself and keep your rage alive by feeding it, to point your finger in blame, and then hand you back that time one day when you realize what a gift it is just to open your eyes in the morning.

People who want to be angry and bitter deserve compassion, surely, but not a lot of your time and energy. I’m not talking about people who are trying to heal or take ownership of their lives, or make big shifts. I’m talking about people who are unwilling to loosen their grip on their angry story. I had an acquaintance like this. I’d see her at different functions every five years or so, and it was always the same. She’d find a way to corner me, and tell me her tale of why she was the hero of her family and her workplace, the generous but unappreciated benefactor, the one who always got the short end of the stick. Usually she’d be quite drunk, and the more she drank, the more angry and self-righteous she became. For quite some time, I’d listen to her, even though it was exhausting. I thought maybe she just needed someone to hold a space for her to unload the pain. I really didn’t care about the details of her stories, the list of wrongs, the way this person or that person had failed her or betrayed her, but sometimes I’d try to offer up a different viewpoint, and then she’d attack me, too. You can’t help a person who’s armored themselves in bitterness. I don’t make myself available to people who don’t want to let the love in. It’s a choice.

Let me be clear: we do not get to choose what life will put in our paths. We get beautiful lessons in life, and we get brutal ones, too, and that is not a choice. Unthinkable tragedy could befall any of us. People sometimes ask, “Why me?”, but why any of us? There’s no way to predict what any of us will have to endure, and if you go through a knifing loss, I hope you don’t compound your pain by feeling that you ought to be able to get over it faster, or with fewer racking sobs or relentless tears. The more we’re present in each moment, the more we allow the feelings to wash over us and through us, the more we’re honoring our experience. Loving someone so intensely that the loss of them makes it hard to breathe, loving someone that way is a gift and an honor. The loss of the ability to express that love through hugs or phone calls or shared experiences is so painful. If it’s a sudden and unexpected loss, of course that has its own particular difficulties.

My point is, death and loss put things into sharp perspective for us. If you’re worrying about the five pounds you’ve gained, for example, perhaps that’s not the best use of your time. Hugging someone you love would feel so much better. If you’re obsessing over a call or email you haven’t gotten, maybe there’s a better use of your energy. Maybe you could do something nurturing for yourself or someone else instead. If you’re getting caught up in what other people think of you, remember it’s none of your business. When the big losses or heartaches come, you take the time to breathe, to be kind to yourself, to reach out for help if you need it. Short of those tragedies, don’t be your own obstacle by dwelling on the unimportant crap. Pick your mind up, and bring it back to right now. Choose better thoughts. Make better mistakes moving forward. Forgive yourself, and forgive other people, as much as you can. Holding grudges and carrying heavy stories around will weigh you down, and that of course, makes it harder to fly. I really wouldn’t waste too much time.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Teach People to Treat You Well

tonygaskins Sometimes we accept treatment that’s so far below what we want, it’s hard to comprehend how we’ve landed ourselves in such heartache. This can happen with our parents, it can happen with our partners, and it can happen with our children, too. When we love people with our whole hearts, we make ourselves totally vulnerable. It’s hard to create boundaries when you love like that. If it’s your child, walking away is not an option, but if you’re being abused, of course you’re going to need some support, and so are they. Allowing yourself to be mistreated never serves anyone, but those situations are particularly painful, because of course we never think we’d need to protect ourselves from people whose diapers we once changed. You simply never know what might happen down the line; you can’t say for sure how the teenage years will go, or what kind of rage you might be facing, or what will happen when your grown children find partners. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard from mothers who tell me their son has married a woman who doesn’t like them, or their daughter is involved with someone who doesn’t value the family bond, and now they barely see this person who means the world to them. It’s brutal. (Don’t worry. I hear from the wives who tell me horror stories about their mothers-in-law, too. I understand there are always at least two sides to every story. I just think it’s a heartbreak to watch a family that was once close, fall apart.)

Of course this can happen with our parents. If you grew up with an elusive mom or dad, maybe you’ve been trying to earn her or his approval or attention or recognition for years. The same holds true if you were abandoned, by choice or circumstance. This stuff can run so deep. Even if you know your mom or your dad didn’t leave you “on purpose”, even if they were taken by disease or disaster, it doesn’t change the fact that you were left. Sometimes we chase love, or we run around trying to prove our worthiness, or we try to be “perfect” so we won’t be left again, or we act out all over the place. Feeling invisible hurts like hell.

Which leads to my third example, because of course this can happen with our romantic partners. Sometimes we fall hard in the beginning, when the hormones are raging and fogging up our lenses. A lot of people think, “This is it!” six weeks in, only to realize a few months later that maybe the “person of their dreams” isn’t so easy to be with. It takes time to get to know people, but by then, a lot of us fall into that trap of having already decided this person is the one we’ve been waiting for, even if all evidence starts to point to the contrary. We keep waiting for the person who was so kind and attentive and complimentary in the beginning, so romantic and affectionate and sweet. For many people, the beginning is the part they’re great at; when things get real, they want to run for the hills. I get so many emails from people who struggle with all of this stuff. The teenage child is being hurtful, the parent is punitive, even from the nursing home, the partner is treating them like an option.

The bottom line is that we teach people how to treat us. If we allow someone to be emotionally or verbally abusive, and we keep interacting with no consequences, the message is that we will tolerate that behavior. We create an understanding, a contract. You can’t expect respect from people who’ve learned that they can treat you badly, and you’ll still be there, with the exception of your children, and I want to clarify that. I don’t know if you remember your teenage years, but unless you were one of those rare, well-adjusted teens with your self-esteem intact, you probably went through some rough moments. Puberty isn’t easy for most people. We don’t know ourselves well yet, we feel pressure to conform, or at least to make it seem that we’re the same as everyone else, even if we feel sick on the inside. The hormones rage, peer pressure can be intense, and then there’s bullying, and cyber-bullying, and texting and sexting and so many other things many of us did not have to deal with. So if you’re a parent of a troubled teen, I think it’s important to draw healthy boundaries, but I think it’s equally important to make sure your child knows you will always love him no matter what. That you might have to draw the line, or get some help, but that love will never be withdrawn.

Anyone other than your child does not automatically get that same assurance. A growing kid is going to flail and make mistakes; that’s normal, understandable and expected. Your parent is not a person from whom you need to accept mistreatment, physically, verbally, psychologically, or emotionally, and neither is your partner. You are not obligated to come back with love when someone is treating you badly. I mean, you might choose to love them anyway, but you have to love yourself, that’s a non-negotiable, and that means you must protect your tender heart when necessary. You don’t have to participate in toxic, unhealthy relationships. You don’t have to accept poor treatment. You don’t have to settle for so much less than what you really want. If you’re in love with someone and it isn’t reciprocal, don’t stick around to have your heart broken again and again. Look at a person’s actions. Words are easy, but the tale is told in deeds, not words. If you want to be someone’s everything, and instead you’re their, “fine for now”, get out.

Life is short. We’re here for a blink of time, and none of us, not a single one of us, is here to be a doormat. You have a spark and it’s your job to stoke it, not to participate in its turning to ash and dying out. Teach people to treat you well, by refusing to accept anything less.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Stop Kidding Yourself!

annlanders I know it can be painful to swallow, but for the most part, people will do what they want to do. I say this because I think many people try to fool themselves, or make excuses for someone else’s behavior, or justify certain actions. Sometimes we want to hold on to our idea of how someone is, or how we want things to be, or how we want someone else to feel, and we just refuse to see reality clearly. We think we’re going to change someone, or save another person, or we fall in love with the potential we see, which is not the same as falling in love with the person in front of us.

In order to face reality as it is, you have to be able to discern what is real from what is not real. What is you from what is not you. What you wish were happening, versus what is happening. Ideas and opinions and desires can really fog up the lenses. Often we want to see through the glasses that show the outcome we want, and no matter what happens, we press those glasses to our heads, and stick our fingers in our ears. We reject, deny or explain anything that challenges our view, or we numb the edges so that reality almost looks the way we want it to. This person would be with me if they could. Or this path is the right path because I’ve been pursuing it so long I can’t turn back, even though it just feels wrong, now. Whenever we deny reality, we set ourselves up to suffer. The truth won’t kill you. Not facing it could.

Some people agonize for months or years, grasping on to false hope, creating constructs that uphold the happy ending they desire. I know too many people who can look a person in the eye and insist something is purple when it’s clearly orange. I don’t mean it’s someone’s opinion that it’s orange, I mean it’s actually, factually orange. If you say that, though, you might be met with anguish or rage or stubbornness. Sometimes a person needs to hold onto that purple, that false version of reality. If that’s the case, there’s not much you can do. I mean, you really can’t say, “Okay, it’s purple”, and still feel good when you look in the mirror at the end of the day. You can have compassion, you can recognize the pain, you can hope eventually they can loosen their grip on the need to deny. You can love people, but you can’t save them, you can’t press their faces up to the reality of a thing and scream, “This is orange!!!” You’ll just alienate them or break their heart, and maybe they are not yet strong enough to allow their heart to break. You have to be strong to do that.

The thing is, you know in your heart if you’re desperately grasping at something, because you’ll feel sick and exhausted, and things just won’t make sense. You’ll talk yourself into accepting less than you want. You’ll hear yourself explaining the situation to your closest friends, and even to you, the story won’t add up. It’s true that many people are floundering around in the dark, trying to figure out what to do next, with no real idea of which way to turn. So you may deal with someone who doesn’t know what they want. The thing is, if a person wants to be with you, it’s not going to be a mystery to them, or to you.

Lots of things in life are complicated, but the truth isn’t one of them. When I say the truth, I just mean what is true for you, and what is true for other people. Love requires bravery and intense vulnerability and a lot of acceptance. It’s challenging, but it isn’t complicated. Joy is simple, too. So is gratitude. The paths to get to these places may be full of thorns and stopovers where you have to lean into your deepest fears and your most raw, unhealed places, your mistakes and your regrets and your desires, but if you want to be at peace, you’re going to have to get acquainted with the voice of your intuition. It can spot excuses hundreds of miles away. Its vision is so clear, it cuts right through judgements and attachments and shoulds, and just sees what is. It’s a relief, really. Working to create a false reality takes a tremendous amount of energy. Facing reality as it is leaves you the energy to move with and toward love.

Sending you some right now,

Ally Hamilton

See the Pain Beneath the Words

stephencovey Have you ever gone to see a film with a friend, and come out to discover you have two completely different viewpoints about what you’ve just seen? Obviously, it’s not that you’ve seen two different movies, it’s that you and your friend are bringing two different perspectives to a shared experience. I think that’s clear when we’re in that context, but we seem to forget it’s the same with life.

We’re always bringing so much to the table. We have our life experiences, our histories, our opinions and feelings and things we’ve been taught, in addition to our current mood and circumstances. This is really helpful to remember when we find ourselves totally thrown by someone else’s behavior or different take on a situation. It’s also good to remember when we move through conflict with those we love.

So much of the time, we get caught up in the story, or our need to be right. If we’re not seeing eye to eye with a loved one, we might expend a lot of energy trying to convince them to see things our way. We might dig our heels in, or shake our head, or throw our hands in the air in our attempts to “win” a fight, but when we separate ourselves form those we love because being right is more important than being close, no one wins.

If, for example, your partner feels jealous, and you know in your heart there’s no need for that fear, you might become impatient or angry or indignant. Maybe you go for reassurance once or twice, but then you feel frustrated that you have to spend time and energy putting them at ease when you aren’t doing anything wrong. You could take that tack, but you could also stop and breathe and consider your partner’s life experiences. Maybe they’ve been betrayed in the past, more than once. Don’t get me wrong, here. I’m not talking about pathological jealousy, or controlling or violating behavior. I’m not suggesting it’s ever okay if the person you’re with is checking your email or your text messages, or showing up unannounced. That kind of behavior chokes the life, trust and health out of any relationship.

What I’m talking about is clear communication and compassion. When we love people, we love the whole person, with all their beauty and all their flaws and occasional absurdities, just as we hope they’ll also love us. We don’t reject the challenging parts. We don’t walk away when a person we love is in pain. One of the most loving things you can do for anyone is to try to understand their perspective, because underneath words and stories, there are always feelings. Sometimes in the middle of a charged exchange, it’s incredibly revealing to stop listening to the words, and just look at your loved one’s face. Maybe you’re going to see fear or anger, because when we love, we make ourselves vulnerable, and when we feel threatened, it’s human for us to want to protect what we love. Generally, if you can see the pain or fear beneath the words, it makes it so much easier to be kind and understanding. That’s what we all want, right? To be seen and understood, to feel that if we’ve given someone our heart, we can trust that they’ll take care of it, and that they won’t shame us or reject us for our insecurities. We all have some, after all.

The other thing that’s such a relief, and often comes with time and distance, is just the realization that so little is personal. People can only be where they are, and they can only use the tools they’ve got. We’ve all had our experiences and our life lessons, and most of us have learned at least a few things along the way that we’re going to have to unlearn. Like, maybe you learned that “everyone cheats”, or “everyone leaves”, because that’s what you saw growing up, and that’s what you’ve unconsciously sought out as an adult, in an effort to rewrite your story. Maybe it just hasn’t occurred to you yet, it isn’t that everyone cheats, it’s that all the people you’ve picked, cheat. Ugh. Not a very fun realization, but key for your healing and happiness. Anyway, my point is, if you love someone, and I don’t just mean romantically, part of your job is to help them unlearn anything that’s blocking their happiness. I mean, you don’t have to take that on, that’s advanced love, but the option is there for you to be that person.

If you can really make those closest to you feel safe to be fully themselves, and to know that you won’t walk away, you set the stage to be received in the same way. Not everyone is going to accept that invitation, but you don’t need everyone, just a handful of people is a blessing. You can always have at least one person who accepts you entirely, because you always have the power to do that for yourself, and it’s a relief, really. We all have our struggles, fears and pain. That doesn’t make us less lovable.

Sending you a huge hug, and a lot of love,

Ally Hamilton

Your Five-Year Plan

steinbeck There’s no way to accept and embrace reality without recognizing our own vulnerability. If we’re lucky, we get seventy, eighty, ninety, maybe one hundred years to offer up whatever we’ve got. The first order of business, once we’re grown, is to make peace with our past. I’ve met maybe three people who had idyllic childhoods, so barring them, most of us are going to have some healing to do. And of course, I jest. Even if your childhood was wonderful, we all have pain, insecurities, doubts, fears and struggles. It’s part of the nature of being human, and of being part of a mystery much larger than any one of us. Yet, we have to face the journey in our own way, and we have to develop our own tools.

