​Recently one of the most prominent politicians of our nation announced that he had been “too busy” to buy his wife a birthday present but he got her a nice card instead. As I read this, I wanted to reach through my computer screen and throttle the man (although I often have that reaction to what he says anyway).

Let’s establish one thing: there are few people in this world who are truly “too busy” to do something for a spouse for their birthday. If someone works 100 hour weeks at three minimum wage jobs while trying to care for multiple children and a disabled parent, that person is legitimately too busy to do much beyond try to survive. Most of us, though, are not quite that pressed for time. Even if our finances are extremely stretched, there are creative ways to come up with free gifts for our spouses if we choose to put the effort into it.

In this situation, though, this particular politician is quite wealthy. While his actual wealth is debated, it’s at least in the millions. He also has multiple personal assistants who work for him. For him, it’s quite possible to hand one of those assistants a credit card, tell them to call Tiffany’s (or whatever the preferred jewelry store of his wife is) and ask them to send over a pair of earrings from this season’s line that cost under X dollars and are preferably in a certain stone. The husband can then inspect the jewelry before presenting it to his wife on her birthday. Or if this man wanted to get his wife something less commercial than jewelry, he could make an online donation to a charity which she supports in her honor. Really, he’s not too busy to make that request of his assistants (or possibly do it himself), and his funds and situation actually allow him more flexibility than most of us even if his time is limited.

When someone says, “I’m too busy” to do a particular activity, what they are actually saying is, “That’s not important to me and I won’t prioritize doing it.” For this man, getting his wife a birthday present was simply not a priority for him. He didn’t care about her birthday or doing something to make her happy. While most of the country suspects they are not a happily married couple, actions like this help to cement the fact that he is not making true efforts to show her she matters.

The next time someone hurts you by saying that they are “too busy” for you, stop and think about it. Are they really too busy? Or are you just not a priority for them? If it’s the latter, then it’s time to reevaluate your relationship with that person. If your romantic partner is constantly “too busy” to spend time with you or to do things for you that are important to you, consider seeing a couples therapist together (which they may very likely object to on the “too busy” grounds as well). If it’s a friend who is always too busy for you, then take some time to let go of your hopes of that friend being there for you in the ways you want and put your friend a little further down on your list of people to associate with. Spend your valuable time with those who aren’t “too busy” to enjoy being around you.

©2018 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., GreenHeartGuidance.com

​I attract engineers. It’s just a fact of my life that I have come to accept. For 40 of my 43 years, I have lived with engineers or future engineers. I’m the daughter, ex-wife and mother of engineers. Over half of the men I have dated have been engineers. I don’t go looking for them, but yet somehow engineers find me or I find them unintentionally. When I mentioned to a friend that a man I was newly dating was an engineer, she replied, “Of course he is. What else would he be?” I suspect that it might be quicker when talking to men about their careers if I just asked them what type of engineer they are rather than inquiring them what they do for a living. Chances are that they are an engineer.

Engineers are a unique group of people with brains that function in a way that is somewhat different from many others in society. While comics like Dilbert make fun of this engineer’s mindset, I am so accustomed to it that I find men who aren’t engineers to be the ones who are different thinking. Perhaps this is why I attract engineers: I know how to be at peace with their general mindset.

Thus, when a local intimacy coach mentioned that she was reading and absolutely loving Heart in Gear: An Engineer’s Erotic Journey to Freedom by Christopher Hoffman, I immediately purchased the book. I quickly read through it, fascinated by Hoffman’s story and amazed by his deep insights and his life growth. The book was far more than I had expected or hoped for.

Like many people, Hoffman found himself in a completely unsatisfying marriage after 20 years. Having been unable to improve the relationship through counseling, Hoffman reached a crossroads. With the encouragement of friends, he left his dysfunctional marriage, began rebuilding his life and found his deepest self. Heart in Gear details how Hoffman’s life evolves professionally, psychologically, and sexually as he worked to become a happier person.

Hoffman’s journey is filled with many fun and very sexy moments that he details explicitly, but he also encounters pain along the way. As he notes, “I learned not to be afraid of big emotions. Feeling pain was just a sign that what I was encountering mattered” (146). Through exploring that pain, Hoffman finds some of the deeper truths about himself and life. One of his first steps in the journey was discovering, “There are people trying to reach us, but they can’t penetrate into our hearts—not because we aren’t listening to them, but because we aren’t listening to ourselves” (53).

Once Hoffman realizes that he has to be accountable for his own emotions, desires, and behaviors rather than depending on others to shape him, he is able to enter relationships that are more soul-empowering. Rather than trying to fix everything and everyone around him (a very male and very engineer approach to life), Hoffman discovered that the healthier approach is to accept others as they are and to appreciate them for their genuine selves. Through this full acceptance of others, Hoffman found that his sexual connection with others became far more intimate and powerful than ever before. In his words, “I unplugged my cock from my ego and plugged it into my heart” (108).

I recommend Heart in Gear for any man (but especially engineers and their partners) who is wanting to learn more about himself, to heal his wounds and to be a better romantic partner. For a short and very easy to read book, Heart in Gear is filled with some very deep and powerful insights that have the potential to open up new worlds to its readers.
​
©2018 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(Potential spoilers about Parenthood, season 4, below)
 
As I watched Parenthood a few months ago, the Braverman family began dealing with major health issues in season four. Grandfather Zeek was diagnosed with heart trouble, and daughter-in-law Kristina was diagnosed with breast cancer. What these two family members had in common was that they began lying to their adult children about their health. Zeek didn’t want his adult children to know that he was having health issues since the problems might not lead any trouble. He didn’t want anyone fussing over him. He preferred to use denial to cope with his health issues. For reasons that are hard to define, Adam and Kristina didn’t want to tell the family that they were facing breast cancer; they outright lied to their college aged daughter because they didn’t want her to worry or get distracted from her education.
 
Unfortunately, this tactic of coping with stressful issues is all too familiar to me. My family of origin and my ex’s family of origin tend to take the same approach to health issues: Adult children are still seen as children, and parents try to “protect” the adult children from bad news.  Yet adult children are actually adults. They are, for the most part, capable of understanding and coping with issues about life and death.
 
In my own family, my father was not going to tell me when my uncle died of ALS until after the funeral. My widowed aunt made it clear that my father had to inform me. The death was not a surprise as ALS is horrible degenerative disease. My health was not going to allow me to travel to the funeral, yet it still was the right thing to tell me about the death. My father didn’t want me to tell my children (who were ages 10 to 13), but I insisted otherwise. They weren’t close to my uncle, but they needed to know that he had died. As my father finally came to terms with my decision, he said, “I guess it’s better than them coming to visit and him not being here.” While this attempt to protect us from the pain of death was well-intended, it also failed to respect our right to know and grieve about a loved one.
 
While they say we often marry our parents, I never believed that my ex-husband was that much like my father until after we separated. Soon thereafter, my ex’s aunt died. Even though I had been a part of his family for more than twenty years, I was very much not close to her. She was an odd bird, and that’s coming from someone who proudly identifies as weird. Her health had been declining, so to me, the death was not a surprise. However, my ex chose not to tell me or our kids about the aunt’s death for 48 hours after she died. When I asked him why he delayed the news, he told me that he didn’t want to upset me. In reality, I suspect he just didn’t want to face the reality of her death by speaking to me or our kids about it.
 
With my children, I’ve broken free of this dysfunctional model of hiding important information from younger family members. I treat my teenage children as human beings who deserve to be respected; I've always done so even when they were little. While I might filter information to frame it in a way that is age appropriate, I am honest with my children about big information even if it is painful. I believe that with children, both when they are young and when they are adults, honesty is the best policy. As a result, my children know that they can always trust me to be honest with them even when they ask difficult questions that other adults won't answer for them.
 
© 2016 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(Apologies in advance for an insanely long blog post. ~Elizabeth)
 
I am a huge Josh Groban fan. I’ve loved his music since I first saw one of his earliest PBS specials. When I came out of my years of silence, his was some of the first music I found myself able to tolerate. On the nights when I was going through horrible intestinal pain that would last for untold hours on end but my now ex-husband was unwilling to be there to hold my hand and support me through that hell, it was the music of Josh Groban (and others) that I played on repeat all night long to keep myself as calm and relaxed as possible. His albums are still my default when I am dealing with pain that medication and meditation cannot control.
 
I have been battling health issues for 13 years; I was all but bedbound for two of those years and homebound for six. Slowly I have been fighting my way back to health. After successfully attending an event at a local church in September, I realized that I probably could start attending live theater and concert events again. This was something that I hadn’t expected to do be able to do for another several years, and it is a huge milestone for me in my healing journey. Fortuitously, my 15 year old daughter is taking a costuming class as an elective this year, and she’s required to go to a live performance every six weeks, anything from a free one person poetry reading in a coffee shop to a Broadway musical. As I looked for options for her (and me) to attend this school year in Austin, I found that Josh Groban was coming to Austin in October and that tickets were all but sold out (two individual tickets available in different balcony sections). I was crushed. I was talking about this with one of my health practitioners who encouraged me to look on Craigslist or to just show up the night of the show to find tickets from someone who needed to sell.
 
So back in October the week before the concert, I was looking at Craigslist for tickets to see Josh Groban. I was thoroughly annoyed at the number of businesses scalping tickets, but after a few days I eventually I found some seats on Craigslist for original purchase price located in the back of the orchestra section that were being sold by someone with a death in the family. As I sat there debating buying them, I got an intuitive hit to go check the concert hall website where I'd unsuccessfully looked for tickets previously: When this happens, it feels like there is someone in my brain loudly saying, “GO LOOK AT THE OFFICIAL SITE!” When I searched this time on the official site, there were two adjacent front row orchestra seats available (plus two adjacent seats a few rows back from that). This was actually fourth row seating because the pit was covered and three rows were added, but it was still close enough that my daughter commented after the show that Josh had a loose thread hanging from the back of the blue suit jacket he wore in the first act that was bugging her. (Yes, she is Type A, and yes, I do know which parent she got it from. Sigh. :) )
 
Josh Groban got seriously ill with a lung infection in October and had to reschedule the Austin concert. I knew when he canceled his New Orleans show a few days before that there was a huge chance that he would cancel Austin as well; I began praying for a reschedule because I didn’t want to lose those amazing seats I had gotten! When the rescheduled concert was set for December 19th, I looked at the calendar and discovered that my ex had just bought Star Wars tickets for the exact same date at the same time for the kids. Fortunately my daughter was able to grasp the concept that she could see Star Wars any time but Josh Groban wasn’t going to be available to sing at any other time. Her cousin took her Star Wars ticket, and our girls’ night was back on, just delayed by two months.
 
Last night, after overcoming all the hurdles of a disabled individual trying to attend an event at a major auditorium, my daughter and I were finally in the theater. Honestly, I sat there in shock for a bit with my hands shaking, so amazed that I was actually in Bass Concert Hall once again. A few years ago I would have said that this might never be possible. If Josh Groban had decided not to sing, I would have been disappointed but I still would have gone home incredibly happy because I simply made it into the theater. That’s how huge of a deal it was that I went last night.
 
Fortunately, though, Josh Groban performed last night despite a “full-blown sinus infection” which he claimed had him performing at only 86% though I don’t think anyone in the audience would have noticed if he hadn’t shared that information. I certainly wouldn’t have! His music was every bit as amazing as I expected it to be in person, and I enjoyed every minute of the evening. I didn’t take notes as I wanted to be fully present in and enjoying the moment, so my retelling of the evening probably has the setlist in the wrong order though it’s somewhat close to the original experience.
 
While I was expecting to be powerfully moved by this concert since Groban’s recordings can leave me in tears depending on the day, what I didn’t expect to happen was that the evening became a life review for me. As song after song unfurled, images from my life, past, present and future, marched through my mind’s eye. Some of the songs that weren’t favorites before suddenly took on totally different meanings as I found new, deep, and very emotional acceptance about parts of my life.
 
Josh Groban walked onto the stage opening with “Pure Imagination” from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a song that speaks to me of the innocence of childhood. I spent my childhood with my head in a book, the safest and happiest place for me to be, though I was actually kind of freaked out by most of Roald Dahl’s books. Groban followed this with “Try to Remember” from The Fantasticks which was the school musical in my sophomore year of high school. While our El Gallo sounded nothing like Groban, the memories still flooded back to me of that time in my life when I was the stage manager and one of my still current friends ran one of the spotlights, terrifying me by scrambling up to its rather unsafe perch. This, too, was a time of partial innocence. While my life was far from happy, I still had my health, and in no way could I foresee the struggles ahead of me in life. Only three months after that production, I began my 22 year relationship with my now ex-husband.
 
After these first two songs, Josh Groban began talking to the audience. My daughter had asked before the concert started if Groban would be doing anything about Donald Trump like he did on Jimmy Kimmel. I told her that I doubted it, and while she was disappointed in that answer, she was not at all let down by the other humor that Groban amused his audience with between songs. During this first round of talking, he explained that he knew that Bass Concert Hall was probably named after someone with the last name of Bass, but he preferred to think of it as one of those talking bass fish like the ones he gets from his aunt for Christmas each year. After having an amusing conversation with an imaginary talking bass, Groban then said for the first of two times that evening that he was highly medicated. I still can’t imagine being able to perform that well while medicated!
 
From there, Groban sang “Old Devil Moon” accompanied by an Austin trumpeter. The song has been going through my head since then including when I woke up during the night. Groban was subsequently joined by the incredibly talented singer Lena Hall for the duet “All I Ask of You” which he sings with Kelly Clarkson on the Stages album. Hall performed a solo afterward, singing “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World” originally sung by James Brown. I could tell my daughter was really impressed with Hall’s singing as she was Googling Hall during intermission. I listened to the song thinking about the strong woman I have had to be to survive this life and knowing that my daughter is also a strong young woman, filled with self-confidence, who is going to be able to make her way in a world where women often still aren’t treated as men’s equals.
 
As he had promised earlier yesterday on Twitter, Josh Groban began a few of the songs that he has not performed on tour or in recent history starting with “Dulcinea” from Man of La Mancha. That was probably the low point of the evening for me; both my daughter and I found the red moving images on the curtains behind Groban to be disorienting and distracting. Groban also sang the first of two Christmas songs he performed last night, “The Christmas Song.” He introduced the song by saying that his album Noël (2007) had been very successful, but after its success, he was very Christmased out and didn’t want to sing Christmas songs again until now. I found this amusing because when I announced to my sons that I had bought tickets for Josh Groban in concert, my youngest asked, “Is that the guy who sings Christmas songs?” It made me realize that I play Noël around my kids far more often than any of Groban’s other albums though it’s not the album I listen to most often by any stretch of the imagination.

To close out the first half of the evening, Groban sang “What I Did for Love” from A Chorus Line. This song was one of the most moving parts of the evening as the song touched a pain in me I hadn’t known was there. As I had been thinking about my love of theater throughout the evening, I realized during this song that it was something that my ex-husband had never truly shared. He came with me to various events, but he never understood the joy they brought to me nor the passion they ignite in me. Like many other things in our relationship, that power of music and theater was something that I abandoned, and now I am regaining that lost part of my life again. Yet despite what I gave up in my relationship with him, I looked at our beautiful daughter sitting next to me, and the lyrics “Won't forget, can't regret/ What I did for love” hit me hard. Everything I put myself through in my relationship with him and everything I sacrificed was worth it for the three amazing children we are raising. Though I wish I hadn’t gone through so many years of emotional pain in a toxic relationship, I would never give up the blessings of my children.
 
The second half of the evening was no less entertaining than the first. Josh Groban began after the intermission by singing his medley of “Children Will Listen/Not While I’m Around.”  This opened a whole new level of emotional processing for me. As I had dressed for the evening, I tried putting on a labradorite pendant, but I couldn’t do it. I was intuitively being told that I had to wear my clear quartz pendant. I didn’t understand why until this medley when my heart chakra began aching terribly as the music released a great deal of stored emotional pain and the crystal helped fill the emptiness it left with healing white light. The release continued through the next few songs. This medley in particular forced me to acknowledge how horribly painful it has been for me not to have had someone on the journey who would tell me “Nothing's gonna harm you/ Not while I'm around.” This journey has certainly been one where “demons are prowling everywhere,” yet it’s one that I have had to fight without the support of a partner.
 
Rejoined by Lena Hall in a different sparkling dress than she wore before, Groban sang the duet of “If I Loved You” with her; I actually enjoyed their version more than the one with Audra McDonald on the Stages album. As I listened to these lyrics, once again I was shown some of the happiness that awaits me in the second half of my life just around the next bend. I am impatiently waiting for the day when I have a partner for the first time in hundreds of years who will love me in the way captured so beautifully in the lyrics of this song. Lena Hall then followed this with another solo singing “Maybe I’m Amazed” by Paul McCartney and which she had recorded in honor of her father, a huge Beatles fan.
 
Moving on to another set of songs not on the Stages album, Groban announced he would be singing another Christmas song. Someone from the audience screamed out, “O Holy Night” which would have been my choice had I been able to vote on the song selection. To accommodate that request, Groban instead offered up a short version of Eric Cartman of South Park singing “O Holy Night.”  It was truly remarkable; Groban is a better Cartman than Cartman I think. (I also believe this is the point where Groban again blamed his medication again for his actions.) Having somewhat satisfied the audience member’s request, Josh Groban moved on to “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” which he dedicated it to the troops who are not able to be home for Christmas as he does on Noël. During the song (which is actually my least favorite on Noël but which I enjoyed last night), I was flooded with an understanding that Christmas will never again be for me what it was in the past. It’s still a very fun event with my children who so far this year have put R2-D2 in the manger in lieu of the Baby Jesus, but it will never be the Christmas of my childhood again.
 