We like to make things linear, but my sense is really that time folds in on itself, and also expands out, simultaneously. I can go back to any vivid moment of my life at any time. I can be three, on my grandmother’s soft and cozy lap, I can feel her fingertips tracing my face, and I can smell the mix of powder and perfume and love, just by closing my eyes. I can be fourteen, in the living room of the boy I adored, being kissed for the first time with sunlight streaming through the window, my heart pounding, every sense on fire. I can be sixteen, walking away from the boy I loved, who sat on a bench and watched me leave, sobbing as I went, because he said he had to go away. I can see the blurry trees through my tears, the statue of Balto in Central Park, I can feel the biting cold on my face, on my fingers, in my heart. I can be at the funeral of my cousin’s little boy, with that impossibly tiny coffin, and I can still see the way my cousin’s hand flew to his mouth when our eyes met. Just like that, I’m there, and I’m crying. I can be with that same cousin when I was five years old, and he and his brother threw me in a pool in Bermuda, much to my delight, even though my thumb was broken and I had a cast up to my upper arm. I can see that same cousin, with his head thrown back, laughing, before, way before the coffin and the loss and the grief. I can be at the emergency veterinarian’s hospital with my dog, and doctors I’d never met before, holding his head and watching the light go out of his eyes as I thanked him and tried to wrap my head around the fact that he was here, and then he wasn’t, ten years of history, ten years of being my best friend, holding the ceramic paw print they gave me as I walked out the door, about to give birth to my son, joyous and bereft all at once. I can be in the delivery room with my son, a week later, terrified, wondering if we were going to make it, and I can be in the delivery room with my daughter, too, although the births were two and a half years apart. I can also be right here, right now, with both kids asleep, a different dog curled up on the floor, people walking by on the street outside. If you can’t acknowledge the vulnerability of this thing, I think you’re going to be in some trouble.

A few years ago, I went to a meeting, and someone asked me what my five year plan was, and I didn’t mean to, but I laughed, loudly. I might have accidentally snorted. When I look back on the last five years of my life, almost none of it has gone according to any plan I had. You heal. You make peace with your past. You use your wounds as entryways to understanding and insight and compassion. You figure out what lights you up, what it is, you, in particular, have to offer, and you get busy figuring out how best to do that. Hopefully at some point you realize that it’s what you give, and not what you have, that’s going to define your life. You follow your passion and you share your gifts, and you keep your heart open. You evolve as everything around you evolves, and you keep putting one foot in front of the other. That’s the plan as far as I know.

I’m not saying you have to burn your vision board, or that you shouldn’t have goals. Living intentionally is the way to go. Thinking about where you’re going to spend your time and energy makes sense. It’s not like those are infinite gifts, after all, and you don’t want to squander them, but I wouldn’t get too attached to a picture in your head of “how things should be”, or how people should be, or how life should look, because reality is not obligated to bend to your will, and it probably won’t. If you want to pin something on a board, I’d make two columns. Under the first, “Things I Can Control”, under the second, you guessed it, “Things I Cannot Control”. There’s only one thing that goes under the first list, and here it is: “I can control the way I respond to what I’m given (if I work on it a lot).” Under the second list, go ahead and put everything else, including, “other people (and there are some sub-topics here, like what other people will want, or do, or say, or need), circumstances, the weather, when and if I’m going to meet someone amazing (here’s an asterisk for you— *YOU are someone amazing), how long I have here, how long anyone else has here, timing, and whether I’ll get the “breaks” I need.” There are a lot of other things that can go on that second list, that was just off the top of my head.

Here are some things I know for sure: When I’m coming from a loving, open, generous place, life feels pretty awesome, and when I’m in fear, when I’m anxious or worrying or feeling resentful or bitter, or I’m blaming someone else, life feels pretty crappy. When I focus on what I can give, it reminds me that I’m coming from a place of abundance, and that makes me feel really grateful, and when I focus on what I don’t have, or what I’m not getting, that makes me feel like I don’t have enough, and other people have more, and that, in turn, makes me feel that I ought to grasp whatever I’ve got which makes me feel small and petty and like I’m coming from a place of lack, which feels bad. Also, when I focus on the days instead of the years, that feels manageable. When I think about what I can do today to support my own healing if I need it (that has to come first), or what I can do to possibly uplift someone else, I’m on track to have a meaningful and fulfilling day. If I can string a bunch of those days together, I’m having a meaningful and fulfilling life. If I start to future trip and worry about what could happen or what someone else might or might not do, if I start imagining different scenarios, then it all feels overwhelming. What can you do in service to your dreams and the dreams of those you love, today? What can you do to strengthen and nurture yourself, and everyone you encounter, today? I think those are useful questions.

Grateful, as ever, to be in conversation with you all, and sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Raise Your Words, Not Your Voice

rumi Words are powerful. They can be used as tools for healing, communication, connection, understanding, comfort, gratitude, joy and love, or they can be used as weapons, knives, arrows, or bullets. As with any tool, it’s how you wield it.

Sometimes people grow up in homes where words are used as tools of pain and destruction. It doesn’t take much to make a kid doubt his own worth, or come to know the taste of fear. The holding of breath, the desire to be invisible, or safe, wanted, protected or loved. We only know what we know. We each have a frame of reference. If you grew up in a house where your parents fought like enemies, where they cursed at each other, or at you, or threw things, or stormed out the door, you’re going to have to develop a communication style that’s different from what you saw if you want to have healthy relationships in your life, not just with lovers, but with your children, your friends, and your colleagues. Try to imagine how terrified you’d be right now if giants tore through your house screaming, and multiply that times a million, because as a kid, you can’t reassure yourself, or understand that it’s no reflection on you.

It’s a very confusing experience when we don’t know what to expect from the people who are supposed to love us and nurture us. It’s even more troublesome if they’re sometimes loving, affectionate and kind, and other times reactive, abusive or nasty. There’s no way to feel secure. There’s actually a name for this, and it’s called “disorganized attachment”, and it can follow you into your adult life, and probably will. It’s hard to relax with people if you’re always waiting for the other shoe to come crashing down over your head.

People tend to go in two directions; they either repeat the cycle of abuse, or they go in the absolute opposite direction. Either way, if you didn’t have a model of healthy communication, you’re almost definitely going to need some help with that. You don’t have to use the map you’ve got; in many instances it would do a person good to burn that map and chart a new one, but it isn’t easy to rewire the system. It takes enormous desire and dedication and herculean effort. If you come out of terror, it’’s likely you either shut down when conflict arises, or you go for the jugular. Neither of these options are going to lead you toward healthy communication.

This is one of the great gifts of a consistent yoga practice. So much of what we do is about breathing through intense sensation. I know we don’t think about emotion this way, but when we say we’re “enraged”, we’re not talking about an abstract concept; we’re not talking about some idea. We’re describing the feelings we have when our bodies are flooded with sensation. The racing heart rate, the rising blood pressure, the tense shoulders, the shortness of breath, the clenched jaw or fists, these are all physical sensations. This is why it’s so powerful to breathe deeply while you’re holding a lunge and your quadriceps are on fire. You’re training both your nervous system and your mind to stay centered, to keep breathing, and to stay curious. If you stick with the physical practice long enough, and if you use your practice in this way, you ought to find you’re becoming less reactive and more responsive. Which is really what we’re talking about. (You can take my “Yoga for Anger Management” class, here: http://pages.yogisanonymous.com/preview/1529)

When we’re reactive, something within us gets triggered. Someone says something or does something that taps some raw, unhealed place within us, and BAM! We’re exploding. Cruelty and mean-spiritedness have no place in loving relationships. They have no place anywhere. Sometimes people say things that are so knifing, they leave a scar as deep as any blade. Or sometimes someone says something or does something that taps a place of intense pain, like the pain of being abandoned or neglected or unseen, and we shut down, or we flee the scene. Those are examples of reactivity. An event from our present ignites pain from our past, and it’s as if the prior event is happening all over again. All of our pain, or all of our rage comes crashing to the surface. A response comes out of the present. We might feel triggered, but we remember to breathe and to stay calm and to listen. We create a little space between the event, and what we decide to do or say about it. We take in the person in front of us. We recognize that we’re feeling hurt or angry, and we speak about what’s happening within us. Maybe we tell the other party we’re feeling overwhelmed and we need a minute. Or we explain our heart is racing and we don’t want to say something we’ll regret. We communicate rather than annihilate.

You don’t have to be ruled by your past. There are tools you can use to reverse the damage. You can create a life out of ideas you have about how you’d like to show up in the world. If you want to start to shift the way you’re speaking to other people, start with your inner dialogue. If you berate yourself relentlessly, you’re going to be filled with pain, and you’re going to spread it. Feed a loving voice. That’s something else you can do on your mat. So what if you fall? So what if your hamstrings aren’t as open as the person next to you? You aren’t here to balance on one leg, or put your ankle behind your head. You’re here to be at peace with yourself, to uncover your gifts, to share them freely, and to connect and love and give everything you’ve got. Fill your tank with love, so you can spread it wherever you go. The world needs more of that.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

What You Give

victorhugo The best things in life spring from what you give, not what you have or what you get. Giving from your heart feels great. Keeping score is not what it’s about. If that’s how you’re doing your relationships and your life, focusing on whether you’re getting as much as you’re giving, wondering about whether you’re being “shorted”, or holding on to lists of past transgressions or disappointments, you’re probably not going to feel very happy.

Some of this has to do with your outlook in general. If you’re the victim of a hit-and-run, and six people stop to make sure you’re okay, to wait with you until the police arrive so they can give their accounts, too, if one of them runs to get you ice, or holds your hand or your head, who are you going to focus on after the fact? The person who hit you, or the people who helped you? I mean, of course you’re going to tell the story of what happened, but when you think about the world at large, are you going to say, “This person hit me in my car and took off, and people suck”? Or are you going to say, “This person hit me in my car and took off, but a half-dozen other people, total strangers, dropped everything and made sure I was okay, and people are really kind”? What’s your takeaway going to be? What are you holding onto in general? I mean, we all have stories; things we carry around, sometimes like a talisman, that explain who we are to ourselves, and sometimes to other people. “I’m this way because…” And some of these stories strengthen us, and some of them weaken us. If you carry too many weakening stories around, what you really end up with are excuses.

I know this might be a little confrontational, but sometimes it’s really good to consider the quality of our thinking. A lot of our suffering is created in our own minds. Not all of it, so bear with me. There are devastating things that happen in this life that can bring you to your knees, so I want to be clear about that. Sometimes we suffer because someone we love more than words is ripped from us. Grief is real, and appropriate and it’s a healthy response when we’ve lost someone we don’t know how to live without. Sometimes I hear people spout platitudes like, “There are no bad events, there’s just the way we’re relating to the things that are happening.” Tell that to a grieving parents who’ve lost their child in a violent act. There are events that are simply brutal, and they are real, and we will suffer, but short of those tragedies, a lot of our suffering is created by our thoughts.

If you always focus on what you don’t have, you’re going to be miserable. If you always focus on the ways your partner is blowing it, you’re going to feel lousy, and chances are, your partner will, too. It never feels good to be constantly criticized, rejected or ignored. If you throw an epic and ancient list of past mistakes into the mix every time your partner forgets to bring home apples, that’s probably going to weaken your bond, not strengthen it. If you’re giving with a motive, it’s not really giving, it’s giving to get. Am I saying you should never consider how you’re being treated or whether your partner is seeing you? Of course not. A healthy, happy relationship is one in which both people look out for each other. Each party wants the other to grow and expand and be more of themselves, not less, so if you’re in something with someone who’s mistreating you, you really have to look at that, and take some action.

I’m not talking about that, here. It never feels good when we’re small and petty and calculating. Manipulation is a poor use of your time and energy. Directing your thoughts to everything you do have makes you feel good; it makes you feel full, and like you’re coming from a place of abundance. Moving through the world focusing on what you don’t have is going to make you feel terrible, and you’ll be coming from a place of lack. That leads to greediness and hoarding, whether we’re talking about hoarding stuff, or other people’s time, attention and affection. Neediness is a poor foundation for a relationship of any kind; you can’t expect anyone else to solve your happiness issue, that’s your work. Culturally we’re trained to think that we need only meet our soul-mates, and everything will fall into place, we’ll be “complete” and happy. You are your soul-mate. I think we all need to get really clear about that, because it liberates us, and the people closest to us. We get to take ownership of our happiness issue. The Cliff Notes, if you want them, are that giving makes us happy. Be your own soul-mate, and check the catalog of stories you’re toting around, so you can be sure you aren’t focusing on the doom and gloom, instead of the love and light.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

For People Who Suffer from “Needing to Be Right Disease”, and Those Who Love Them

nietzsche Sometimes it’s easier to be forgiving with other people than it is with ourselves. This has a lot to do with your personality, and your history with making mistakes. If, for example, you were badly punished when you made mistakes growing up, whether they were big or small, you might have a lot of fear around screwing up. If you felt that love and affection and approval were withdrawn when you blew it, the stakes become even higher. If that resonates with you, you might also find that you’re invested in being “right”, because if you aren’t right, you’re wrong, and if you’re wrong, you’ve made a mistake and there will be painful consequences. Fear usually drives the need to be right, and people who suffer from “Needing to Be Right Disease” often have a very hard time saying, “I’m sorry.” Which is, of course, the antidote.

If you’re dealing with someone who has to win every argument, or can’t ever say they’re sorry or see their part in a misunderstanding, you might be dealing with narcissistic pride, but you might also be dealing with fear. If this is someone you love, or someone you’re still getting to know, it might be worth your time to investigate the source of their need. Obviously, no one is always right, and most of the time, if there’s a miscommunication, it’s a two-party deal. Not always, so don’t freak on me, here. Sometimes you’re dealing with personality disorders and it doesn’t matter what you do or say; logic has no bearing, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about people who are normally kind and considerate, thoughtful and reasonable, until they feel they might have screwed up. Then this other entity comes out, this person who digs his heels in, or who can’t hear you because she’s raising her voice, or storming out the door. Clearly, that’s not a sustainable way to communicate, or try to work out problems. I’m just offering a possible explanation. Sometimes if we can understand that underneath anger and defensiveness, what we’re really dealing with is fear and pain, it inspires us to be kind, compassionate, and patient.

You will never get through to someone if they’re in the middle of a fight or flight reaction. That isn’t the time to offer your insights about what might be driving their need to be right. In fact, if you bring it up then, good luck to you! But if you care enough to understand, when things are calm and your friend is not feeling threatened or attacked or backed into a corner, you might ask how it was handled when they made mistakes as a kid. What did discipline look like in their house? How were they punished, and over what? This is the kind of conversation that might bring you a lot closer to someone you love, and it also might enable you to help them grow, to create a safe space to make mistakes, and to show them that you aren’t going to run out the door, or stop loving them, or “make them pay.”

People who fear being wrong berate themselves more than you ever could when they blow it, they obsess over it. And let me be clear, it’s not always the way someone was raised. Sometimes a person is a perfectionist. Maybe they had a parent who was very hard on her or himself, and they ingrained that behavior, so anything less than perfection is intolerable. Type A personalities suffer from this. Anyway, I know a lot about beating the crap out of yourself when you blow it, because I did that for years and years. I often say that after twenty or so years of yoga, pretty much six days a week, I am a mostly recovered Type A personality. 93% recovered on a good day, but it’s a hard way to live, if you’re expecting to never make a mistake, because obviously, you will, and probably you will a lot. It’s kind of an intrinsic part of being human. So if you feel disappointed in yourself, or disgusted with yourself, or like you want to jump out of your own intolerable skin, life is going to be pretty rough. You can lose days, weeks, months, even, over mistakes you’ve made. You can keep “boiling yourself”, traveling into the past, replaying what you’ve done, rewriting the scene so you don’t blow it, and lose all kinds of precious time you could have been enjoying the present.