The next offering was “Unusual Way” which is from the musical Nine. As Groban related yet another one of his very amusing stories which in no way is captured by my summary, he said that this song was recorded but not released on the Stages album. He had seen Nine live with Antonio Banderas, and he was close enough to grasp one of Banderas’ chest hairs (ok, not really) and make a wish on it and now he was on a stage in Austin singing this song. “Unusual Way” is a song which I had never heard before but which is now on my playlist of favorites. I hope Groban releases the recording of it on a future album! This song again lead me to reviewing scenes from my past while simultaneously having an understanding of what is to come in my future.
 
When I was leaving my house for the concert, I had meant to put a wad of facial tissues in my purse because I was afraid that if Groban sang “Anthem,” I would melt into a puddle because his rendition of that song makes me cry every time without fail. Fortunately or unfortunately, “Anthem” was not on the setlist since I forgot to stock my purse. However, one of the last songs was the one which left me in tears, and not too unsurprisingly it was “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” from Les Miserables. Groban dedicated it to the victims of Paris, San Bernardino, and all affected by the recent terrorism and violence in the world. For me, it brought on a reflection of all those from my life who are no longer alive, a melancholic reflection that often happens for me around the holidays anyway.
 
As his closing song, Josh Groban sang, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from Carousel. If the tears hadn’t already started during the previous number, they would have commenced here. This was a song that had never particularly hit me when listening to the Stages album, but it’s now my favorite. Over the past year and especially in the last months, I have struggled with how lonely my journey back to health has been. Few of my friends have been strong enough to make it all the way through the years of illness. When I was separating from my ex-husband 4.5 years ago, I was terrified by the prospect of being alone in fighting the health problems, but what I rapidly learned was that I had already been facing it all on my own for a very long time. It was actually easier to fight the health battles without him in the same house as me draining away more of my energy. Yet that still hasn’t made it easier to walk this path alone. Finding faith and hope that I’m not truly alone has been the hardest challenge for me, especially in the recent months.
 
I’m also at a point where I’m deciding if I am going to be able to go forward in life without a wheelchair. I can walk, but on my bad days, trying to go more than a few feet is draining in an inexplicable way for those who haven’t traveled this same path I am on. So hearing Groban singing about walking, even in the metaphorical sense, prompted more tears. If the choice were just between attending events like this amazing one or not attending them, then I would have no hesitation in getting a wheelchair. However, it’s so much larger of a decision with so many other implications and issues attached that the decision isn’t simple. Thus, I was hearing something in the song that I suspect most other people in the audience didn’t hear: I was trying to understand if the “golden sky” is just around the corner or if I’m going to be living with this level of limited mobility for the rest of my life even once my health battles are done.
 
As the audience gave the first standing ovation and waited for Josh Groban to return for an encore, I couldn’t believe the show was over. It was like I had blinked and the evening was over. I felt like Groban had only sang a few songs until I came home and listed everything and realized it was really a longer evening than I thought! I also went into a bit of shock again. I had done it. I had attended a concert from beginning to end at Bass Concert Hall. I was so amazed and proud of myself for having conquered this hurdle. All I had left to do was get home which actually turned out to be easier than I feared.
 
Josh Groban returned for an encore with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” This song has never been the same for me since it was used for Mark Greene’s death on ER in 2002; it now carries a connotation of heaven and the afterlife. I’m sure Judy Garland’s youngish death also impacts the association of the song for me. Yet somehow I left this song with an impression and a hope that the second half of my life is going to lead me to happiness that I’ve never experienced in the first half. My journey through hell is almost over and I will be emerging on the other side, somewhere over the rainbow, in a much better place than I’ve ever lived in.
 
When Josh Groban returns to Austin, I will definitely be going to see him again. The privilege of hearing him sing in person was more than words can describe. Hopefully the next time he returns, the struggles I faced in getting to the concert last night will be a distant memory, replaced with an abundance of health and love.
 
© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

One of the causes of conflict around the holidays is the problematic phrase, “This is how we have always done things.” Traditions are wonderful, but there are times when traditions need to adapt and change. Human life is full of change, and as our lives change, so too do our traditions need to morph to fit the new circumstances.

One of the more difficult times for “what we’ve always done” is when a new member joins the family, usually through marriage. As a new family unit is formed, the extended family has to shift its traditions a bit to welcome and accommodate the new member who also is coming from an extended family. However, some families don’t welcome new members with love. Instead, past tradition becomes more important than meeting the needs of the present members.

When I married my now ex-husband, I entered into a small extended family, most of whom lived in the same metropolitan area as my family. My ex has no first cousins as his paternal uncle and maternal aunt never married. The grandparents had no extended relations in the area either. It was just a small family gathering at Christmas time.

In contrast, my paternal aunt’s husband (my uncle by marriage) was one of seven children all of whom had married and had children. For their clan to get together, it took considerable arranging. They had held their holiday gathering on Christmas Day for a very long time in order to accommodate all the involved people. As a result, my paternal relatives gathered on Christmas Eve. There was really no way to change the meeting to Christmas Day if we also wanted my aunt and her nuclear family to join us.

Thus, when I married into my ex-husband’s family, we let them know we would be spending Christmas Eve with my family and Christmas Day with his. His parents protested that we should spend Christmas Eve with them even when we explained the dynamics of why my family could not change their gathering time. You would have thought we had declared his family unworthy of any celebration. The verdict from his parents came down, though: They would be opening presents on Christmas Eve, and if we wanted to partake, we would cancel our time with my family and join them because “this is how we’ve always done it.”  

On Christmas Eve, we joined my family, and his family opened presents without us. There were no young kids involved in his family's gathering: I was actually the youngest one involved in the celebrations in that city. I was clearly able to wait a few more hours to open gifts, but the rest of them were not. What his family symbolically told us that year was that their traditions were far more important than making sure we were included. They were not going to change to welcome a new family member and her extended family into their world. They were going to do what they had always done and it was up to us to show our allegiance. Clearly I was annoyed (at best) by this uncharitable behavior. It had been painful enough to know that I was not welcomed with open arms to the family when we got engaged, but this further drove the point home that tradition meant more than current family members.

I spent the first 24 Christmases of my life in Missouri even though I only lived there for eight of those years. After one miserable Christmas in Austin, I returned to spending Christmas in Missouri for several more years. When my grandfather died, traditions changed again. I’ve never spent another Christmas in Missouri. And that is part of life. When change happens, it’s far more important to figure out what the loving thing is to do rather than trying to force a tradition onto a situation that may not be able to accommodate the ways of the past anymore.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

loneliness is a sign
you are in desperate
need of yourself
-rupi kaur

This poem recently showed up in my Facebook feed. It’s intended to be an inspirational thought. I believe that what it means to convey is that if someone feels lonely they may need to do some soul-searching to find out why they are lonely and what it is within them personally that is causing loneliness. While I can see this statement being true for someone who is surrounded by people and activity yet feels lonely, I found the thought pretty ignorant and insensitive as someone who was homebound for six years and is still limited in her ability to socialize.

The life of someone who is homebound is generally pretty lonely. Our society often forgets about or chooses to ignore homebound people when they stop attending various events as I discovered all too well when I was so incredibly sick. With the multiple chemical sensitivities that I have thanks to Lyme disease and weak genetics, my reactions were severe enough that not only was I homebound but I had to limit who could come in my home. Unless people used all natural and unscented detergents, soaps, and body products, I would get physically sick from people coming in my home. At one point I had my least scented friends come over and help me clean since I couldn’t do it and my ex-husband was not able to keep up with cleaning, everyday tasks, parenting the kids and working full time. The day the friends spent in my house was a highlight of my years of being homebound, and yet I ended up with a three day migraine after they left as “payback” for them being in my house and not being 100% chemical free.

Unless a person has a disease like cancer which is considered a socially acceptable cause to rally around, most people who are homebound end up being abandoned by a large number of their friends. While internet “friends” helped me maintain my sanity while I was home alone, it really wasn’t enough to stave off the loneliness. Most of my former friends didn’t even call any more since they felt awkward and didn’t know what to say to me. Once a month or so I would see my doctor, the nurse and the receptionist at his office. The only other physical contact with adults I had during that time on a regular basis was with my now ex-husband. However, as his way of punishing me for being ill and not being the person he wanted me to be, he would use the silent treatment against me frequently. Thus, I was living with a person who would not talk to me or acknowledge me for days or weeks on end, yet I was too sick to leave this toxic relationship. I was too chemically sensitive to have other people come into my house without giving me migraines. I was also too chemically sensitive to function in the world. It’s a horrid situation of isolation and loneliness that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

Loneliness may be a sign that some people are in need of themselves, but it’s also a sign that some people have been ignored and forgotten by their family and so-called friends. Some people may have spent ten years alone with themselves and have gotten to know themselves pretty darn well as I did. However, that won’t ever fulfill the need for socialization and love. There is a reason that isolation and solitary confinement are used as forms of extreme punishment in prison systems. They cause all kinds of physical and psychological effects such as warping the mind and causing delusions, hypersensitivity to noise and touch, insomnia, PTSD, and uncontrollable feelings of rage or fear. Isolation can also cause severe cognitive impairment, as well as impairing the immune system and lengthening healing time for those with health issues. As one article on the topic states, “They have proved that long-lasting loneliness not only makes you sick; it can kill you.” The reality is that while we all need to spend some introspective time, we also all need friends to survive. It doesn't just take a village to raise a child. It takes a village to be a healthy human being.

In my case, loneliness certainly was not because I needed to spend time with myself. Loneliness was a horrible side effect of having an isolating illness. Before deciding that loneliness is a sign that someone is out of touch with their needs, perhaps people should consider all the true causes of loneliness and how they might be contributing to others feeling isolated and alone.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Recently Helen Mirren proclaimed, “It annoys me when I see men with an arm slung around their girlfriend’s shoulders. It’s like ownership. Of course, when you’re young, you want the guy to take your hand and look after you. But when I see girls being leaned on, I want to say, ‘tell him to get his damned arm off your shoulder.’” This statement has created quite a bit of discussion on the internet about whether or not a man’s arm around a woman’s shoulder is anti-feminist or sexist.

I really think this is an issue that is situation dependent. There are definitely men whose public displays of affection (PDA) are territorial. They’re making sure that all other men in the area understand that their women are their property and no other man should even glance at the “taken” women. In these cases, the men often don’t let the women step more than a few feet away from them. It is actually suffocating for the women, though I’ve known women who have happily gotten into relationships like this after having previously been in neglectful relationships with men who didn’t pay any attention to them. In those cases, the women think they’ve hit the jackpot with men who are interested in them not realizing that they are sacrificing their independence and their basic selves in relationships with possessive and overbearing men.

In other situations, though, a man’s arm around a woman is a beautiful thing. It’s a simple reminder to her that he’s there, and he’s got her back in a supportive way. He lets her move away when she needs to, and he doesn’t mind her talking to other men. For him, it’s not a possessive act but one rooted in love and affection. I personally love seeing couples like this where the physical connection between them merely reflects the deeper emotional connection between the two partners.

For me, one of the more painful parts of my relationship with my ex-husband was that he was not comfortable with PDA. He felt it was rude to other people to engage in affection in public, yet on a subconscious level, this was in part a story to cover up his own personal discomfort. When he was willing to touch me in public, it was often reluctantly and was generally limited to hugging or hand holding. Putting his arm around me was definitely beyond his comfort range. As a feminist woman whose love language is touch, I always was disappointed that the man in my life did not put his arm around me.

In the end, this is an issue that really boils down to the individual couple and what they want. Short of public sexual intercourse, we really shouldn’t be judging how others show (or don’t show) affection to each other. Our only focus should be on our own relationships. If Helen Mirren doesn’t want her male partner to put his arm around her, that is her choice. But it’s not her place or any of our places to judge others for how they interact with each other.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Many of us (if not most of us) reach a time in our lives when we have to decide to end a relationship with a romantic partner. But how do we know if we are making the right decision to terminate what we thought was a dream come true?

One way to approach the decision making is through creating a list. In this list, write down all of the characteristics of your dream partner and your dream relationship. You will have to be honest with yourself, or this exercise will not work. On the list, include information such as:

• What would your partner look like?
• How old would your partner be?
• How would your partner treat you?
• Would you share political views with your partner? If so, which ones?
• Would you share the same spiritual beliefs as your partner? If so, which ones?
• Would you and your partner have children? When? How many?
• How and where would you live?
• How would you eat?
• How would you spend and save your money?
• What would your sex life be like?
• What would romance look like in your relationship?
• What would your conversations be like?
• How would your partner speak to you in general?
• What would your social life be like?
• Where would you vacation with your partner?
• How would your family feel about your partner?
• How would your partner’s family feel about you?
• How would your partner support you when you are down?
• How would you support your partner in the relationship?
• What would your partner do for a living?
• How would your partner influence your career?
• [Any other things that are important to you in your life with a partner.]

After you've made this list, go back and check off all the things you are getting in your current relationship. From there, evaluate whether or not you are getting what you need to be happy in a relationship. If your Prince/ss Charming has blond hair and your current love has dark locks, that's not such a big deal. If you want sex weekly and your partner wants it monthly, that's a bigger issue. If a large percentage of these items that you want in a relationship are missing from your current relationship, then you are very likely not in a great relationship for you. It's time to move on.

If you are accepting something less than you want or deserve, it is likely because you are afraid to keep looking or because you don't realize you deserve better that what you have. I know from personal experience what it's like to settle. I realized I was settling for my ex-husband when I married him, but I did it anyway. And now, after four years of being single, I can attest that it is better to be single than to be in a relationship that is not meeting your needs. It is very hard to leave, but once you leave and do some healing work, life gets better much faster than you could imagine.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Our society is enamored with the Cinderella myth. We like to believe a young girl’s prince will come and carry her off into the sunset. With the notable exception of James Lapine’s Into the Woods, most fairy tales don’t end in divorce. They are about happily ever after. And thus, most of our young girl fantasies involving finding our one and only who will make us happy for the rest of our lives. Yet the reality is that happily ever after rarely happens in a Cinderella story manner.

In my first marriage, I though I had found my Prince Charming. My ex-husband and I had a very unusual relationship for modern America in one particular way: we were each others’ first and only partners from the time we began dating until we separated, a duration of 22+ years. This came about in part because of how young we were when we began dating. I was 14 years 8 months and a sophomore in high school when we changed from being friends to being romantic interests; he was recently turned 17 years old and a junior in high school. Neither of us had dated anyone else previously.

After many years of chronic illness, our relationship grew apart. We both were raised Catholic though we have each evolved in different ways in response to the tragedies and difficulties we encountered in life. My ex doesn’t believe in past lives; he sees himself as somewhere between an agnostic and an atheist. On the other hand, I have become highly spiritual but not at all religious as a result of all the challenges I have faced. However, I couldn’t explore my spirituality fully while I was still partnered with my ex-husband because I felt intimidated by his belittling tactics towards ideas he didn’t understand or agree with. For me, it felt safer to hide my beliefs from him. (And yes, that is a sign of an unhealthy relationship!)

Once my ex-husband and I separated, I began exploring my past lives in earnest. Learning about my past life relationships with other souls helped me to be less devastated by the loss of someone I thought was my “one and only” for this life. I was able to break away from the cultural myth that we only have one soulmate and instead understood that we the potential for many soulmates in each lifetime. Thus, when one soulmate relationship ends, it doesn’t mean that you have used up all your romantic love for one lifetime. It simply means that the person who was right for you previously is no longer right for this part of your journey. I believe that the option for other love interests, including soul mates, is available to all of us more than once in a lifetime.

As I explored my past lives, one of the first souls I had to deal with was my lover from my three most recent past lifetimes (and probably more that as well). When he showed up to talk to me just before the summer solstice, he tried to convince me he was one of my guides, but things felt very wrong. The more I learned about him, the more I realized what a toxic soul he was and how much work he had to do as an individual. He was very mad at me for reincarnating without him this time around, but it was time for us to move on separate paths so that we (or at least I) could heal. I cut ties with him and sent him away. Yet the experiences with him helped me to realize that my relationship with my ex-husband in this life was definitely not my one and only soulmate relationship. I have been partnered with many souls across the millenia, and some of those souls are still in my life in different types of relationships in this lifetime.

The lyrics of "For Good" from Wicked strike me as a powerful way to explain this relationship with our soulmates. They declare:

We are here for our paths to cross, and we will forever change each other when they do. Yet there comes a time when we must say goodbye. That doesn’t mean we will never encounter this soul again nor does it mean we will never share love with them again either. But for this lifetime, our journey together is done. It is time to move on to share in new adventures, new love, and new growth with another soulmate.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I was recently talking to a friend who is in her early thirties about marriage. She stated that she thought she had waited long enough to “do it right the first time.” On one hand, I agreed that she is old enough and mature enough to have figured out who the right man for her might be. On the other hand, I have issues around the phrase “getting it right the first time.”

In today’s modern American society, it’s rare that someone actually meets their true love on their first date ever. Most people date many individuals before they find a person whom they want to marry. It’s also rare for people to wait until marriage to have sex: Ninety-five percent of Americans shed their virginity before saying "I do." In addition, approximately 75% of women have cohabitated with a man before marriage. The majority of couples are engaging in serious relationships without a legal marriage bond whereas previous generations of Americans did not do so. Technically, the majority of people aren’t getting it right the first time: They are simply not making a legal bond until they feel extra comfortable that they have found their forever person. 