Learning to expect that you’ll make mistakes is essential, and learning to own your mistakes and be accountable for your actions and choices is also imperative if you want to have healthy, lasting relationships of any kind in your life. Saying, “I’m so sorry”, and meaning it, is so freeing. It frees you, and usually, it’s all the other person needs or wants to hear. We all just long to be seen and understood by the people we love. We want to be known. It’s not about winning or being right. It’s about being seen and cherished and safe. Give yourself the gift of an inner voice that roots you on, don’t keep living with one that tears you down. There’s no need for that. A loud inner critic is a roommate who needs an eviction notice. That’s a voice that needs to be starved so you can have some peace. For me, I did most of that work on my yoga mat. If that shaming, critical voice spoke up, I didn’t give it any credence. I came back to my breath, reminded myself to be kind, and got back to the business of healing. It’s not a magic bullet, but I don’t know of anything that is when it comes to healing. Forgive yourself. Be reasonable with yourself. Let the love in.

Sending you some right now,

Ally Hamilton

Addiction

kalwar Sometimes in the name of love, we seek to control. We may do this because we can see a loved one is about to head into a brick wall, and we long to save them from getting hurt. Parents do this all the time, especially with their firstborn children. It’s a natural instinct to want to protect your children from pain; if you don’t have that instinct, I worry for you and your little ones, but if a parent is always there to say “no!” and “stop!” and “don’t!”, what results is a fearful child. You don’t want to scare the curiosity out of your kid, or rob them of any sense that they can trust themselves. Eventually, we all have to learn that if we run too quickly, we’re probably going to trip and fall, and it’s going to hurt. That’s how we learn.

Sometimes we see a friend stuck in a painful cycle, and we throw our hands in the air. What are they doing? How can they not realize they’re repeating this destructive pattern? How many times will we have to be there when it all falls apart? I’m not saying we shouldn’t kindly hold up a mirror when someone we love is hurting themselves, but you can’t force a person to see something they aren’t ready to see. You can’t manage another person’s journey, and you never know what someone else needs in order to learn and grow and strengthen. Sometimes we need painful lessons over and over again before we get it. Sometimes we have to have our hearts broken badly and repeatedly, until we finally say, “That’s it. Enough.”

You can’t save anyone, anyway. Communication is beautiful. “I love you, and it hurts me to see you treating yourself so badly. It hurts me to see you in such a self-loathing place, because I see you so clearly, and you’re beautiful.” Say it, go ahead. Maybe, hopefully, some part of that will seep in there. Maybe a tiny little root will grow, and one day the person will start to see themselves the way you do. If you’re dealing with someone who’s harming themselves, of course do everything you can to get them help, but understand, ultimately, everyone has to do their own journey. Healing is inside work. A person has to be open to help, or no help is available.

Also, try not to judge. None of us knows the interior world of another person. We only ever know what someone is willing to show us. We all have pain. Some people do a better job managing their pain than others. Some people have more pain handed to them, that’s a fact. Sometimes a person is up against so much grief and despair they reach for anything to numb it, anything to avoid feeling that abyss. Desperation and loneliness and a certain kind of personality, along with possible trauma, a person’s resiliency, and so many other factors can lead to the kind of numbing that’s hard to comprehend. No one wants to be addicted to something that has the potential to ruin or end their lives. Addicts are prisoners of the object of their desire. They get hijacked by it. Their pain owns them, and the agent that numbs the pain owns them, unless they find the enormous will and strength and tenacity and love for themselves to fight back, and even then, it takes a Herculean effort, a lot of support, and a decision every day to choose love. To choose health. To choose freedom. Sometimes people just don’t win the fight. They get tired. It’s heartbreaking. Addiction robs us of so much beauty.

Have you ever been in a destructive, abusive relationship that you wanted to end, but you just couldn’t find the strength? You just weren’t feeling good enough about yourself to say, “F&ck this. I don’t deserve this”? Maybe you tried to end it a bunch of times, but the pull was so strong, you found yourself dialing that number, even when every part of your being was screaming, “No!” It’s not easy being a human being. It can be gorgeous and beautiful and wildly interesting, but it isn’t easy. Love the people in your life. I mean, really love them. Honor them, cherish them, see them, hear them, support their growth and their joy. That’s all you can do. Sometimes, you’ll have to do it from afar if someone you love is hurting themselves and won’t be stopped. Don’t ever think a person is choosing between you and a drug, and that you must not mean much to them if they’re choosing a drug over you. You’re not even in the fight. You’re not in the mix. It’s not about you, so don’t get confused. You’ve been left on the shore. They’re out to sea with this thing, fighting for their lives. You’re outside the thing, so try to grasp that. How much they love you has nothing to do with it. It’s how much they’re able to care about themselves. May all beings be free from suffering.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

A Leg is a Leg

lincoln Sometimes people come into our lives and there’s an instant and real connection there, but circumstances prevent us from exploring it. There’s no need to agonize over this. You can’t pursue every road; life is full of choices. There’s a reason we have the word “bittersweet.” Also, understand that there are times we idealize someone, or the feeling we have when we’re with them, simply because we’ll never get to really test it. Fantasy is easy, even with a real bond. Meeting once a decade for tea, or reconnecting on Facebook with someone you knew twenty years ago can bring you back. It can make you feel like you’re in a time warp, but if you really want to know how things would be with someone, you have to be in the foxhole with them at some point. Otherwise, it’s easy to feel like this would have been the person for you, if only things had worked out. Sending messages, meeting at Grand Central Station for an hour-long wistful coffee while you’re in town on business, that’s easy. Holding your baby at 3 o’clock in the morning as he’s throwing up for the sixth time in four hours, covering you both in vomit until you finally strip down to your underwear to lessen the laundry load, that’s something. Especially if your partner is there to take shifts with you, to discuss the merits of a trip to the ER, to hold you, too, because you’re on the verge of collapse—that’s when you really know, one way or the other.

Focus on what’s real in your life. Try not to take people for granted, or to be reckless with the heart of someone you say you love. If there are problems, welcome to real relationships. Life will never fail to put challenges in your path, it’s how you handle them that defines your relationship with yourself, and anyone else. It’s easy to lose the thread. You wake up with someone, day in and day out, for weeks, months, years, decades, and it’s easy to stop seeing them. I mean, to really take them in, and not just glance and nod your head like you’ve got it all figured out, because guess what? We’re all changing, all the time. Every single one of us. The person you chose to share your life with ten years ago, is not the same person today, and neither are you. We like to “peg” people, to think we “have them down”, but we’re always in process, and so are they; if you stop paying attention, you’re going to miss a lot, and no one likes to feel unseen or unheard. If two people stop showing up for each other, but continue living under the same roof, you can bet problems will follow.

A relationship exists in the space between you and the other person, whether we’re talking about your partner, your child, your parent, or the person behind the counter at the juice bar. What you put into that space is up to you. If we’re talking about intimate, longterm relationships, you have to be especially mindful about what you’re contributing, because complacency won’t get you there. Boredom, rage, frustration, blame and criticism won’t do it, either. You can’t control other people, or where they are on their own path. You can only do your end, you can only work to keep your side of the street clean, but you can inspire other people to be kind, compassionate, caring and present, by being those things yourself. If they don’t follow suit, if you try to communicate but find it’s falling on deaf ears, you may not be able to walk the distance together. It takes two people to make that third thing beautiful; that third thing being the relationship.

Maybe it can’t work, and that’s hard. It hurts. Depending upon circumstances, it can hurt a lot. If there are children in the picture, for example, it’s brutal, but understand that they live in that space between you and your partner, and if it’s polluted, they’re going to suffer. If you can’t make the space safe, loving, healthy and nurturing, it’s time to come up with a new plan. Turning your attention to fantasy won’t help anyone, but people do it all the time. They allow a flirtation at work to grow into a full-fledged situation, with heated emotion, and lying and desperation. It’s easy to justify poor behavior when you’ve felt discarded or rejected for years, but that just adds to the mess. It involves a whole other person, with all their feelings and complexities. It adds a layer of guilt and shame and hopelessness to a situation that’s already bleak. You really have to go to the source. If you’re unhappy, unfulfilled, misunderstood, it’s time to have a conversation. It’s time to sit down and get real with your partner, who already knows things are not okay. If it’s so bad you’re ready to trade in your integrity, and your ability to feel good about yourself, communication is long overdue. Some things are just not sustainable. Sometimes the foxhole is full of broken promises, dreams, hopes and potential. All that stuff has been shot up over the years, and now it’s time to see if you can piece things back together. If there’s enough there to start again, and start new, as you are now, and maybe you’re going to find that you can’t. But dealing with reality as it is, is always the place to start.

When we struggle in a relationship, we all like to think that things would be different if we had a different partner. And let me say this—maybe you chose someone when you were too young to really know yourself. Maybe you got hitched because you turned thirty and it seemed like the thing to do. Maybe you thought you knew your partner, but found out once you were in it, that so much had been edited out. Maybe you thought you wanted intimacy, but once you had it, you realized it isn’t for you. It isn’t for everyone, and that’s just reality, but if the truth is that if you’re not happy on the inside, finding a new partner won’t fix that. It’ll catch up with you. We can’t run from our pain, or gloss it over, or push it down or numb it out, and expect life to feel good. It won’t. Whatever it is, deal with it. Take it by the horns, and own it, because you don’t have all the time in the world. You want to be at peace, and you want the people you love to be at peace, and you want to be able to face yourself in the mirror when you’re brushing your teeth at the end of the day and feel you can look yourself in the eye. These things are really important. There’s no judgement here. People screw up royally, all the time. Someone is making a huge, messy mistake right this second. Sometimes that’s what we need to learn a painful lesson, or own the fact that we’re miserable, and start to make hard choices. So don’t go to self-loathing, because you’ll get stuck there. Just start where you are. Yoga is great for this, by the way. One of the biggest things we work on is the ability to lean into our uncomfortable feelings, and to work with reality as it is, to breathe when we feel challenged, to trust that everything is always in flux, to understand that how we feel now is not how we will always feel, and to pause and listen before we act. When you follow your intuition, the way becomes clear.

Sending you love and a hug,

Ally Hamilton

Speak Out

kuhn Clear communication is so important when we’re looking for understanding, but it’s not always easy. Sometimes people don’t say what they feel out of fear that the truth will hurt, that there will be repercussions for themselves or others, or because they know if they say this particular thing, the ground underneath them is sure to shift. We resist change, but it’s the only thing we can count on, and it’s the only chance we have for connection when we’re feeling misunderstood, disrespected, or unheard. Of course, when you’re sharing something with someone, you want to express yourself with as much compassion as you can muster. Hopefully, when you go to share something with someone you love, you do that because you’re hoping to be closer, you’re hoping to be seen.

In-person communication is always the best bet when you’re expressing something that’s emotional, sensitive in nature, or has a “charge” to it. So much can get lost in translation with emails and texts. If you can’t meet face-to-face, a phone call is your next best bet; at least you can hear the person’s voice, you can hear the tone, or their voice cracking, you can hear the frustration, and the pain underneath it. Words on a screen are impersonal, people get reckless with their fingertips; they write things they’d never say. A text is not a place to break up with someone, or to express rage or despair about anything, and neither is an email. If you’re frustrated or angry, go ahead and write it down if you need to get clear about the storm that’s raging in your mind, but don’t hit “send” until you’re in a calm state of mind. Words are powerful. Once you put them out there, you can’t take them back, and some things are so hurtful, they may be forgiven, but it’s unlikely they’ll be forgotten. This is true personally and globally–part of the pain so many people are in right now is a result of words that have been spoken and cannot be forgotten.

Manipulation is no way to go about getting what you want. If you want something, or you need something, ask for it. You may not get it, but take the mystery and agony out of things for yourself, and the people in your life. No one can read your mind, or mine. Being passive aggressive is also not a fabulous communication style. Expecting people to try to figure out what’s wrong or what you need makes it harder on everyone. If you’re angry, disappointed, scared, sad, hurt or confused, try saying that out loud.

When we’re angry, it’s almost always just a cover for our pain, or intense feeling of vulnerability. If we’re defensive, it’s because we feel attacked, even if that’s just our perception. Many people cannot receive anything but positive feedback. If you offer any kind of constructive input, that, too, might be received as an attack. Sometimes this happens with personality disorders like narcissism. Sometimes it happens because a person grew up in an abusive household, and an admission of error was met with incredible pain and punishment. You really don’t know what someone is dealing with unless they tell you, but you can work on the way you express yourself. You can work toward clear, truthful, compassionate communication. That’s really all you can do. As with everything, you can never control what someone else does.

There’s no hope for our personal relationships if we can’t speak clearly, and there’s no hope for healing rifts and divides with people we may not know, unless we can call it out when we see things that are not okay. Sometimes we have to speak up on behalf of someone else, and sometimes we need to act on our own behalf, but having no voice for either is no way to go through life.

Sometimes we keep quiet because we don’t want to have uncomfortable conversations, or we think we already know what the other person will say. Let me say this: If you have a long history with someone, and you know that sane, satisfying communication isn’t possible, then don’t bark up that tree. A lot of people are struggling with family members and close friends right now, who may have wildly different ideas about what we need in this world at the moment. It’s very painful when your entire ideology or life philosophy is rejected or ridiculed by those closest to you. Having said that, anyone who refuses to make an effort to understand your point of view is a person who is also struggling to understand what it means to love. Ridicule and disrespect have no place in that arena. You don’t have to agree with the people close to you all the time, but there needs to be some effort to grasp, to understand. Accept people where they are and how they are, or don’t have them in your life, or have them in your life, but create boundaries. In general, though, if you struggle with being assertive, work on it. Most people will really appreciate your honesty, if you’re kind; being truthful and mean is crappy, it’s not funny or brave or strong or tough. It’s crappy. So there’s that.

Maybe you grew up and no one ever asked you how you felt, or what you needed or wanted. Perhaps you’re still trying to figure that out. Maybe it doesn’t occur to you that how you feel is important and worth sharing. Maybe you feel invisible, or believe your worth lies in what you can do for other people. Those are all lies. Maybe you think it’s better for you to be in pain, and silent, than it is for you to express yourself, and disappoint someone else. What kind of relationship can possibly result? There’s no intimacy without honesty. Find your truth, and then find your voice. It really matters. If you struggle to say what’s real for you, get some help with it.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Hungry for the Truth

mandyhale Attachment leads to suffering. As human beings, we are going to be attached to our loved ones, and I wouldn’t recommend trying to avoid that. We’re going to be attached to wanting our families to be happy and healthy and living in a way that feels good and right to them. Connection and love and shared experiences are the best things in life. It’s just that when we allow ourselves to be attached, we also allow ourselves to be vulnerable. You can’t have one without the other, and the reality is, we are going to lose people we don’t know how to live without. Sometimes this happens because we’re in these bodies with their unknown expiration dates, and we just don’t know how much time we have with each other, and sometimes it happens because we grow apart from people with whom we were once so close, this eventuality seems impossible.