For thousands of years, the Catholic Church and most Christian churches have frowned upon divorce. While it has been under the guise of a religious dictate from God, I actually believe this was a control and stability based decision. Most churches continue to publically denounce divorce while the majority of the members of the same churches divorce and remarry, sometimes more than once. The churches uphold the mythological belief that we should find one “forever” person and marry that person for the rest of our lives.

However, I don’t know that “doing it right the first time” is actually what the goal of marriage should be. I believe that marriage is a sacred union, but I also believe that it is temporary: Our marriage vows end with death (though many Mormons do not agree with that), and we are free to remarry once widowed even in the most conservative of the mainstream churches. While we are alive, I believe that marriages should exist to help individuals grow. That might mean having children with a partner so that we can experience parental growth and the challenges that come with taking care of other beings who are utterly dependent upon us. It might mean learning how to live with someone who has different beliefs, actions, hobbies, or habits than us. It may mean spiritual growth as we challenge each other to find the Divine in our marriages. Whatever it means to each couple, I believe that they have been brought together to learn some life lessons that they could not learn without the other. When those lessons have been learned, then it is time for the couple to move on to new relationships where they can continue their growth.

Thus, I don’t believe that “getting it right the first time” should be the primary goal of marriage. Instead, I think we should be choosing the right partner to help us grow and change through the next stage of our lives. If we are able to stay well-matched with our partner as our lives take us through many joys and challenges, then by all means, “‘til death do us part” makes a great deal of sense. However for the large percentage of people who find that their individual growth takes them in a different direction than their spouses, divorce should be an acceptable and supported practice in our society. Divorce should not be viewed as failure, but rather a change or even a graduation. Two people who were once well-matched have learned the lessons they need to learn from each other and are now ready to go in different directions. While divorce will still be emotionally difficult as most major endings in our lives are, there’s no reason it needs to be made shameful. Rather, our goal should be finding the right person for this point in our lives and accepting that some day we may move in a different direction from that partner, whether it is because of divorce or death. If we enter into relationships that help our souls grow, then each one will be "doing it right" even if it is not our first relationship or marriage ever.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(This is a continuation of yesterday’s blog post about my college roommates.)

My second roommate (“A”) and I were good friends within a few weeks of meeting each other. We both shared a warped sense of humor that helped cement the bond. Though we were both introverts, she had a need to explore the world that I didn’t really share that point. She didn’t like going places alone, though, so she would often tell me, “Get ready. We’re leaving.” I’d ask where and she’d respond a movie, driving in the Hill Country, antiquing, or whatever she had already decided she wanted to do. I would tell her that I didn’t really want to go, and she would talk me into going with her anyway. In retrospect, I am glad A did because we went on some fun adventures that I would never have done otherwise. One night, A decided she was going to use sidewalk chalk and draw a cartoon figure of hers all over the campus sidewalks. She took me along as her lookout. That’s definitely not something I would have gotten up to otherwise!

At the end of the school year, A decided she wanted to move out of the dorms. I didn’t have a car, and so living off campus seemed daunting and inconvenient to me. I knew I only had one more year left, so I decided to stay on campus. By then, I had other friends in the dorm. One of them was losing her roommate as that woman moved off campus to live with her boyfriend, so the two of us decided to be roommates the following year.

During that second and final year of my undergraduate studies when we were no longer roommates, A and I would get together periodically to do fun activities. Things seemed off for a while between us, but I couldn’t figure out what was up. Towards the end of the school year, A finally came out as being gay. Suddenly so much about her and some of her behaviors made complete sense. My instinctive response was to be mad at her for not telling me sooner! However, I understand she was still figuring it all out herself. Once A came out, our friendship really didn’t change except that she was a much happier person now that she was able to truly be herself.

After I graduated and moved to Boston for nine months to work on my master’s degree, A and I stayed in touch via e-mail. She made plans to come to my wedding with her then-girlfriend, a woman whom I really liked. A and I watched with great amusement as one of my future brothers-in-law flirted with her girlfriend at the rehearsal dinner. At one point I asked A if we should be merciful and tell him that A and her girlfriend were a couple, but A told me, “No. I’m having way too much fun watching this!”

When I moved back to Austin in 1994, A and I continued to be friends through her final year of undergrad and beyond. When she would get together with my then-husband and me to do things, it was him who became the third wheel, not her. A and I were like the sisters neither of us had ever had. We often wouldn’t talk for weeks but then we would see each other multiple times within a short span. It was just how things worked with us. We could always pick right back up where we left off with things.

In 1998, four years after I got married and moved back to Austin, A took her turn to move to Boston for nine months. I helped her finish packing her apartment and took her to the airport with her cats. It turned out she couldn’t stand living in Boston, but while she was up there, she met a girlfriend who eventually became her life partner. When I went to visit A in Boston while I was doing dissertation research, I got to meet her partner, “J,” and liked her. When they moved back to Austin together, I was happy to have J as an additional friend though I never got to know her well.

Shortly after that, my firstborn daughter died. A called and offered to do whatever she could to help. Since she had previously worked at a photo developing store at the mall, I asked her to help me find someone whom I could trust to make enlargements of the very few photos I had of my daughter. She found someone she felt was trustworthy, and I took my negatives to him. He did a great job and was very compassionate toward us. I was incredibly grateful to A for that assistance. Her parents, whom I had met several times and been at their house outside the Dallas-Fort Worth area twice, also sent a bereavement card which really touched me.

Then, a few months later, everything changed. A and J decided to move to another state to pursue grad school and better jobs. I was sad to see them go, but I understood. However, a great silence ensued. Even before they moved, I didn’t get phone calls returned. Any attempt to make contact was thwarted. I had no idea what went wrong. Before the one year forwarding period ended, I sent a letter to her old address in hopes it would find her in the new state. In that letter, I offered apologies to her for anything I might have done and let her know I missed our friendship. More silence. As the internet blossomed, I tried to make contact with her through various social media sites, but I again was met with the stunning silence.

It took me over ten years beyond the last time I talked to her to finally let go. While she had been one of my closest friends for almost a decade, it was clear that A was unwilling to have me in her life any longer. The only possible understanding I had for why she might have cut off our relationship was if her new partner felt uncomfortable with the bizarre and close but definitely platonic relationship A and I shared. A and I both knew that there was no chance in hell of me dating a woman (or her dating a man), and we accepted that we were friends and nothing more. However, I could completely understand how a insecure partner might have been threatened by the close friendship we shared. Yet not knowing for sure was torture. This was someone for whom I had a platonic love and whom I wanted in my life no matter what the conditions were.

Oddly, it was my unrequited love for a man which actually helped me let go of A and the desperate desire to make contact with her again. That man and A reminded me of each other because of their incredibly warped but wonderful senses of humor. The friendship I had with each was similar in some odd ways. And when I finally accepted that I would never get over that man while I was still friends with him, I also reached a place of peace with no longer having A in my life either. I realized that after all that had happened in the intervening decade in my life, we might or might not have anything in common anymore. But most importantly, she had made a decision to cut me out of her life. While that hurt because I had no understanding of why it happened, I still had to respect her decision and let her go.

Today is A’s 42nd birthday. I still remember her every year and wish I could send her an email telling her to have a great day. If A were ever to show up in my life again, I would welcome her with open arms. But until the time when we meet again, if that ever happens, I have to be content with sending her good wishes in my heart. I hope that wherever she is and whomever she is with, that her life has turned out better than she ever dreamed it could.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

This week, I have been working on preparing an October meeting for my Meetup group on jealousy. I asked members which topics were of greatest interest to them, and to my surprise, jealousy came out near the top of the list. Jealousy is not something I have dealt with at the levels other people have, so it took me a minute or two to think about when I have been most envious of others in my adult life. The first thing that jumped to my mind was paint envy. Yes, you read that correctly. I have spent the past 10+ years being jealous of other people’s colorful paint jobs in their homes. The walls of my house were painted right before we moved in 14 years ago, and they are a very serviceable and resellable white. However, after 14 years of dogs and kids and regular life, the walls are showing lots of wear and need a new coat of paint.

When my ex-husband and I made the decision as to who was going to stay in the house and who was going to move out, there really was not much of a decision to make. Because of my chemical sensitivities, it made the most sense for me to stay in the house that we’d spent thousands of dollars upgrading to make it safe enough for me to tolerate. It has electric appliances, has all hardwood and ceramic tile floors, and hasn’t had fragrance or chemicals used in it in 12+ years. Finding a house like that is a needle in a haystack, and finding another for me in our price range that meets my needs seemed like a very daunting task. My ex wanted to move to a new location to start over, and I really understood that feeling. I was jealous that he got to leave and I had to stay in the house where I’d felt like I’d been trapped for all of the years of my illness including the six that I was homebound.

As we began dividing possessions for him to take things with him, I asked if he would take the white dishes we had registered for as wedding presents. Ceramic dishes don’t usually need to be off-gassed, so this was something that I could get new and not have to worry about reacting to any chemicals on them. My ex agreed, and so I set forth in looking for new dishes. I knew I wanted Fiestaware, and I knew I wanted color. Lots of color. I told my kids that they could help pick out the new dishes I was going to buy. My older son jokingly told me he wanted orange plates with sharks on them. I told him I couldn’t help him with the sharks, but we could have orange for sure. He thought I’d gone crazy that I was letting him have his way with the dishes, but since orange was part of my plan, it was good by me! We now have Fiestaware in lapis, peacock, cobalt, plum, scarlet, tangerine, sunflower and shamrock. Our table is very festive!

For the first few years after my ex moved out, I could only do limited things to change up the house because my health was still struggling and my chemical sensitivities were still so strong. I rearranged furniture, hung some of my photographic artwork on the walls (which my ex didn’t like so I’d never had it up before), and did a few other little things to make the house feel different. It wasn’t as much as I wanted, but it was what I could do at the time.

This calendar year, my chemical sensitivities have lessened further. I finally hit the point where I could paint the interior of my house. I tested a few paints and determined that Dunn & Edwards’ Spartazero no-VOC paint was the easiest for me to tolerate. My daughter and I spent a few weeks debating colors of paint samples and finally settled on our choices. We bought paint, and as I have energy and time, my kids and I are slowly painting the house. We started with the downstairs bathroom and hallway, and the difference between white and peach paint was radical. All of us were so impressed with the difference. Today we started painting the laundry room a deep lavender. I find myself just standing there and staring at the newly painted walls in awe. I am amazed at how beautiful the color is.

So what does all of this have to do with jealousy? Yes, I was jealous of other people’s paint on their walls. But what I was really jealous of was the color in their lives. I felt like I was living my life all in white, just like my house had previously been. It was the safe choice. My life until a few years ago was the safe and logical choice, too. I was with a man whom I loved but who was not passionate about me. I hid from my metaphysical gifts. I didn’t explore things in the world but rather stayed within what were deemed safe margins. Now, I want color in my life. Not just my dishes and my walls, but my entire life. I am still rational and sensible, but I want to explore new ideas, new places, and new people. I want my life to be truly vibrant.

Sometimes examining the deeper roots of our jealousy can be very telling. It might seem like we are coveting someone else’s new sports car or their fancy house or their promotion, but perhaps there are deeper issues underneath the jealousy that we need to explore. Once we identify the true source of our jealousy, it becomes easier to work on the problem and create a situation in our own lives that helps us reduce our jealousy towards others.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

When I was in high school, one of the guys whom I hung out with had an inferiority complex around women and intelligence. Any time we took a standardized test, he would come to me and proudly boast his results. I would smile and congratulate him and try to shift the conversation. It never worked. He always forced the issue to a head by wanting to know what my score was on the same standardized test. Every time, without fail, my score was significantly higher even though I was almost two years younger than him and, heaven forbid, a female. He would always get a crushed and frustrated look on his face that once again, a girl had beaten him. Hence, I tried to avoid the topic of testing or grades whenever possible.

As I’ve grown up, I’ve found that there are still many men who are made uncomfortable by intelligent women. One of the quickest ways to scare off a large number of men on a dating site is to tell them that you are a woman with a Ph.D. Other female friends with doctorates have experienced the same. There are men out there who are sapiosexuals, and these are the men I tend to seek out. They are attracted to women who are intelligent and not afraid to show it. Likewise, I am drawn to intelligent men. I want someone who can keep up with me in conversation and discussion. Both of the men whom I have been in love with had doctorates. That’s not to say I wouldn’t date a guy without an advanced degree or even a college degree at all, but I find intelligence incredibly attractive, and I want a partner who feels the same.

Last night, I was watching The Bachelor in Paradise (and yes, you may question my intelligence for doing so!). The Bachelor franchise is my only “reality” television indulgence. This season, there is a man named Joe Bailey who was also on the last season of The Bachelorette. I had a hard time understanding why Kaitlyn Bristowe, the bachelorette, was so attracted to him. To me, he was playing up the stereotype of a Kentucky hillbilly, right down to bringing a bottle of moonshine along with him to give to Bristowe. She really seemed to adore him, or at least making out with him. On Bachelor in Paradise, though, Bailey has demonstrated some very narcissistic tendencies as he emotionally manipulated one woman to advance in the “game” aspect of the reality show. When one of the other men on the show, J.J. Lane, a man who tends to get himself in trouble almost every time he opens his mouth, confronted Bailey about having deceived the woman in question, a very disjointed and pointless argument ensued. Along the way, Bailey insulted Lane by saying he has a sister who is more intelligent than Lane.

Whoa. Really? It’s the year 2015 and a man is going to insult another man on national television by implying that being dumber than a woman is a terrible thing? Things like this shock me, though they really shouldn’t given the number of insecure men I’ve met in my life who have been intimidated by my intelligence. However, I would hope by now that our society would understand that men and women are equal. Clearly our nation doesn’t completely comprehend this concept as women are still blamed for being raped by men, women are seen as being at fault for unwanted pregnancies even though it takes two to tango, and wages for women lag significantly behind. The fact that anyone could still generally assume that all women are less intelligent than all men is really a sad but telling state of affairs.

I have often felt sorry for my poor kids for the educational standards in our family. Even though my kids will only be the third generation of our family to go to college, they’ve got a precedent of a lot of doctorates in the family. Among my ex-husband’s and my siblings and their partners as well as us, there are six Ph.D.s, two M.D.s, one D.O., one terminal master’s and one terminal bachelor’s degree. Three of the Ph.D.s and both of the M.D.s are women. The one thing that my kids will never doubt is that women and men are both intelligent. We may have different innate areas where we are stronger and fields of study that we prefer, but women are not stupid, and insulting women’s intelligence is never acceptable.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

For years I have seen quotes and excerpts by Marianne Williamson on the web. I've always been captivated by the fluent poetic nature of her prose and her beautiful thoughts so wonderfully explained. As my mentor and I were discussing the nature of love a few weeks ago, I decided it was time for me to read some of Williamson's work once I finished off the other book I was reading at that time. I pulled Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power of Relationships off of my bookcase and proceeded to read 2/3 of it in the first sitting because it is such a smooth and easy read. The concepts contained within are deep and powerful, but Williamson explains them so clearly that it feels like reading a work of fiction.

Enchanted Love is a series of short essays, prayers and poems around finding a sacred romantic love. Along the way, Williiamson describes judgemental relationships that fall far short of a sacred ideal. She talks about sex, divorce, God, and the reflections of love on the greater world. Beneath all of her ideas are the concepts that we partner with others to work on our deepest wounds and that the love we exchange with each other is actually the love of the Divine. While strongly disagree with some of her discussions about gender in relationships, the majority of the book was powerful to read and contemplate.

As I read through the earlier part of the book, the part that discussed relationships done wrong, I saw my former marriage with my ex-husband very clearly in her words. We were judgmental of each other, we did not and in some cases could not support each other in the ways that each wanted to be supported, and we didn't help each other grow as individuals. The relationship was not one that could have ever achieved enchanted love status. Yet as I read through Williamson's statements about midlife, divorce, and sacred love, I very clearly saw the relationship I want to have with my next husband. If he hasn't read this book by the time we've met, I'm going to hand him my copy and say, "This! This is what I am looking for in a relationship!" 

I've already recommended this book to one friend as she works to heal wounds from a previous partner because I thought it would be very useful to her to understand the "why" of her relationship's demise. I also thought that the book coould greatly help her and her current partner grow in their relationship. I definitely expect to be recommending Enchanted Love to many others in the future.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

One of our society’s common reactions to difficulties, struggles, and challenges is for people to respond, “At least….” So if you have had your foot amputated, a friend might tell you, “At least you didn’t lose your whole leg.” If you are struggling with finding a job, you might be told, “At least you still have a roof over your head.” If you were emotionally and sexually abused during a bad marriage, you might get told, “At least he didn’t beat you.” If you are suffering from health problems, you will  very likely get the statement, “At least you don’t have cancer.” If you experienced the death of a baby, someone might respond, “At least you won’t have to raise a severely disabled child for the rest of your life.” (Yes, I did get the last two personally.)

On one hand, there’s an element of truth in these statements that could lead a person to issue gratitude for what they do have rather than what they do not have. However, all of the statements are judgmental and opinionated. They deem to know better than the struggling person what would be worse for that person. To me at the time of my daughter’s death, the prospect of raising a severely disabled child seemed far less daunting than facing a future with no child at all.

Furthermore, this method of comparative trials can be devastating for those who are suffering with the “at least” situation. You may be telling your friend that they are blessed that their child died rather than ending up severely disabled, but what about all those who are raising severely disabled children? What is their comfort in this situation? What if someone has been physically abused? What about all of those people who do have cancer or who have lost multiple limbs or who are homeless? What does the “at least” statement that puts them in the worst case scenario do for their self-esteem, their confidence, and their motivation as they wrestle with difficult challenges in life?