Few things cause us greater suffering than attachment to a picture we have in our heads of “how things should be”, or “how people should be”, or “how life should look.” That “should” is such a dangerous word. Sometimes we’ve attached our happiness to a particular outcome, and anything less, or anything else, just won’t do. So many people attach their happiness to externals. It’s the old, “I’ll-Be-Happy-When” formula. “I’ll be happy when I lose ten pounds, or have a different job, or a bigger house, or a faster car. I’ll be happy when I meet the ‘right’ person, or win the approval of my parents, or book that big gig…” It goes on and on, and I’ll tell you what. If that’s the formula you’re working with, happiness will always be just out of reach because it will never be enough. Anything outside of you will never equal your happiness. You plus the right person won’t do it. You plus the big house won’t do it, either. You minus the ten, fifteen, twenty pounds won’t get you there. It’s inside work.

I know this from my own personal experience. I tried the “me plus lots of external stuff” way for many years, and I exhausted myself. The funny thing is, while we’re out there in hot pursuit of that place called happy, inside it never feels right. We know, intuitively, it’s pointless, but we’re taught that this is the way, so many of us hang in there hoping, for many years. At a certain point, I stopped chasing happiness, and I got hungry for the truth. When I say “the truth”, I’m not talking about it like there’s one truth for everyone. I mean, I got hungry for my own truth, the truth of my own experience. Sometimes we think, “If only I could get this person to love me and see me and understand me and cherish me, then I’d be happy!!” And “this person” is not necessarily a romantic partner (although that’s often the case). It might be your mother or your father, or your mercurial Uncle Howard. Sometimes we start out with a parent who seems out of our reach and we repeat the pattern later in life by choosing partners who can’t or won’t commit to us. You can literally make yourself sick trying to be perfect for other people, trying to make yourself worthy, trying to dance like a monkey to earn love, trying to be something other than what you are just to get that thing you so desperately want—your happiness. But you’ll never be happy by trying to be something you are not. The alternative is to lean into the truth of whatever is real.

Maybe you have a parent who will never be able to love you in the way you long to be loved, perhaps they’re just not capable. You can receive that fact as a reflection of something lacking within you, but the much likelier reality is that it’s a deficit within them. People can only be where they are, and they can only use the tools they’ve got. If you’ve chosen a partner who can’t commit, you could interpret that data as an indication that there’s something about you that just isn’t good enough, or you could accept that perhaps this person has deep fears around intimacy, or maybe it’s just not where they’re at at this particular moment in time. Accepting reality as it is, without taking it personally, is such a huge relief. Getting hungry for the truth is a liberation. Setting yourself free of the idea that only one outcome can lead to your happiness opens you to a whole new world of possibilities. And yes, accepting that someone might not love you the way you love them, or might not want to commit to you is going to hurt, but it’s also going to allow you to breathe again, and to feel like your feet are planted solidly on the ground. It’s going to give you back your self-respect and your self-esteem, which you have to check at the bars of your prison cell when you make yourself unable to release your attachment to a happy ending that isn’t in the cards.

The other thing is, opening to reality as it is, gives you power and peace. You’re not busy telling yourself stories, or pretending things are other than what they are. You aren’t spending your time or energy pretending that you are other than what you are, and I have to say, that’s a pretty happy feeling. It puts you at ease. It allows you to release your grip, to stop your grasping and clinging. It relieves you of any notion that things are “happening to you.” It puts you back in the power seat. There’s no desire to force or manipulate or cajole. Why would you do any of that? You just allow things to flow, and trust that when they’re right, it’s clear, and if you have to force, it isn’t right. So much simpler, so much happier. I highly recommend it.

Sending you love and a hug,

Ally Hamilton

P.S. If this was helpful, you can buy Ally’s books here.

You Betray Yourself Before You Betray Anyone Else

aesop You are not your thoughts, and you are not your feelings. You are you; your thoughts and feelings come and go. Some of them are wonderful and inspiring, and hopefully you act on those. Some of them are untrue and unkind, and those are the ones best left to arise, peak, and subside. Witnessing your experience is always a powerful way to be in tune with how things are for you from moment to moment. Not every feeling deserves your energy. You don’t have to believe everything you think, as the saying goes, nor must you act on every feeling you have.

Years ago, one of my closest girlfriends was dating a man who cheated on her while he was at an ashram, and said he was “honoring the truth of what he felt.” He said it was a deeply spiritual experience, and that he was a “mysterious and enigmatic being.” There’s nothing spiritual or particularly mysterious about that. Honoring the truth of your experience in that scenario means observing your attraction toward someone other than the person with whom you’re in a committed relationship, without acting on it. It’s either a normal, passing attraction borne of the fact that you’re a human being, a mammal, a person with desires and fantasies, or it’s an indication that you need to regroup with your partner. Regrouping might mean taking a compassionate but honest look at the state of your relationship. Maybe you’ve been taking it for granted, and both you and your partner need to direct your energy toward the space between you. If you don’t feed and water it, it’s going to starve and die, after all. Maybe it’s already dead, and there’s no hope for resuscitation, and it’s time to have that conversation. Maybe this other person really is someone with whom you’re going to have a long, meaningful, lasting relationship, but starting out with deceit and a lack of integrity doesn’t bode well for anyone.

Uncomfortable conversations are hard, but most people, given the choice, would opt for painful conversation over betrayal. Betrayal is awful, because it can only happen at the hands of those we trust, and nothing shakes your faith in your own judgement more, than the sting of having made yourself vulnerable only to realize that your heart was not so important to the person with whom you entrusted it, after all.

Having said all of that, none of us will act from our highest selves in every moment. Sometimes we screw up in a huge way, and learn a painful lesson. There are all kinds of betrayals, after all. The truth is, the only way to break someone else’s trust, is to break your faith in yourself, first. We all want to feel in our hearts that we’re good people. Not perfect, but that we’re doing our best to be kind, that we know how to be a good friend, that we understand right from wrong. When we behave in a way that goes against what we know to be right or okay, we’re letting ourselves down. We’re showing a lack of self-respect. It’s really hard to feel good about yourself when you know your actions would cause pain to someone else if they knew what you were doing. That includes unkind things you might say behind the back of someone you purport to love, or an inability to be happy for the success of someone you care about. When we’re in a petty, judgmental place, that’s always an outward expression of inner pain. Something within us feels unworthy, not good enough, less than, and instead of leaning into that and having compassion for ourselves, we point it outward, and put it on someone else, but that feels even worse. Nothing makes us want to shower more than the stink and weight of gossip and mean-spiritedness.

If you’re in a stinking ditch of your own creation, it’s really time to climb, claw, and drag yourself out. If you can’t feel good about yourself, everything else is going to erode. That’s your foundation. If you’ve made huge mistakes, own them. Apologize. I’m not talking about unburdening yourself of guilt, here, so you can feel better and someone else has to suffer. Sometimes things are better left unsaid. It really depends on the situation, but if you’ve done something for which you feel terrible, and an apology is in order, have at it. If it’s something you have to grapple with on your own, get some support. Figure out what went wrong. Maybe you acted out of desperation. Maybe you’ve been putting your own needs on the back burner for so long, you justified one reckless act. Maybe you’ll receive forgiveness, maybe you won’t, but eventually, when you’ve learned everything you can about why you didn’t show up the way you wanted to, or the way you’d like to moving forward, you really have to forgive yourself. We all make mistakes, it’s part of the gig of being human. If you were selfish, thoughtless, reckless with someone else’s heart, try to make amends, and do better moving forward. One of the things that gives us compassion and a forgiving nature with others, is our own ability to forgive ourselves for those times we made poor choices.

It’s not realistic or desirable to control every thought and feeling you have; in fact, anything you reject will push back four times harder. You don’t have to be horrified by your thoughts, you just want to observe them, and choose the ones that strengthen and nurture you, and take into account the feelings of those you love. Sometimes we behave poorly because we’ve refused to accept what’s true for us, and that’s like sitting on an active volcano. You can’t deny who you are, or the song in your heart. If the people around you have asked you to do that, they’re asking too much. You have to be you. The more you’re able to do that, the less likely it is you’ll act in ways you’ll regret, because your whole life will be directed by knowing who you are and what you need to be at peace. We really only get in trouble when we aren’t clear about that.

Sending you love, and a huge hug,

Ally Hamilton

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Direct Your Energy

churchill Not everyone is going to like you, or me, that’s just a reality of life. Sometimes we’ll be misunderstood, judged, rejected, excluded, or ignored. None of these things feels good, but human beings are complex. Some people need to be angry, or they need for you to be the bad guy, or they need to rewrite history so they can live with themselves. There’s nothing you can do about that. If a person won’t or can’t communicate in a respectful and compassionate way, there isn’t a lot of hope for mutual understanding or closure. On the flip side, sometimes we’ll screw up, and we may not be met with forgiveness. Once you’ve owned your mistakes and apologized, there’s not much more you can do, except try to do it differently next time.

Sometimes we spend our energy on the people who are looking to bring us down, thereby using up energy we could have spent on the people who can see us clearly. And look, I’m not saying we’re all wonderful. We all have work to do, places to heal, ways we could show up for ourselves and the people in our lives that might be infused with more enthusiasm or presence or gratitude. I’m talking about the tendency to get snagged on those people who are full of venom. Sometimes you’re dealing with a personality disorder, but if you try to rationalize with someone who cannot hear reason, you’re as nuts as they are. It’s not like we have all the time in the world, and where and how you direct your energy has the biggest impact on how your life will feel.

By this same token, sometimes we dwell on all the things we don’t have, and all the ways life is presenting its challenges, when we could be focusing on those things that are flowing, and are fulfilling. I’m not saying we should shun people who are struggling, in pain, or full of rage. Compassion when possible is always the path, but to spend hours, days, weeks, years getting caught up in other people’s dramas is not the best use of your time. You have a song to sing. You have dreams, fears, things that inspire you, scare you, excite you. You probably have a vision of how you’d like life to be or to feel, gifts within you that you long to share, ideas that you’d love to see blossom into being. That’s where you want to direct your energy. There will always be barking dogs, or, in the vernacular of our time, “haters gonna hate.” Don’t allow too much of your precious time and energy to go toward that stuff, and try not to dwell on what you’re lacking at this particular point in time.

It’s not always a choice, but the more we can choose to be grateful for all we have, the better we’re going to feel. This is not realistic when you’re dealing with heartache, rage, grief, jealousy, guilt or shame. I’m not one of those, “It’s always in your power to be happy” kind of yogis. Real, actual, devastating things happen sometimes, and your best bet is to feel all of your feelings. We don’t take the road marked, “Spiritual Bypass” on this page, but short of tragedies and great losses, direct your energy toward the good stuff. You’re not going to get to the end of your life and think, “I wish I’d been angry and defensive more. I wish I’d held onto my righteousness a little more fervently. Too bad I didn’t judge and gossip more of the time.”

Open your heart. Nurture yourself and the people close to you. Care about everyone, but don’t get stuck in a ditch with people who do nothing but hurt you. You aren’t here for that.

Sending you love, as always!

Ally Hamilton

Love More, Judge Less

On Tuesday mornings I volunteer for an hour in my daughter’s Kindergarten class. It’s extremely fun. I love my daughter’s teacher. She’s very warm, but very firm, and she maintains standards in the room. The kids have to listen to each other. They have to keep their hands to themselves. They don’t have to agree with each other, but they have to be respectful. She’s really setting them up with great tools for life. Last week when I was there, one of the little girls was sitting at my table, and she crossed herself when an ambulance went by, and said something under her breath. I knew what she was doing, but she looked up at me with this little smile, and said, “I’m praying that everyone is okay.” She’s five. I told her that I do that, too, but I don’t use my hands. One of the other kids asked what she was doing with her hands, and she explained that she was asking God to take care of anyone who might be hurt. One of the kids asked what “God” was. I said it was a word that meant different things to different people, and that was a topic she could explore with her mom or dad, and we had a conversation about what it means to care about people, whether we know them or not. It was easily the best conversation of my week.

We get so caught up with labels and separation. We try to figure out who’s like us, and who’s different. We’re so prone to create an us and a them, but true spirituality doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t separate. It asks us to care about everyone, because we’re all part of the same family. I know it’s not easy, but if we start to expand that same idea to all living creatures, and the planet itself, we start to shift the way we’ve been moving through the world. Sometimes we learn things at home, like hatred. Hatred can be passed down from generation to generation, just like eye-color. When we’re little, our parents are god-like creatures, and it doesn’t occur to us to challenge what we’re being taught or told until we get old enough to realize we’re our own beings. We have our own minds and our own hearts and our own ability to discern and intuit and make sense of the world.

Hatred is a great divider, and it weakens its host. When we hate, we’re blind. In my opinion, it’s also unnatural to us. I spend a lot of time with little kids, not just because I have two of my own. I always have, because my little brother is eleven years younger than me. I’ve had a little person trailing around after me asking why questions for most of my life. We come into this world full of love and curiosity. We’re trusting and open, unless or until we have a reason not to be. Kids might ask guileless questions, like why someone has a different skin color, or why they observe different holidays, but it’s never with contempt. It’s with a genuine desire to understand, and kids do what we do, not what we say, as we well know. Maybe you don’t have kids, and maybe you don’t want them, but you were a child once, and it’s good to examine your beliefs about yourself, about other people, and about the world around you. Sometimes something we’ve learned is so ingrained, we don’t even question it. I get emails from people who were told they were mistakes. That they’d never amount to anything. That they were meant to be seen and not heard. That their parents wanted a boy, not a girl. That they’re a disappointment.

Also, you can preach compassion all day long, but if you’re hard on yourself, don’t think that will go unnoticed by your kids. We internalize everything. We’re energetic creatures, and we both emit and absorb energy wherever we go. If your mother was always dieting and scrunching up her face when she looked at herself in the mirror, even if she always told you you were beautiful, don’t be surprised if you have body-image issues. If you were taught that people who didn’t believe the same things your family believed were wrong or not to be trusted, you’re going to have some unlearning to do.

The outside might look different, and I mean this for all of us. We may be male or female, short or tall, thin or stocky, dark or light. We may believe in one god, many gods, or no god at all. We may believe in a continuation of consciousness, or we may believe we’re worm food when it all ends. We may be rich, or we may struggle to put food on the table. The bottom line is that we all deal with certain parameters. We have a finite amount of time in the body we’re in. We have the capacity to love people wildly, openly, with everything we’ve got. We have our attachments, our fears, our dreams, our heartbreaks, our nights when we cry ourselves to sleep, or wonder what we’re doing here, or flail about trying to find our place in the world. The more we look for the vulnerability behind the mask, the kid underneath the grown-up, the similarities instead of the differences, the kinder we become, and the world could really use that right about now.