It also can seem that when someone creates purportedly worse scenarios, their examples actually downplay the suffering that people have endured. Trauma is trauma, and all of it is devastating to those who are undergoing it. While it might seem comforting to some to pretend there is a worse case scenario, the reality is that the person undergoing challenges doesn’t need to hear those comparisons. What they need to hear is support for them in their own struggles. They need to come to terms with what they are dealing with, not what someone else has endured. What they need is not to be unintentionally judged for not suffering enough to merit sympathy or empathy.

The reality is that every human on this planet endures challenges and issues throughout their lives. Each of us has our own struggles, and each of us handles them differently. There really is that there is no better or worse when it comes to suffering. The reality is that the challenges we all endure are just different. The differences may lie in the type of trauma, the severity of the trauma, and the response of the individuals to the traumas. All of the various elements create unique situations. Each of the people involved must work through these struggles on their own but hopefully with a lot of support of those around them. As we work through these traumas, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, our souls grow and change. In my belief system, these are the struggles we are each meant to face to help us become the best people that we can be.

One of the hardest comments I had to endure in my time of being homebound and mostly bedbound was the statement from clueless people that they would think their lives were challenging until they looked at mine and then realized how much worse it could be. (Yes, they said this to me directly.) These people made me into the the worst case “at least” scenario, and they used my suffering to bring themselves dysfunctional comfort about their own struggles. That doesn’t feel great when you are the one at the bottom of the heap. Rather than making such awkward and painful comments to those you know who are struggling, the best thing to say is “I’m sorry you are struggling.” Or grieving. Or hurting. Or fighting for your life. Whatever it is that the person is enduring that you wish they didn’t have to go through, tell them that you wish they weren’t undergoing such a difficult challenge. Then, if you really want to show your support, ask them what you can do to make their burdens lighter during their time of need. Those are the kind of friends people need when they are in crisis.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I frequently see blog posts singing the praises of being single. They often have a tone to them that if one spends enough time being single, one will learn to embrace it and love it. I don’t believe that’s always true.

I started dating my ex-husband when I was 14 years 8 months and a sophomore in high school. We were married right before I turned 20. For all practical purposes, until we separated four years ago, I had been in a relationship for the entirety of my adult life. While we dated long distance when we were in college before we married, there was still a commitment and there were frequent phone calls and emails. I lived with roommates in college and housemates in my first year of grad school, so I’d never really lived on my own as an adult either. Throughout my adult life, I’ve had many people express dismay to me about how I would regret not having that "alone time" as an adult in my twenties. Despite their arrogant and self-certain proclamations, it turns out they were wrong about me.

The reality of it all after three years of living on my own part-time (and living with my kids the other 50% of the time) is that I don’t really like being single and living alone. I am the type of person who prefers to be in a relationship. While the time to focus on just me and not on a relationship with a partner has been beneficial, the experience of being single and living alone as an adult is completely overrated for me. That doesn’t mean it’s not perfect for someone else. When we separated, my ex-husband was *very* excited to have his own house and his own living space without a partner to share it with. In his ideal scenario at that time, he wanted a romantic interest who didn’t want to actually live with him. We’re pretty much opposites in this regard.

My time alone has taught me that the truism is right that it is far better to be single than to be in a toxic relationship. I spent far too much of my metaphysical energy shielding against my ex-husband’s negativity when we lived together. Yet despite being grateful to no longer need to face that problem, there are other things I miss about living with a partner. Even though I am an introvert, I like having someone around whom I can talk to and bounce ideas off of. I enjoy eating with someone else rather than alone. I like cooking for my partner. I hate being the only mature adult in the house who can take care of problems that erupt. I’ve learned that I can deal with the roaches when they need to be relocated from the house even though I don’t like doing it. I’ve learned I can’t fix the garage door on my own when it decides to quit working (thank heavens for repair people!).

On a deeper level, I have always known that I am a self-sufficient person. I've always been self-confident about whom I am. I've never believed that I needed a man to make me a good person or even an acceptable person in society's eyes. The dysfuctional situation I grew up in as a child taught me quickly how to take care of myself, physically and emotionally, so I didn't need this alone time as an adult to learn those things, though I can understand why many people do. 


I am grateful that I didn’t end up in a relationship right after my marriage ended so that I could do a great deal of deep healing that most people never give themselves the time and opportunity to do. As a result, the partner whom I am looking for now is completely different than the one I thought I wanted four years ago. Yet despite the assertions of many others on the internet and in real life, the time I have spent alone has not taught me to love being single. It’s helped me confirm that I am a partnering type of person.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Conventional wisdom states that in order to have a happy marriage, you should marry your best friend. A Google search of that phrase turns up quite a few articles, studies and blog posts confirming this very notion. Yet I discovered the hard way that marrying one’s best friend is not a guaranteed way to a create a lifelong recipe for happiness. In my case, it led to disappointment and divorce.

My ex-husband and I began dating when I was very young: I was 14 years, 8 months and a sophomore in high school; he had just turned 17 and was a junior. We had been friends for the year prior, but then suddenly Cupid’s arrow hit us and we saw each other in a very different light. Our friendship blossomed into romance, our first and only romantic relationship for both of us until the time when we separated 22 years later. We both thought we had found our “forever” person.

After five plus of dating but before our wedding, I had the distinct thought that I was settling in my choice of marriage partner. My fiancé was a wonderful man: smart, caring, and loving. I knew he wouldn’t physical abuse me, and he would be a good provider. I was sure he would make a great dad, and that was very important to me. He was my best friend, yet I also knew that in marrying him, I was giving up any chance of having romance in my life. My ex was not a romantic person. I’m not an over-the-top romantic, but I am a woman who appreciates having her birthday acknowledged or occasionally having flowers or a new book given to her. I also knew that the passion between us was more than lacking at times. Yet when I looked at the whole picture of whom he was, I thought that sacrificing romance and passion was a small price to pay for marrying my best friend. It was, after all, what common advice dictated.

It turns out that wasn’t true. I needed romance and passion in my lifelong relationship with my partner. I needed friendship, to be certain, but I also needed more. I needed someone who would also cherish me as a woman. As the years passed, this need became more important rather than less, and I began to realize how much was actually missing from my marriage.

The time right after my ex-husband and I separated was the best our relationship had seen in a long time. We occasionally began talking on occasion, and we started to find our friendship again. What we came to realize was that we made far better friends than lovers. In the case of popular advice, our relationship was not the norm: marrying our best friend resulted in us also losing our best friend. Our relationship was better as a friendship rather than a romance. That doesn’t in any way deny the romantic feelings we had for each other. However, it does break with conventional wisdom.

A year after our divorce finalized, I am far happier as a divorced woman than I could ever have imagined. I never dreamed my marriage would end, but I am grateful it did. Staying in a relationship that was no longer even a friendship was not a healthy option for either of us.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

In this season’s most controversial issue on The Bachelorette, Kaitlyn Bristowe made an alcohol-induced decision to have sex with contestant Nick Viall. This was not a major surprise to the audience who had been watching Bristowe drool over Viall since he first joined the season during episode 4; the two looked ready to consummate their relationship from the start. The morning after the magical event, Bristowe began lamenting her decision nothing how guilty she felt. She realized that it was probably not a good decision on her part even if it was one made in passion. However, had Bristowe made the same decision outside of the show, I doubt she would have felt so much remorse. Her guilt was primarily arising from the fact that she was still dating many other men at the same time as she had sex with Nick; she felt guilty for having betrayed them by giving Nick special privileges. This guilt was rooted in a societally based belief system that sexual behavior should be monogamous.

All of us draw on social mores when it comes to our interpersonal behavior. In regards to sexual behavior, the rules become more complicated and more emotionally difficult. We are sexual beings from the time of our birth. Our families, our religions, and our society at large begin piling expectations, judgments, experiences and often abuse onto our experience of sexuality. These ideas and ideals about sexuality and sexual behavior become our sexual baggage before we have even begun to engage in intimate sexual relationships.

Some children are fortunate: they are raised in homes where bodies and sexuality are seen as normal, healthy parts of human life. Unfortunately, that is not the most common experience for most of us. We grow up in cultures and in families that shame sexuality and bodies. We’re taught at a young age that touching ourselves beyond necessary washing is sinful and something to be avoided. Many religious groups preach that masturbation is a terrible sin. Likewise, premarital sexuality or any sexual act outside of heterosexual married love is condemned. Children and teens hear this often growing up. It may not be on a daily basis and it may not be explicit, but these messages are made clear to us as children.

The damage of these messages we receive about sexuality as youth is greatly understated in our society. I’d argue that any religion that tries to dictate sexual behavior in its members is venturing into territory where it has potential to do a great deal of psychological harm. However, religions are allowed to define the appropriate sexual behavior of their members though most would judge that to be something a cult would do if the idea was taken out of context. These moral dictates of often conservative religions end up being very damaging for many of their members even once they begin to participate in sanctioned sexually intimate relationships.