Yes, there are some people who’ve closed their hearts and fed their hatred, and are so far off the grid, there’s not much hope for any kind of epiphany at this point, but that’s a tiny percentage of human beings on planet earth. The vast majority of people recognize that an us versus them mentality isn’t getting the job done. It isn’t creating a world that’s safe for us, or for our children, and it also doesn’t have to be this way.

Examine your thoughts, your words and your actions. Maybe you’re already operating from a place of love the vast majority of the time, but maybe you’re still struggling with this. Start with your own internal dialogue. Since there’s no (good) escape from the voice in your head, start to starve a loud inner critic if you have one. You don’t have to believe everything you think. Sometimes our thoughts about ourselves are so violent, so unforgiving, so relentless, it’s a wonder we can get out of bed in the morning, and if you’re that hard on yourself, I guarantee you’re hard on other people, too. Perhaps not as harsh as you are with yourself, but whatever we have within us is what we spread. Start there. It might seem like a small thing, but if everyone worked on creating a peaceful and loving world within themselves, the whole landscape around us would change. If you’re in the habit of saying things like, “I’m such an idiot” when you make a mistake, shift that thought to something like, “I’m human and I make mistakes sometimes, and that’s okay, and very normal. Let me take a deep breath and see what I can do.” Find a nickname for yourself that makes you smile, like, “Chief”, or, “Sport”, or “Tiger”, and whenever you feel that self-loathing come up, catch yourself, with an, “Okay, Sport, that didn’t go the way we wanted it to, but it’s no big deal.” What I’m trying to say is that you really want an inner voice that roots you on, not one that tears you down. May we all send good thoughts and love when we hear an ambulance go by. May we all care about each other more, and judge each other less. May all beings be free from suffering. May all beings be happy.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Use Your Gifts Wisely

twain Our time and energy are our most precious gifts to give, and they’re also finite. Sometimes it’s really a practice in itself to direct your energy toward thoughts that strengthen you, rather than those that weaken you. It’s easy to get caught up, or snagged on someone else’s thoughtless comment or careless act, to become embroiled in other people’s dramas, or to allow yourself to spin over mistakes you’ve made. Rejection creates this scenario for many people, as does feeling disrespected, unseen, unheard, ignored, excluded, or harshly judged. We can lose hours, days, weeks obsessing over how other people feel about us, when our time would have been better spent getting right with ourselves.

Human beings are complex. We all have our interior worlds, our inner dialogues; in many ways, being human requires our ability to deal with solitude. Obviously, we can reach out. We can seek connection, love, joy, shared experiences. We can uncover our gifts and spread them in whatever ways are available to us. But if you aren’t happy on the inside, no person and no thing can fix that for you. Often, we’re so focused on the externals, we neglect to do the work that would really bring us peace and joy. So many people spend the large majority of their lives trying to prove that they’re here and they’re worthwhile by pointing to things outside themselves. A lot of people have their identities wrapped up in what they do and what they have. If your self-esteem is determined by factors outside your control, you can see how this leads to trouble.

It’s not what we have, it’s what we give, and it doesn’t have to be grandiose. You can change a person’s day by really taking them in, even just for a moment. You can smile at a stranger, hold open a door, allow someone to merge in traffic. These are small things, but they have a huge effect. When we move through the world and people are kind and considerate, it really fills us with a sense of hope and well-being, but having said that, if someone cuts us off in traffic, we don’t want to let that experience rob us of our own peace. There’s no need to let a stranger raise your blood pressure.

Sometimes we have to draw a line with someone. Maybe you have people in your life who struggle, and as a result they can be inconsiderate or self-absorbed or sometimes thoughtless. The truth is, we can all display these tendencies from time to time, and we probably will. Sometimes we have a day or a week, or many years when we feel victimized or angry or lost, and we lash out because we’re unhappy and we can’t figure out how to fix it. We point fingers and come up with our reasons, and make it about other people or circumstances, and as we flail and rage about, we unintentionally hurt those around us. Some people live their whole lives this way. You are certainly free to direct your time and energy toward making other people responsible for your lack of peace, but I don’t recommend it. No one is going to save you, but you. We each have to do our own work, and for most of us, that gives us plenty to do. Anne Lamott has this great phrase for those who suffer from, “Good Ideas for Other People’s Disease.” Isn’t that awesome? Aren’t we all great at figuring out what other people should do to get it together?

You can’t control people or circumstances, nor do you want to try. The more you let go and practice acceptance (which doesn’t mean you allow yourself to be disrespected or abused), the less you suffer. The more you seek to create steadiness and peace inside yourself, the better off you’ll handle the inevitable and ceaseless ups and downs of life. The more you direct your mind to the present moment, the more peace you’ll find. Breathing deeply feels good. Being awake and aware feels good. Being enraged or depressed or anxious for extended periods of time, obviously does not feel good. Are heartbreaking things going to happen? Yes. To some degree or another we’re all going to face loss, grief, confusion, shame, guilt, envy, jealousy, fear and rage. We’re all going to lose people. We’re all going to have to move and shift with changing circumstance, and sometimes we’ll be grieving, mourning, heartbroken and listless, and those feelings will be understandable and appropriate. This is when you hope you have a spiritual practice that’s going to be there for you, along with the people in your life whom you love. This is the dance. You can fight it. Of course we’d all like to be able to count on things, but the only thing we can truly count on is that everything is always changing.

Think carefully about where you’re sharing those gifts of time and energy. You’re not going to save other people, so I wouldn’t squander your resources there. That doesn’t mean you don’t try to find help or support for those in need, but it does mean you don’t try to manage someone else’s path; usually when we do that, it’s because we’re avoiding our own. Things that will surely bring you down—gossip, violent thoughts or actions, self-loathing, clinging to your anger. Things that will absolutely lift you up- remembering all the good that’s present in your life right now. Taking ownership of your story, and righting the ship if necessary. Doing the work to heal, and seeking out whatever tools you need to help you with that endeavor. Reaching out when you need help, and offering it when you’re in a position to give it. Trying to help those you love be their best selves by celebrating them and encouraging them when times are tough. Doing that for strangers, too. These are all great uses of your time and energy, and the beautiful thing is, the more you direct your energy toward helping others, the more you’ll feel meaning and purpose and fulfillment in your own life. Good for you, good for everyone else.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Give it Time

stripyourgears Sometimes our expectations of ourselves are so unrealistic. We have ideas about how we should feel, or where we should be at any given point in time, and if we aren’t meeting those markers, we feel disappointed in ourselves, or frustrated, or we wonder what’s wrong with us. This comes up a lot around grieving, mourning, and recovering from heartbreak of any kind. There’s no timer for this stuff; there’s no formula. It’s different for everyone, and dependent upon so many factors. But the last thing you need when you’re suffering, is to feel badly about yourself because you aren’t done suffering quickly enough.

Obviously it’s no fun to be pining or longing or missing people we cherish. Death is the most extreme version of this, of course. Grieving has no time limit. As Earl Grollman says, “The only cure for grief is to grieve.” No matter how much we understand we’ll all die eventually, it’s still almost incomprehensible when someone we love is ripped from us. It’s natural to want to hug the people we love, to hear their voices, their laughter, to hold their hands. The loss of a person is like the loss of a whole, beautiful world. There’s a shock to it, it seems impossible that the earth could keep spinning, and depending upon who’s been lost to you, and in what way they were taken, and at what point in your life and theirs, the impact may bring you to your knees. The only thing at a time like that, is to ask for help. Hopefully, you don’t even have to do that. Hopefully the people in your life know how to show up for you, at least some of them, so that you know you aren’t alone.

For many people, grief is difficult to witness, because it reminds them of their own mortality, the fragility of life, and the potential that they, too, could have to hold a sorrow so great. The people who are the most uncomfortable holding a space for your pain, are likely the same people who will tell you you “should be feeling better by now.” What they’re really saying is, “I’m having a hard time being around you when you’re in pain, and I’d like you to make it easier for me.” The thing is, when you’re mourning, your only job is to allow yourself to feel whatever you need to feel, for as long as you need to feel it. Anyone who can’t honor that or understand it is probably not going to be one of your cronies when you’re ninety-five, sipping lemonade in your rocker, but you don’t need tons of close friends. You just need a few.

The same goes for the loss of any relationship. You have to factor in all kinds of things. How much time and energy you invested, how many memories, shared experiences, heartaches and growing pains you went through. If you had a family with this person, it gets exponentially more complicated, but even if we’re talking about someone you dated for a few months, having a broken heart never feels good. You just have to give yourself time. Examine what happened, especially if you’re disappointed with the way you showed up, but try not to obsess. Glean the information from the experience that’s going to help you grow, and make different choices the next time. If you’re recovering from a toxic relationship, understand your oldest, deepest wounds were probably in play, and that it’s very likely you could use some support. It might be a great time to find a good therapist, and do some deep and needed work toward healing, but don’t beat yourself up because you aren’t over your ex. Some days will be better than others, and these are just natural feelings. Don’t stalk their social media making yourself sick, and try not to invest too much of your time or energy wondering what they’re doing. Focus on your own healing. As Regina Brett says, you have to “give time, time.” You know that anything you resist, persists. Of course we don’t want to marinate in pain, but denying it or running from it or numbing it out just prolongs the inevitable. Eventually you have to face it, and the more you’re willing to acknowledge and work with your pain, the faster you’ll move through it.

Be kind to yourself. Gravitate toward people who don’t try to fix things or tell you how to feel, but are simply able to listen and to be there. Nurture yourself, and spend time doing those things that bring you joy and fulfillment. Volunteer if you have it in you. Try to move your body and sweat and breathe once a day. Weep. Feed yourself well, and I don’t just mean food—pay attention to what you’re watching, reading, telling yourself, and try to have patience. One day, you’ll wake up, and the weight and heaviness of your grief won’t come crashing down upon you as you blink your eyes open and remember where you are. In the meantime, have some compassion for yourself. Life is a constant lesson in impermanence and loss. There’s also incredible beauty and joy and love, but it isn’t easy.

Sending you a huge hug,

Ally Hamilton

Get Busy Living

stephenking Everything worth doing involves sacrifice. If you have a dream, you’re going to have to work if you want to see it come to fruition, and any choice we make involves loss. When we choose one path, we walk away from another. Eventually, you have to figure out what’s important to you, and where you want to direct your time and energy.

People agonize over this stuff. They pick something, and then they wonder if they made the right choice. They look back over their shoulders, or they look ahead to see if something better is on the horizon that they’re now going to miss. Single people do this. They’re single for years, lamenting the loneliness and lack of a partner, of someone who sees them and understands them and is there for them, and then they meet someone, and six months later they’re agonizing over the loss of their freedom. Freedom to do what? Sit home on a Saturday night binge-watching tv? Married people do it, too. They choose commitment, and then envy their single friends out at the clubs. Yes, when we make a choice, we agree to not choose something else. This is why it’s called a “choice.”

The saying goes, “the grass is always greener on the other side”, but of course I’m talking about the other saying, “the grass is always greener where you water it.” We can drive ourselves nuts with this stuff, but the truth is, if you made a decision, you made it for a reason. If that reason doesn’t hold true anymore, or you doubt its validity, or it hasn’t played out the way you thought it would, then you’ll have to make some other choices, and hopefully you do that with serious deliberation, and maybe some support. We’re never done, we’re always in process and you can choose to have a good attitude about that, or not. Either way, the reality is the same. I’m not saying anything is fair game. Obviously we want to make choices carefully, especially where they involve other people. You never want to be reckless with another person’s tender heart. If you’ve made a mess, you have to do your best to clean it up with honesty and compassion, but most people would not want you to live a lie. Most people would not ask you to choose pity or guilt over what’s true in your heart and almost everyone I know would choose honest communication over betrayal.

What I’m saying is that you’ll never give your choices room to grow and blossom if you spend all your energy looking over your shoulder. Don’t allow yourself to be manipulated into choosing things you don’t want, and by the same token, when you say you want something, mean it. Don’t make your decisions someone else’s fault. We spend way too much time blaming circumstances and other people for our own unhappiness. Blame keeps you stuck. It’s liberating to take responsibility for your life and your choices, to take ownership of the whole thing. You’re going to make unfortunate choices sometimes. Another word for those is “mistakes.” That’s part of being human, it’s how we grow. If you don’t ever choose anything, your paths will be chosen for you. You’ll meet other strong-willed people, and they’ll tell you what they want you to want, and what they think you should do, but that’s not the same thing as living your life. That’s living someone else’s life. That’s becoming part of someone else’s story. Yes, we can co-create a story with another person in a healthy and loving way, but that’s when two people come together out of choice. You’re not a leaf on the wind. You’re a particular human being with your own intrinsic gifts to share. Choose wisely.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Sometimes “Rejection is Protection”

rejection There are few things in life that feel worse than being rejected by someone, whether it’s a stranger, a new romantic interest, a longtime partner, your parent, sibling, or child, or a colleague at work. When someone discards us or ignores us or excludes us, it hurts like hell. So let’s talk about it.

First of all, not everyone is going to like you, or me. That’s just reality. Also, you’ll never please everyone, nor do you want to try. It’s never good to chase love, approval, respect or worthiness; if these things are not offered freely, this is not a person with whom you want to be close, because bending yourself or shaping yourself around some idea of what you think someone else wants you to be, is an absolute betrayal of self, and it will bring you nothing but heartache. You are who you are, and who you are is a unique, one-of-a-kind human being in a world of seven billion human beings. There’s not even one other person just like you, which is remarkable and miraculous. So there’s that.

Here are other things: if someone does not return your call, your email, your feelings, they need to go in your “Not for me” file. They don’t need to go there with your contempt or bitterness, they just need to be put in that file, which you delete every time you fill it, because why would you carry around a drawer of people who don’t get you, see you, appreciate you, or deserve another ounce of your time or energy? I don’t say that in an angry way. Ideally you wish them well on their journey. You just don’t carry the weight of their opinions about you in a knapsack on your back. Life is too short for that. You have to like you. You have to be able to look yourself in the eye when you’re brushing your teeth at the end of the day.

Now, that’s an approachable idea if we’re talking about a stranger, or someone you went out with once (basically, a stranger ;)), or someone at work with whom you don’t really have to interact, but if we’re talking about heartbreak, we’re in a different situation. When family members stop speaking to one another, that’s a certain kind of sadness that’s truly unfortunate. Sometimes it can’t be helped. If a person isn’t willing to communicate with you, to try to see things from your point of view, to treat you with respect and consideration, then there’s not much you can do except to take yourself a safe distance away, and send them love from afar; maybe over time they’ll soften, and maybe they won’t. You can’t control that, but if you’re in a stand-off with your sibling or your parent or your child, really check in with yourself. If you’re the shunned party, ask yourself if you’ve done everything you can to communicate and try to heal the situation. If you have, let that be enough for now. If you haven’t, think carefully about trying again because life really is short, and we just don’t know from day-to-day. It’s one thing to go to bed feeling a little uneasy about something, to have a lack of closure around a particular topic, to have a misunderstanding that’s going to take some time to clear up. It’s another thing to have the last thing you’ve ever said to someone be an angry thing you can never take back; to let things like arguments over money, or being “right” overshadow the love you once shared with this person. Trading righteousness for love is a fool’s game.

If we’re talking about your longtime partner, or someone with whom you’re in love, you’re in for a rough go for awhile. If you have doubts about whether you’re lovable, or about your worth or value, you’re now going to be in that highly uncomfortable place of feeling like those doubts are true, and your former lover has seen the truth of them. This is not generally what’s happening when a partner walks away from us. Sometimes, and this hurts, but sometimes, they just are not in love with us the way we’re in love with them. If that’s what you’re dealing with, as bad as it feels, they’ve done you a favor, because you really deserve to be loved all the way, but you have to make space in your life to receive love like that. If you give the space to someone who doesn’t really have it for you, you’ve filled your dance card with a person who’s “just not that into you”, and I don’t know why you’d do that. Sometimes we fall into a very unhealthy dynamic with a person we feel we just never quite “have”, and we chase and run and dance like a monkey to get them to love us, until finally, they leave. Cut the time you play the monkey. You’re not a monkey, you’re a person. Trust that you’ll find the kind of love you want after you heal yourself and face those deep-rooted doubts.

More of the time, people leave because they don’t like the person they’ve become during the course of the relationship. Maybe they’re just not happy with themselves, but they’re convinced finding a new partner will solve it. People have all kinds of crazy ideas sometimes. They think they’ll be happy if they find the “right house”, or “right job”, or “right person”, but if they aren’t happy with their true house (themselves), it doesn’t matter where they go or what they do, or with whom. The pain will travel with them. It is not your job to wait around hoping they’re going to figure that out, though. It’s your job to come back to yourself, to nurture yourself and to heal. When we really truly love people, we have to want for them what they want for themselves, and this includes leaving us, if that’s what they feel they need to do. Your job then is to open the door. Your job is not to block the door, throw yourself in front of it, or wrap yourself around their ankles. There’s only one person who really has to love you, accept you, see you, understand you, honor you and celebrate you, and that person is you.

Is connection one of the best things in life? Absolutely. Warmth, love, affection? Yes. Being embraced with all your beauty and all your flaws? Of course, but do it for yourself, first, so you’re intimately acquainted with how that feels. That way you’ll recognize it when someone is feeling it for you, and you’ll be able to return it equally, too. Trust your pain. It will open you and strengthen you if you let it, and remember that no feeling is forever.

Sending you love, and a giant hug,

Ally Hamilton

A Bridge Takes Two

lonelywalls If you have a long history with someone, and you have healing to do around your relationship, or events of the past, understand you can never do one hundred percent of the work. I’m talking about important long-term relationships in your life, with family members, or spouses, or your best friend for years and years. Life is not easy. It’s amazing and interesting. It’s filled with incredible beauty, the potential for love so intense you feel your heart might burst, and pain that can bring you to your knees. It’s always changing, so it’s certainly an adventure, but there’s a tremendous amount of uncertainty, and not everyone is able to handle that easily. Sometimes people cling to their pain or their anger because that feels safer than letting go, and the reality is, the people in the most pain are also the people who create the most pain. It’s not usually intentional. What we have within us is what we spread around us.

If you’ve been disappointed, neglected, abused or abandoned, those are all experiences which might have hardened you, or broken your trust in people. I understand that, but I think it’s important to believe in the goodness of people, and to understand when you’ve been betrayed or abandoned by someone, it’s not a reflection of you, or your worthiness or ability to receive love, it’s a reflection of where the other party is on his or her own path. That doesn’t mean it’s okay if someone abuses you or mistreats you, it just makes it easier not to take those things personally. I think the key is to be discerning, and to understand that it takes a long time to know a person. We all want love and connection, but your heart is precious and it’s important not to be reckless with it. There’s a big difference between living in fear, which is not really living, and taking your time.

The thing is, human beings are complicated. We all have our histories, our pain, our various upbringings, ways we were nurtured, loved, supported, or not so much, so when you bring any two people together, it’s exponentially more complex. And when you increase that number to three or four or five (as in, a family), you can bet the chances for different dynamics to arise just multiplies. I get emails from so many people in pain over their strained or nonexistent relationships with their mothers or fathers, sons or daughters, sisters or brothers, friends from childhood. Things happen in life. Sometimes a person is moving through pain and they lash out, or there’s a family system in place and roles are being played and maybe it’s not a healthy situation, and then one day, one of the players doesn’t like his or her role anymore, and everyone panics as the system collapses. Maybe the whole family is held hostage by one member’s addiction, depression, or mental illness. There’s no shortage of different scenarios. People fight over money (it isn’t usually really the money they’re fighting about), or something someone said at a wedding when they were drunk and full of salmon.

If you have healing to do with someone, understand you need some kind of bridge. It takes two to tango, and it takes two to mend a bridge that’s collapsed. I don’t think a person has to meet you halfway; it’s ideal, but not everyone will be up to that. A person has to step onto the bridge. If you feel motivated to walk the rest of the way, that’s enough, but if a person won’t even take that first step, you’ll be dealing with a chasm and it will be up to you how you want to manage that. Sometimes we can’t have a person in our lives, and sometimes we have to accept that a relationship will never be quite what we want it to be. Not everyone is capable of fearless and honest communication and acceptance. Not everyone can open his or her mind to a different point of view. You can’t force someone to be somewhere they aren’t.

Sometimes we have to choose between two painful options–not having someone in our lives, or having them in our lives in a way that falls incredibly short of what we know is possible. That’s a choice only you can make. You can keep your hands open. You can offer the chance for healing, but you can’t make someone take you up on it, and I know that can hurt. I think closing yourself down and shutting yourself off hurts more, though.

Sending you love, and wishing you peace,

Ally Hamilton

How to Love People in Pain & Still Love Yourself

Earlier this week I wrote about being held hostage by someone else’s depression, addiction, personality disorder, or general instability, and I heard from a flood of people who wonder what to do when these challenging people are cherished loved ones. I heard from many mothers, struggling with their children, grown, or almost-grown, or very little, and from people who are having difficulty with one parent or the other, a sibling, their partner, their best friend.

I’m going to say the most excruciating thing is watching your child suffer. That’s a pain and powerlessness that’s simply brutal, and if that’s what you’re grappling with, walking away is not an option. If we’re talking about depression in a small child, you have to find help; a great therapist would be step one, there are brilliant people who specialize in working with children. If finances are an issue, and you’re here in the states, go to http://www.nami.org/ and get some support for yourself and your little one. This is a great resource for anyone suffering from mental illness, or loving someone with mental illness, at any age.

Parents who watch their grown children struggling often blame themselves. I’ve heard a lot of that over the last few days; the heartache and feelings of failure and shame, so I think the first thing I’ll say, is please try to stop beating yourself up. If you were there, if you were present, if you loved your child with everything you had and did the very best you could, you have to release yourself from feeling that you’re the root of your child’s suffering, whether your child is 19 or 49. If you didn’t do a great job with your parenting responsibilities because you were a child yourself when you had your babies, or because you were suffering from your own mental illness, personality disorder, addiction or depression, that’s a heartbreak for you and your kids, but blaming yourself just perpetuates and feeds the pain. Let go of blame.

We’re all going to suffer. This is not an easy gig. The parameters make us all vulnerable, and some people have a harder time with that reality than others. There are people who always see the glass as half empty. People who look on the dark side of things, expect the worst from people, and feel frequently disappointed in themselves. If you’re seeing that tendency in your little one, I’d get in there and point out a different perspective whenever you can. Keep re-framing things for your child, but also be sure to normalize their feelings. There’s such a desire to make everything okay for our little people, and loving, well-meaning parents say things like, “Don’t be sad”, or, “Don’t be angry”, or, “Don’t be scared,”, but the truth is, these are normal human emotions we’ll all experience. When we, as children, get the sense that certain feelings are not okay, like fear, or sadness or anger, we start to push things down. We start to edit ourselves, and that’s the beginning of loss and confusion. We become lost to ourselves. Also, show them what it looks like to be a forgiving and compassionate person. When you make a mistake, acknowledge it, but don’t berate yourself. Our kids do what we do, not what we say.

If you see your little one feeling down, you might just speak out about it, as in, “Hey buddy. You seem a little blue today. Everything okay?” If you don’t get far with that, you can get more specific. “What was the best part of your day today?” and, “What was the hardest part of your day?” Just keeping the lines of communication open is huge. Making your child understand that s/he is safe to talk to you about anything, any feeling or any situation, or any confusion that might arise creates a foundation of trust. Naming what you’re seeing in a loving way is also good. “It seems like you’re focusing on everything that isn’t going well. Can you think of three good things that happened today? Or one thing you’re really thankful for?” Basically, you are your child’s nervous system when they’re little. They can’t always self-regulate, so you’re helping them learn how to process and integrate all the things life is putting in their path, whether that’s the changing structure of your family, a friend who’s moving away, a new school, bullying or exclusionary behavior from someone else, or their own acting out. Any intense emotion that’s flooding their little nervous system might require some help from you. The steadier you are, the easier it will be for them to lean on you, and the more you’re accepting of all their feelings, the more comfortable they’ll be to share everything with you.

If you’re dealing with your older child, and this could mean your teenager, but it could also include your 50 year old child, you’re in a different area. With depression, I’m going to recommend what I did above; a great therapist is the place to start. If you’re dealing with addiction, then chances are the whole family is being held hostage, and you’re going to need help for everyone. There’s always a family system in place, roles each person is playing, a dynamic between all parties which needs to be examined and, in most instances, changed. If it’s serious, rehab may be your best hope, with additional support for every member of the family. Al-anon is a great resource here, both for people suffering with addiction, and the family members around them, but search for yourself, because there isn’t just one way, or one solution. There are obviously so many different situations with all their complexities, but understand when you’re living with and loving someone who’s addicted to drugs or alcohol, you’re also in the mix. You can’t save them, but you can do everything in your power to get them some help, and I think radical honesty is a good bet in that case, too. If you have things you want to own, own them. If there’s anything you wish you’d done differently, tell them, but also let them know they’re on their own path now, and they have the power to make it great, or to stay stuck and that you’re going to help them, but you’re not going to enable behavior that keeps them powerless.

If you’re dealing with mental illness or a personality disorder, it’s rough. Certain behaviors can’t be helped, they can only be regulated. It’s not easy to love in the first place. It requires that we make ourselves vulnerable, and it’s really hard to do that, and even reckless, when we don’t feel safe. So loving someone you cannot rely upon to be steady is no easy feat. It’s hard to love and protect yourself simultaneously. I think the best thing you can do in that case is have enormous compassion for yourself and set up a solid support system, so you don’t feel isolated in your experience. Find those people you can trust, and lean on them when you need to; sometimes our feelings of being hijacked and imprisoned make it hard to reach out. Think about what you need to feel respected and understood. This is where boundaries come into play. You can love someone who’s having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. You can love someone who careens from high highs to low lows. You can love someone who says one thing to you one day, and something completely different the next. But it’s not easy. As always, your first responsibility is to your own heart. If you betray that, you won’t be able to help anyone.

Sending you love and hugs,

Ally Hamilton

Breathing Through Sensation

thichclouds Emotions create sensations. When we say we’re enraged, we’re describing the feelings that are flooding through our bodies—maybe our blood pressure is rising (thus we’re “hot-headed”), or the breath is shallow, or the jaw is clenching or the shoulders are up around our ears. When we say we’re depressed, we’re describing the weight of being listless and hopeless, of having no energy to get out of bed, or take a shower or “start the day”; we’re describing that ache that’s settled into everything. When we say we’re in love, we’re talking about the endorphin rush that’s coursing through the system, making us feel giddy and excited and “drunk” on someone else. If we’re feeling jealous, we’re really talking about that burning deep in the belly, that primal instinct that tells us we’re threatened.

The next time you’re having an intense emotion, observe what’s happening in your body. Get quiet if you can, sit up tall, close your eyes, and see if you can just breathe in and breathe out, witnessing your experience. For so many people, when uncomfortable feelings arise, the tendency is to run, or numb, or deny, to “push” the feelings away, or sit on them, but no feeling is forever and when we race from how we feel, we lose an opportunity to know ourselves, to figure out where we are, what we need, and why we’re feeling what we’re feeling. Why are we enraged? Are we feeling disrespected, unseen, unheard, or invisible? Is that an old, familiar feeling, and if so, when did it first arise? When we understand what’s happening within us, it’s a gift we give to ourselves, and all the people in our lives; it’s a relief. Things that felt skewed and uncomfortable suddenly fit, even if we’re left with a feeling of grief, rawness, and deeper understanding of where we still have healing to do. Now we can be accountable for the actions we’re taking, the things we’re saying, and the energy we’re spreading.

Conversely, racing to numb a feeling robs us of all this very valuable information. This is the source of all addiction, this idea that we “can’t take it”, that we have to do something, that the feeling is going to do us in unless we act. When I say addiction, people jump to drugs and alcohol, and of course those are big ones, but plenty of people are addicted to shopping, or the internet, or exercise, to eating or not eating, to throwing themselves into relationships or turning to sex to make the painful feelings go away.

If we want to be at peace, we have to come to an understanding about who we are and what we need. Not knowing yourself is the loneliest feeling there is, and it’s also a sure way to flail around through life. Happiness will be short-lived and accidental, something you just fall into by chance. One of the biggest gifts of a consistent yoga practice is the ability to breathe through intense sensation. Sometimes the quadriceps are on fire, or there’s a “fire in the belly”, and we breathe and observe. Then in life, when painful or pleasurable sensations arise that threaten to throw us off our centers or rob us of our peace, we breathe and observe. I think when we say we want to be happy, we really mean we want to feel that inner steadiness. We want to feel we’re living in alignment with what’s true for us. We want to be able to identify what’s blocking us, or inspiring us, or terrifying us, so we can work with that stuff. When we come up against some pain, some jagged, raw place within us that still needs our kind attention, we want to be responsible with our feelings. We want to show up for ourselves and other people in a way that feels good. We want to believe in our ability to have a positive impact on the world around us. There’s no way to do any of that if we run every time a difficult feeling arises.

Sending you love, and wishing you peace,

Ally Hamilton

Let’s Get it Together

Yesterday as I walked out of a grocery store carrying a case of coconut water to my car, two guys on the street passed me, and as they walked away, one of them turned around and said over his shoulder, “Great ass”, and his buddy said, “Damn, girl.” I was immediately thrown into a state of conflicting feelings about this: part of me wanted to laugh, because really? I’m not a girl, I’m a woman, I’m a mother, I’m a yoga teacher and a writer and a business owner, and these two guys just treated me like a piece of meat. Another part of me felt enraged and frustrated. That’s a compliment, right? These guys thought that what they said was going to make me feel good. I’m supposed to enjoy the fact that someone thinks I have a great ass, but I’ve also just been casually reduced to a body part. This is so acceptable in our society, I’m expected to blow it off if I don’t like it, roll my eyes or shake my head and go on about my day as if it isn’t a big deal to be stripped of what makes me, me, by two complete strangers. That’s what my daughter is supposed to do one day, too.

I grew up with a dad who loved women and struggled with fidelity. He especially loved tall thin women with big boobs and tight butts, and long flowing hair. I met so many of my dad’s “women friends” growing up, the mind boggles, but I came to understand from him that most of the value of a woman had to do with how she looked. I don’t think he meant to teach me this. He always encouraged my writing and reading and creativity, so it wasn’t that he didn’t like smart women, because he did, but on the street his head would turn, or he’d point out some feature he really liked about this one going by, or that one over there, and as his daughter I got lessons in his preferences like I was his wingman. I also saw the way men looked at my mother as I grew up. She’s very attractive and never had trouble turning heads, and that seemed to give her some power. When we diminish women this way, and when we, as women, buy into this idea, we do a disservice to both genders. We also have a whole bunch of people who are transgender, or don’t relate fully to either gender. The way we think about roles is really outdated.

Last week I took my kids to meet friends of ours at a sushi place on Main Street. We like avocado rolls, so sushi restaurants are usually a good bet. When we got to the place, though, there were 3 big-screen televisions on the walls. In the chaos of sitting down and getting settled, I wasn’t paying attention to what was on the screens, but after we’d figured out who was sitting where and ordered, I noticed my daughter, who’s five, looking up at the television facing us. On it, were very young Japanese girls in tiny shorts and skirts, and little midriff tops, gyrating, and playing with their hair, and blowing kisses to pop songs. If it was just me, I’d shrug it off and not look, but I don’t want her taking that in. Not at five, and not ever. I leaned over and said, “You don’t need to look at that. Those are just girls who think they have to dress that way and dance that way so people will like them. They’re confused.“ I told her the conversation we were having with our friends was a lot more interesting. Then I look across the table, and see my son staring at the screen behind me. I turn to look, and it’s a beer commercial, with a girl with her boobs sticking out. I told my son he didn’t need to be watching that, either. It turned out it was a football game. I look to my left, because I’m hoping for National Geographic or something. My kids don’t get much television time. A few shows that are educational and cool, but that’s about it. So of course it’s enticing to be in a place with three huge screens. On the third screen, I kid you not, is “Shark Week.” It happens to be an episode about a rescue mission to save people who were on a boat that capsized near a hungry shark. The shark started eating people, and they had this on film, and I thought, things are bad when there are three choices, and I’d pick having my kids watch people getting eaten by sharks. We ate our rolls and got out of there, and won’t be going back.

Here’s the thing. Nothing is black and white in life. We all have our masculine and feminine sides, and we are beautifully different, but completely equal. We balance each other out. When you get too much testosterone in the mix, and not enough estrogen, I’m sorry, but things start to explode. We start shooting things up. We need each other. We need the action and the fire and the strength to get things done, and we need to be able to be soft. We need to be brave enough to be soft.

We’re training our boys, who turn into our men, to think of women as pretty objects, to separate them into different body parts. “Nice ass”, “great tits”, “long legs.” We’re visual beings. Women are, too. “OMG, that guy is so HOT.” It’s just, as a society, we’re taught to think of men as virile and powerful, so even if you try to reduce a man to the sum of his parts (and I hope you don’t), those parts are still holding the cards. When we, as women, dress ourselves in tiny skirts and push-up bras, what we’re saying to men is, “I know you can only really think with your small head.” We need women who are not spending the vast majority of their time and energy obsessing over how they look or what they weigh. If you see a woman, and you think, “Great ass”, I hope you immediately remind yourself that she’s a human being with an interior world you know nothing about. Maybe she’s carrying a lot of pain. Maybe she’s grappled with loss, fear, shame, insecurity. I know when I look at a man all those things are probable because it isn’t a gender thing, it’s a human thing. This is a tough gig. We don’t need to be reducing each other, we need to be uplifting each other. We have real problems in the world. We need to work together, and we could help each other so much if we recognized and acknowledged that. If we taught our girls and our boys to value people for who they are, not how they look, or what body parts they have.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

You Might Not Get Everything You Want, But…

allow Depending on your personality, and many other factors including the way you grew up, your level of self-esteem, and your ability to speak out about how you feel, creating boundaries with people may be a great challenge for you. I really get that, because I struggled around this issue for years.

What makes it difficult to speak up when you want to? Maybe you’re worried about disappointing other people, or not being able to show up the way they want you to show up. Maybe you grew up and felt you had no impact on the people or the world around you, so it never occurred to you to value or investigate what you felt or what you wanted. Maybe you’ve decided that your worth as a person, a friend, and a partner is based upon how much you’re able to do for the people in your life. And maybe, you don’t know how you feel, so when you come up against a strong-willed person, you let them take the lead.

The thing is, your job while you’re here is to shine. I really believe that; you have something precious and unique to offer that only you can. I don’t think you’ll be able to do that without some belief in yourself and your own value, so I’d look at that first, if you find it difficult to act on your own behalf. If you don’t feel good about yourself, why is that, and when did that begin? Upon what evidence did you come to the conclusion that you don’t measure up, or have anything enormously special to offer? When we don’t stand up for ourselves, it’s often because we’ve grown up feeling powerless. We’ve internalized that, and sewn it into the fabric of our being. When confronted, we collapse in on ourselves. We cope, when we should fight back. But if you’re grown up, you’re not powerless anymore. Sometimes we really have to unlearn ideas or ways of being that are not based in our current reality, and are also blocking our ability to both give and receive love to our maximum capability (which is huge).

A few weeks ago, I took my daughter with me when I went to get my eyebrows waxed. This place is nice, and they have organic cruelty-free nail polish, and they’ll paint your kid’s nails while they wax your eyebrows and whatever other parts you might want waxed. So there we were. My daughter went to pick out a color, but she’s five, so she picked four colors. She wanted a rainbow. They don’t charge to paint your kid’s nails. You tip, of course, but they don’t charge for it. So I was debating whether to tell her that might be asking for a bit much, when the woman called her over, and the waxing woman started talking to me. When I turned back to my daughter, she had pink nail polish on every nail, and was looking down at her hands, and up uncertainly at the woman painting them, and then she looked at me. I knew she was disappointed about the lack of a rainbow. Before I could step in and explain to the woman what it was my daughter had wanted, this grandmotherly woman at the table next to her, also getting her nails done, leaned over and said, loudly but nicely, “She wanted a rainbow. She wanted a different color on every nail.” My daughter beamed at her, and the woman said, “Always ask for what you want, dear. You might not get it, but you definitely won’t if you don’t ask!” And the woman who was painting her nails promptly and happily gave her her rainbow.

Communicating how you feel, what you need, and what you’d like is a gift you can give to the people who are close to you. It’s so refreshing when people are just honest about where they’re at, and what’s happening within them. As my friend at the nail place said, you might not get everything you want, but it never hurts to clearly state what that is. It takes the mystery out of the thing. No one can read your mind, and sometimes we project and assume so much. We think other people must think and feel the way we do, so certain things should be obvious. But you know what? I would take nothing for granted. What’s obvious to you might not even occur to someone else.

So there’s clear communication, and then, sometimes, there’s the need for boundaries. Maybe you have someone in your life who hurts you, intentionally or otherwise. Sometimes, even when it is a family member, your only healthy option is to step away, but there are certain situations where that isn’t possible or desirable, and that’s when boundaries come in. You may not get everything you want in life, but you deserve respect. Ideally, you shouldn’t have to fight for it, but that’s not always how it goes, and sometimes we have a long history with someone, and there are ingrained patterns and dynamics. When we seek to shift that stuff, there’s always resistance. Most people struggle with change, and if you’ve been playing a certain role for a long time, don’t expect to be able to calmly give your two weeks’ notice. People in your life have probably gotten used to you being the way you’ve been. That’s understandable, but that doesn’t mean it can’t change, it doesn’t mean you can’t change. You may lose some relationships if you’re making big shifts in your life. Those close to you may feel threatened, they may feel like they’re losing you. Or they may get angry and say they liked the “old you” better. Of course. The old you didn’t confront them.

Anyway, my point is, there are times in life when you have to stand up for yourself and say, “Enough.” That’s part of the responsibility you bear; you have to be able to protect your, “little spark of madness” as Robin Williams called it. You can’t let people trample on that. If this is new for you, it will take time, like anything else. The first several times you speak up when you’re not happy with the way you’re being treated, it might come out with more force or aggression than you intend. Of course, you’ve been bottling up your voice for so long, it’s not surprising it might explode, but if you stay with it, and explain to the people in your life that you are in pain and are trying to change some essential things about the way you move through the world, the people who are meant to travel with you will support your efforts. Over time, you’ll be able to speak out with confidence, clarity and compassion about what’s real for you. It’s worth the effort. You deserve a rainbow if that’s what you want.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Ways That Life Will Feel Good

innerguidance When you start to live in alignment with what’s true for you, life becomes so much simpler. It’s easier to say no when you mean no. It takes away the murkiness between people and around situations that might have left you scratching your head in the past, because now, you can just open your mouth and say, “I feel really weird. What’s going on?” It gives you the power to direct your energy, because you know what you want, and so do the people in your life. You don’t have to waste time or energy making excuses for yourself, or anyone else.

It’s not always easy to get there, and you can multiply that by nine million if you have certain tendencies, like people-pleasing, or feeling you aren’t supposed to be taking up any space. There are genuine problems in life; all we have to do is read the paper for three minutes to verify that, but a lot of the problems people grapple with are self-created. Not all of them, so let’s be clear. There are heartbreaking, piercingly painful losses we endure sometimes, and some people more than others, but I’m not talking about that right now. I’m talking about a loud inner critic you may have been living with your entire life. A relentless voice inside your head that is unforgiving and full of should. I’m talking about ideas you may have about yourself that are blocking your ability to be happy, to be at peace.

What stops us from listening to our hearts, and calmly but confidently moving in the direction we know we must if we want to rock it out in this life? Fear. Fear that we aren’t enough. Fear that our deepest desires may not be in line with what others had hoped we would want. Fear of hurting the people we love. Fear of trying, and failing. Fear of change and of loss. Fear of proving to ourselves that we aren’t able to do it, after all.

Here’s the thing. You’re alive. You’re living this life, and it’s going to feel good, or it isn’t. Ways it will definitely not feel good: If you let your shoulds rule your life. If you don’t try because you might not pull it off. If you allow yourself or other people to talk you out of your dreams. If you never act on your own behalf because you don’t feel good about yourself. If you believe everything you think, especially the nasty, mean-spirited stuff. If you marinate yourself in envy or bitterness or rage. If you keep a mental list of every way you’ve ever been wronged, betrayed, abandoned, and disappointed. If you never let anyone know you, really know you because you’re so caught up in worrying about what people would think if you dropped the mask. These are all ways life will feel very long and painful.

Ways that life will feel good: If you take ownership of the one thing you can, namely, how you face what you’ve been given. If you look your pain, losses, heartbreaks and betrayals in the face and say, okay. That happened. That hurt. Here’s what I’ve learned from these experiences, here’s how I’ve grown, here’s how I’ve become more empathetic and compassionate as a result. If you remind yourself every single day of all the things you do have, right now. If you remember to let the people in your life know how you feel about them. If you feel the fear of not being enough, but go for it, anyway. Because you’re going to be here, right? You’re going to be living these days, and living truthfully feels a lot better than living in fear or blame or powerlessness. Maybe all your dreams will come true, and maybe they won’t, but you’ll feel a lot better about yourself if you’re following your heart. It’s not like tomorrow is promised, or that life is going to start somewhere out ahead of us after we get everything figured out. Life is happening right now, this minute.

If you’re stopping yourself from following your intuition, it’s time to get some support. We all need that sometimes. It might be a teacher who inspires you, or reading something that raises your consciousness, or it might be a good time to try therapy, but I wouldn’t just wait for things to get better magically. You know the saying right? If you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting. If what you’ve been doing isn’t working out so well, it’s time to try something else.

There’s only one of you. I really do not believe you’re here by accident. You have something to offer only you can, but you won’t be able to do that if fear is blocking you at every turn, or if that voice inside your head tells you you can’t. I can share with you that for me, personally, yoga was the way I eroded that inner voice that was so harsh and critical and relentless. I got on my mat, and I just didn’t feed that. I didn’t heed it, either. I kept feeding a loving, patient kind voice. For me, I needed an experience that was happening in my body. I needed the visceral feeling of hitting a challenge and seeing what came up for me. It wasn’t pretty or easy. It took a number of years, but knowing yourself and accepting yourself is certainly worth the investment of a few years, right? Developing a healthy, happy relationship with yourself is the thing, wouldn’t you say? I can tell you it feels a helluva lot better having a voice in my head that roots for me, than one that tears me down and says I’m unlovable at my core. Life does not have to feel that way, but you have to meet yourself where you are. It won’t get better unless you get off your a$$ and make it better. That’s the truth. You have to work, but what better use of your time is there than to make the world within you a more peaceful, loving, kind, compassionate place to be? So you can make the world around you, and between you and those you love, a more peaceful place to be; what’s more pressing than that? If you need help along these lines, try this series, or if you’re looking for community, interaction and support, you still have 48 hours to sign up for my next online course! See if that sparks something within you, but don’t let life go by for too long feeling stuck. We don’t have forever.

Sending you so much love,

Ally Hamilton

You Take the Keys

pemahearts When I was in college I had a roommate for one semester, I’ll call her Jane. I didn’t know her, we were just placed in a room together. Jane liked boys. A lot. I walked in on Jane with so many different Tarzans, we finally devised a system. Not that Jane was ever troubled if I showed up in the middle of her eggs being scrambled, I just found it awkward, and Jane was annoyed by the fact that I found it awkward. When I wasn’t interrupting something, I’d come back to our room and find sweaters of mine thrown in a corner, sometimes stained, or I’d go looking for a pair of shoes only to discover Jane must be wearing them. She was catty, and cold, and never had a kind word to say about anyone, not that she talked to me much. I tried to get to know her, but she really wasn’t open to that, nor did she have any other girlfriends. If I saw her on campus, she was almost always with a group of guys, and might acknowledge me with a look, but not a friendly one, and not usually. One morning I walked into our tiny shared kitchen and howled because I stepped on a shard of broken glass. Jane had knocked over a vase, and simply thrown a towel over the mess. Finally, frustrated and done, I requested a new roommate. The paperwork took a few weeks, but there was light at the end of the tunnel.

One afternoon after I knew my days with Jane were coming to an end, I walked in to find her alone in her bed. She looked awful, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were glassy and she was groaning. She had the kind of flu where you just want to dig a hole and bury yourself until it’s over. Her fever was incredibly high, but she refused to let me take her to the nurse, so I went to the store and bought soup and juice and bread for toast, and came back and made her a little lunch. I sat on the edge of the bed and put my hand on her forehead, and Jane started crying. Not just a tear or two streaming down her face, but the kind of crying that sounds more like keening. Primal, deep wailing. I was stunned, but I just held onto her until she quieted. It turned out Jane’s mom had left when she was a baby, and never looked back. Her dad had raised her but he wasn’t the most emotional guy. No one had ever made her soup before. I wish I could say this was the beginning of a close and lasting friendship, or tell you that I still know Jane and that all is well with her, but that moment with the soup was all there was, because the next day Jane was back to her dismissive ways. In fact, she was even more hostile. When I packed up my things before winter break, I left Jane a card with my new phone number and a note that said she could always call me for any reason. I never heard from her, but I think about her a lot. Especially when I meet someone who’s challenging to be around, or whose behavior is difficult to understand. Everyone has pain, everyone is struggling with something.

When you feel as though someone is “driving you crazy”, understand they can only do that if you let them. Checking in with yourself when you’re feeling enraged, frustrated, trapped, or shut down with someone is really essential. Sometimes a complete stranger can “drive you crazy” by talking loudly on their cellphone in a cafe, or not holding a door open, or letting you merge on the freeway. Sometimes it’s someone you like who isn’t responding the way you wish they would. The story that matters is always the story of our participation. What about the situation is triggering us? Why, for example, would you allow the driving habits of a stranger, no matter how annoying they might be, rob you of your own peace? Or affect your blood pressure, or the way you’re driving, or what you’re doing with your own middle finger? What is the real source of the anger or insecurity or lack of trust this person is tapping that already exists within you, and did long before s/he came into the picture? If you’re really tweaked, consider whether it’s old stuff. Are you feeling powerless? Rejected? Abandoned? Are you repeating a pattern of interaction that feels awful and very familiar at the same time? This is the way challenging people can become some of our best teachers. The potential for growth and greater understanding about who you are and where you’re at is always available. If someone cuts you off on the freeway and you feel a surge of heat rush to your face, you really ought to be yelling, “Thank you!” and not, “F&ck you!” out the window, because they just helped you release and explore some of the rage that was already within you. Next time you’re dreading hanging out with that person who drives you up and down a wall, see if you can turn it into an experiment where you drive instead. They can do and say anything at all, and you will still drive your own car, peacefully and mindfully, slowing down whenever you need to hop out and explore the terrain.

Sending you love, and wishes for a peaceful ride without the use of your “traffic finger” 😉

Ally Hamilton

Just Be There

Sometimes the very best thing we can do for someone is hold some space for them to be where they are, to listen intently, and reflect back our understanding with love. To say, “Yes, of course that would hurt. I’m so sorry you’re going through this.” That’s often the best we can do for people, reassuring them that they are not alone in their experience, that we get it, that we’ve been there, or that we haven’t been there, but still, we can mourn with them, or just be there to make a meal, or take them for a walk. It’s very hard when people we love are suffering, or grieving, or enraged, or feeling bitter, or maybe all of those things at once. It’s natural to want to get in there and fix it, to brainstorm about solutions, or to offer our unsolicited opinions about what our friends should do. The reality is, we never know what another person needs for his or her own healing or grieving process or growth. Sometimes people are in so much agony, the people around them become uncomfortable, and this discomfort propels them to give their friend a push to “get back on their feet.” That’s really the last thing a person needs to hear when they have no way of doing that for themselves. As Earl Grollman rightly states, “The only cure for grief is to grieve.”

Some wounds are self-inflicted. Sometimes we need painful lessons again and again until we get it. That isn’t easy to watch, and of course if someone you love is harming themselves, we’re in a different territory. Then, you step in and do everything you can to get them some support, or you find some for yourself so you can honor your own needs and boundaries while you try to offer a hand up, or a shoulder to lean on. But you can’t save anyone, and if you’re confused about that, you’re in a precarious position. We can never carry the burden of another person’s pain, nor can we be responsible for anyone else’s happiness. Each of us must do our own journey. We all have to find a way to be at peace within ourselves, and sometimes the journey to that peace is fraught with roadblocks, self-imposed, or provided by the twists and turns and losses of life.

Whatever we have to bear, having loyal and understanding friends with whom we feel safe can be such a comfort. Knowing that there’s at least one person we can share our fears or insecurities or doubt or shame or guilt or jealousy with, without hearing a solution we didn’t ask for and don’t want, is really a gift. It’s hard to just listen. I think a lot of people feel like that isn’t enough, that if someone is coming to them in some pain or discomfort, implicit in their sharing is a request for advice. People will ask for our opinions if they want them. Most of us don’t listen to advice, anyway. We tell ourselves that’s the way it is or was for our well-meaning friend, but it’s not the way it is or will be for us. I’ve gotten into the habit of asking close friends when they share with me, “Do you want me to just listen, or do you want to know what I think?” People will tell you. Most people just want a safe space, and some understanding. Hoping we can all be, and have, friends like that, and sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Carpe Diem

If you’re alive, you’re vulnerable; this is the nature of reality as a human being. We have our bodies with their unknown expiration dates. We don’t know what will happen from one day to the next. We love people. They also have unknown expiration dates. We don’t know what happens after this. That right there is the stuff–what more needs to be acknowledged for all of us to embrace the fact that to be human is to be vulnerable?

A lot people run from this reality, even though we all know it’s right there, under the surface. There’s a desire to numb out, to distract ourselves with busyness, to make our plans and meet our deadlines and workworkwork, because that’s what we’re supposed to do. We’ve set it up so there isn’t a choice. If we want to keep a roof over our heads and food in the fridge, if we want to be able to pay for healthcare and send our kids to college, we need money, and lots of it. So we put our heads down and we work. We look forward to the weekend, and we (maybe) take a week or two a year and go travel somewhere and think, “this is the life.” We’re so tired most of the time, we have coffee houses on every corner, and we have our devices to save time, except they suck time. We go meet our friends and text other people, missing moments to connect, to be present, but we’ve all heard this before, right? We know this. It’s just, what’s the option?

Tomorrow isn’t promised. I know no one likes to dwell on that, and I’m not suggesting we should. Living in fear isn’t really living. There’s no point getting worked up over all the things that could happen. Hopefully we will all live to see many tomorrows, but I think if we can be brave enough to face our circumstances consciously, that can inspire us to truly live every single day, and to be kind to one another. Not everyone can meet the pain of this thing with ease or grace. For a lot of people, it’s a messy, thorny thing. A great many people struggle with the big picture, and the unanswered questions. We lose gorgeous souls every day to depression and addiction, because the weight of their despair is too much, the pain is too great.

Sometimes a person has one face for the world. Maybe that face is always lit up, always smiling or laughing, or spreading joy, but inside, the pain is crushing. We feel so shocked when we lose people with huge gifts, but everyone has an interior world, and everyone suffers to one degree or another. Loss is a constant. We lose our keys. We lose a moment to say something. We lose our innocence, maybe too soon. We lose our possibility to not know something, like what it feels like to be abused or betrayed. We lose someone we love because they need something we can’t give them. We lose someone we love because they’re taken from us. We lose, and we grieve, and you never know from the outside what someone is carrying, unless they tell you. Even then, we each carry our own pain. You can’t take it over for anyone. You can’t make things all better. We all have our demons to face, and we face them the best way we can.

It lacks empathy and understanding to suggest a person who fails to manage their pain in a healthy way is selfish. Depression robs a person of hope. Imagine feeling the worst sadness you’ve ever felt, and believing it would never, ever get better. No one wants to be in pain. No one wants to hurt the people they love with all their hearts. No one wants to be a slave to addiction. Sometimes people lose the battle. They get tired. Maybe they’ve been fighting for years, for decades, and they just can’t find the strength anymore. When depression and addiction take over a person’s life, they also stamp out the light, the beauty, the joy, the possibility to connect in a meaningful and sustainable way, and we have to understand that, and let it inspire us to reach out more, to put our phones down and connect with each other. To hold the door open, or let someone merge on the freeway, or acknowledge the person who just handed you that much-needed cup of coffee. You never know what someone is going through, but you know there’s the potential that whatever they’re facing may not be easy.

Life can be brutal, and loss is inevitable, but along with that exists so much beauty. The feeling of your child’s chubby, soft little arms around your neck. The genuine smile of someone you love. The sound of laughter, sunlight on your face, the ocean, the breeze on your check, a moment of recognition, of breakthrough, of being seen with all your flaws and all your gifts, the happiness of those you love, tears between friends, the overwhelming feeling of gratitude just for the experience of being alive, finding those things that light you up, traveling with people who understand you. All these things exist simultaneously. As much as you can, pay attention to the gifts. Try not to get caught up in racing through your life. You’re only going to have this one life in this body you’re in, that much we know, and love and connection are the best things we have here. Immerse yourself in that stuff. Uncover your gifts and share them. Open to love, give it, receive it, spread it. Celebrate the people you cherish, and celebrate yourself. Try to do each day that way, and you’ll have a beautiful life.

Wishing that for you, and sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Believe Them

A few years ago, I went on a date with a guy who travels around the country giving talks and interviews about compassion and kindness. He’s written books, he’s been on all kinds of television shows. He’s extremely charismatic and funny and smart. We met through mutual friends and he asked me out, and of course, I was very excited. I thought we had a similar outlook on life, and I liked the fact that he seemed down-to-earth.

The night of the date came, and he picked me up, and off we went. The conversation was easy and deep. Definitely no small talk. By the time we were at the restaurant, we were so in the flow, the waiter stopped asking us if we wanted to order. We never made it past a pitcher of mint lemonade. We sat at the table for three hours, drunk on conversation. He made all kinds of references to things we had to do, friends of his I had to meet, places we had to go. There was not an inch of me wondering whether we’d be going out again. We exchanged a few emails the next day, but he didn’t mention plans, and I just assumed he was going to call to do that. So you can imagine, when I hadn’t heard from him a week later, I was surprised and confused.

I decided to be direct, and sent an email letting him know I’d had a great time. I told him I was really looking forward to getting to know him better. I told him about a public speaking engagement I’d since had, that we’d discussed the night we went out, and how I was pleased I hadn’t died from fear, after all. Radio silence. He never wrote back, and I was left with the sting of having made myself vulnerable. I didn’t say anything to our mutual friends, because I didn’t want them to feel badly, and I also didn’t want anyone else to get involved. After numerous conversations with trusted girlfriends, and a couple of close male friends, I let it go. I figured it must have been smoke and mirrors or something, because it’s one thing to talk about kindness and compassion, but it’s another thing to have some.

I found out much later he’d been dating someone off and on for a long time. When we went out, they’d been off, but at some point the week after our date, they were on again. I’ve been in those relationships before, the ones that are so hard to end. The ones where you feel so hooked in you’re convinced it must be love so you keep going back even though you know nothing will be different. Anyway, when I realized what happened, I felt a little soothed, but also angry. It would have been so easy to simply shoot me an email and let me know. It would have been kinder than leaving me to second guess my own experience, to replay the night in my mind and wonder if I’d missed something.

Anyway, who knows why he handled it that way. Probably, he wanted to keep me on the back burner for when his on again went off again, because I did get an email a few months later, asking if I’d like to have dinner but by then I was done. I would never pursue something with someone who can’t or won’t communicate honestly. Most of the time people are not setting out to hurt us, and this was not a major heartbreak, obviously. It was one date. It just so happened it was my first date out of the gate after my divorce, the first date I’d been on in eight years. So the timing wasn’t great, but it was a sting, not a wound. Usually people are doing the best they can with the tools they’ve got. Sometimes people are selfish and prioritize what’s good for them over what might be hurtful for someone else. The thing is, it’s really never okay to put your discomfort ahead of another person’s heart. Awkward conversations aren’t fun, but they’re so much better than leaving someone in the dark.

The other thing to remember, is that sometimes a person presents themselves one way, but one-on-one, it’s a whole different story. This is a guy who does a lot of good, legitimately, but his interpersonal skills need a lot of work. It was a good reminder to me that we should never look at someone’s public persona, and assume that’s what’s happening behind closed doors. Not everybody has every piston firing. It’s easy to take things personally, but most of the time, it’s just a reflection of where someone is on their own path; it’s not a reflection of anything lacking in you. I get so many emails from people struggling with this stuff. The truth is, if a person is into you, it’s not going to be a mystery, you’re not going to have to wonder, or chase, or second guess yourself. I really wouldn’t waste time with any of that, life is too short, and you are too precious. Save your time and energy for people who are coming at you with everything they’ve got, and keep your eyes, ears and mind open, so you can see clearly when there’s a disconnect between someone’s words and their actions. It’s really good to remember the Maya Angelou quote, “When people show you who they are, believe them.”

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Take Your Power Back

dalaisuffer Everyone makes mistakes, it’s part of the reality of being human, but sometimes people cling to their rightness. I was friends with someone many years ago who could never say he was sorry. In his view, he was never wrong about anything, and if ever I went to him with a question or concern or disappointment about something that had transpired between us, he would tell me it was my own negativity and/or lack of gratitude. Needless to say, the friendship did not stand the test of time. In order to be close to people, you have to be willing to allow them access to your interior world. You have to be willing to stand there, with all your flaws and all your beauty, and hold the gaze. And when you do not show up the way you want to or mean to, you have to be able to own it and say, “I’m so sorry, I blew it” That way, you give the other person the chance to look you in the eye and say, “It’s okay. I see you for who you are, I understand you have some pain. I forgive you.” Then, you know you have a true friend.

Sometimes people reject parts of themselves. There are few things more painful than an inability to accept something essential about yourself. If you want to be at peace, I really don’t know any other way, than to face those places within you that are still raw; those places where you still have some healing to do. Anything you push beneath the surface will rise up to bite you in the a$$, again and again until you reckon with it. You’ll repeat the same patterns in all your close relationships, at work, as you’re driving in traffic. If you have rage, it will erupt, if you have shame, you’ll find yourself pushing people away, not because you want to, but because you can’t stand to have them get close enough to see what you really are. Not that your perception is accurate, because shame will cloud your ability to see yourself clearly, but you’ll believe you’re unworthy at your core, and that will seep out in more self-destructive ways than you can count, until you face it and deal with it head-on.

Anyway, my point is, sometimes people have a construct they’ve built to cope with their pain or their heartbreak or their disappointment or their rage or their feelings of being on the outside looking in. Maybe in order to live with themselves, they’ve had to make “the way things are” someone else’s fault, or they’ve decided the world at large is unfair, and most people can’t be trusted. So when you approach someone in that state and you ask them to be accountable for something they’ve done, they simply cannot do it, because their whole life philosophy hinges on this idea that they are always right, or that bad things always happen to them.

The thing is, when you dig your heels in and point fingers, you give your power away. You make your unhappiness someone else’s fault. It’s no different than hinging your happiness on external events, like, “I’ll be happy when I lose ten pounds, or drive a different car, or have a bigger house, or meet the right person…” Happiness becomes something you chase, instead of something you dig to find within you. That’s the only place it can exist, after all. Your happiness cannot lie in someone else, or in some future event. It has to be unearthed, and you may have noticed you cannot dig and point at the same time.

I’m not saying awful, heartbreaking things don’t happen, because they certainly do. Sometimes people are careless or self-absorbed or lost to themselves, or nine million other things, but it’s always in our power to decide how we’re going to respond to what it is we’re given. We can’t control circumstances. We can’t manage another person’s path. The only true power we have lies in facing ourselves, and making the world within us a peaceful place to be. That takes enormous strength and courage, but it also gives you your power back.

Wishing that for you, and sending you love,

Ally Hamilton