Much of this damage doesn’t end up being discussed in our society. Sexual baggage is loaded with shame, and most of us shove it under our metaphorical rugs. We don’t want others to know our dirty secrets. We blame ourselves for having done things that our religions preach against even if we don’t agree with the religious perspective. We don’t have an objective view about our own sexuality because of the baggage we carry. When we get into relationships with others, even if they are heterosexual marriages blessed by our churches, we still bring our sexual baggage with us into the relationships. We’ve been told all our lives that our bodies and our sexuality is wrong, but now that we have a piece of paper and a blessing from a clergy member, suddenly we are supposed to be able to have healthy sexual relationships with our religiously sanctioned partners. Yet all that sexual shame we carry doesn’t magically go away during the marriage ceremony. It joins us on the honeymoon and beyond, one of the unwanted parts of our psychological dowries.

I speak from experience on this: I saw sexual baggage create major rifts in my former relationship for almost the entirety of the 22 years I was with my ex-husband. Midway through the relationship, I began to realize how much baggage I had, and I began working on it myself without the luxury of a therapist or coach to guide me. I made tremendous progress on my own, and when I began working on the issues with a therapist in later years, I found even more healing. The problem arose when my sexual healing enormously outpaced my ex-husband’s. Once we were in very different places with regard to our sexual baggage, our sexual relationship began to shatter, slowly but surely, ultimately contributing to the demise of our relationship.

The problem with sexual baggage is that it is so insidious. We are ashamed of it, and we hide it away deeply in our bodies. We avoid talking about it for fear that we will receive more judgment from those we turn to for help. Healing sexual traumas and burdens is not an easy path. However, once one is able to let go of that sexual baggage, one can find great happiness and pleasure in ways one never previously dreamed possible. Through Green Heart Guidance, I help clients release some of this sexual trauma, however and whenever they accumulated it. I work from a place of compassion having been a victim of sexual abuse and sexual harassment and someone who was raised in a conservative church that preached against natural sexual behavior. I know how hard it is to heal these wounds. I work from a place of non-judgment, encouraging clients to be themselves no matter whom that is. To promote healing, I often use energetic flower remedies, essential oils and crystals to help clients release the energy of sexual trauma that creates this baggage. When that stored energy is released, it can be much easier to work through the damage of the sexual traumas most of us have, and from there, healing is much closer than we ever believed possible. The work I do with clients can’t undo the past, but it can make for a much brighter future.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(*I use the gender neutral pronouns “ze” and “hir” in this post for further protection of the client mentioned. I look forward to the day when the MLA and other language authorities will designate an official third person singular neutral pronoun aside from “it.”)

In season 2, episode 18 of Star Trek: Voyager, an immortal being named Q arrives. This particular Q has been the bane of many Starfleet officers in the recent series for his antagonistic behavior towards humanity. In this episode, he is trying to convince Captain Janeway to not give asylum to another member of the Q continuum. Janeway proposes a deal to Q, who responds:

It says a great deal that a conniving and manipulative being such as Q is upheld for not being a liar. Truth-telling is a separate virtue than many of the other things Janeway accuses Q of being. In our society, liars are not well-respected for the most part. Perhaps this is because the Ninth Commandment in the Judeo-Christian tradition is “You shall not bear false testimony against your neighbor” which is translated to “You shall not lie” in more modern editions of Exodus. One could also argue that the Ninth Commandment arose because Jewish society already put such a strong emphasis on truth telling.

In my own life, I’d never realized how important the truth is to me until suddenly I was confronted by many lies. Throughout my relationship with my now-ex-husband there were many times that he neglected to tell me the full story about something. In our Catholic upbringing, this would be considered a sin of omission: failing to take the honorable path when one is clear on what that duty is. However, with our separation, my ex-husband’s behavior switched to sins of commission: knowing that an act is wrong but doing it anyway. In this case, he began intentionally telling me half-truths and lies (and felt completely justified in doing so). Suddenly I realized how vitally important honesty is to a relationship and how much I had valued his previous honesty now that it was gone. My respect for my ex-husband and my desire to maintain a friendship with him suddenly dissolved because I want and need my friends to be honest with me.

Personally speaking, I don’t lie. I’m not able to do it. Anyone who knows me well enough will even be able to tell clearly when I’m only telling half the story by my body language and my energy. I’ve been rightfully described on many occasions of being honest to a fault: if you don’t want to know the truth, then don’t ask me a question. I will gently tell you that yes, that dress does make your butt look large. I would never volunteer that kind of information to anyone but my closest friends without being asked, though!

Within my practice, this truth-telling is also vitally important to me. I have a great sense of honor in keeping my word. I believe confidentiality as vital to my relationships with my clients. I’ve noted in many places that the only reasons I will break confidentiality is if I am ordered to by a court of law or if there is a high risk to someone involved (such as calling Child Protective Services about an abused child). Recently, I had to break client confidentiality for just such a reason: the client was a danger to hirself* and/or others. My body was literally shaking when I spoke with the person to whom I referred the client and hir major issues. I was fighting back tears through it all, and afterward, I did cry. There was absolutely no question to me that I was doing the right thing in breaking confidentiality to get this person the help ze needs in a life-threatening situation. However, it was still devastating to me personally to have to break the confidentiality that person had placed in me. My word matters to me, and I recognize clearly that a person who doesn’t honor hir word is not trustworthy. I hope one day that the client will be able to understand why I did what I did for hir. For now, I know that getting hir help is far more important than me keeping hir secrets.

Even as large parts of our society are moving away from a religious based moral guidance system, lying remains a despicable trait in our society with good reasons. False promises fall into this category of lies. Balthasar Gracian has written, “A single lie destroys a whole reputation of integrity.” Lies are that powerful.  A person who tells the truth is seen as having a very redeeming quality and in turn is trustworthy as a person. This is the standard to which I hold myself.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Popular culture portrays psychics and intuitives in a number of different ways. Some of them accurately reflect my experiences as an intuitive to a certain extent: my perception, both sensory and extrasensory, leads me to deduce things about people that most would not be able to learn. Shows like Sherlock and The Mentalist explain part of my sensory perception of the world, though I certainly don’t function on the same level as these fictional characters. I cannot look at someone and tell that they have eaten ketchup manufactured in a certain province of China unlike the modern incarnation of Sherlock Holmes. In addition, unlike Patrick Jane and Sherlock Holmes, I can actually use extrasensory perception in addition to my highly attuned observational skills. Often it’s very difficult for me to tell which I’m using.

Patrick Jane is the title character in The Mentalist; he is adamantly against the possibility of true psychic perception having previous earned his living as a fraudulent psychic medium. However, he has incredibly powerful skills of observation which he uses to solve crimes. In one episode, Jane figures out that one of his male colleagues is sleeping with another one of his female colleagues based partially on the fact that the man is using the woman’s soap. While this might seem far fetched, I’ve been able to figure out similar things based on my heightened sense of smell. For instance, when my then-husband came home from work one day, I asked him where he had been. He responded that he’d been at work. I told him he went somewhere else that day, too. He told me no. Finally, after a few rounds of this, I told him that I could smell the other place on him and that it wasn’t a place he normally went to. At that point, he admitted that he had been to another office that day which he hadn’t wanted to tell me about. He wasn’t having an affair. He was just trying to keep some information away from me as part of a power/control move on his part. We still have periodic incidents, despite us being divorced, where I’m able to literally smell another story on him than the one he tells me.

At times, it’s less obvious to me when I am using sensory perception versus extrasensory perception. When I am observing the world, I don’t intentionally use one or the other most of the time. They’re an integrated part of my understanding of all that is around me. In one case, I determined that a friend in the group I socialized with was dating someone new and he hadn’t told the rest of us. When I related this to another mutual friend, he asked for my evidence. I gave him a list of things I’d observed including a particularly minute muscle movement that the guy in question had manifest in his neck and left shoulder. The mutual friend agreed with me that something was up with this guy, but he was convinced that there was no way that the things I had observed added up to a secret girlfriend. A few weeks later, the truth came out: Everything I’d deduced was true.

So was that muscle movement that I observed sensory or extrasensory perception? Likely it was both. I saw the movement with my eyes, but I also perceived a shift in his energy as the muscle movement happened. There was something beyond just a muscle movement. Yet I can’t easily explain to others when I experience an energy shift in someone. As an intuitive empath, I can feel people’s energy in conjunction with watching their actions and listening to the words, and the end result is often me ending up knowing more than I many people think I could possibly know.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

The people who don’t want me to heal are some of the most fascinating people for me to observe in my life but simultaneously one of the most difficult for me to experience. The closer I get to completely regaining my health, the more I see various individuals trying to deny my improvements. As with many challenges, the reactions of others towards my healing says more about them than about me. Their responses are not something that I take personally even though they seem to be directed toward me on a surface level.

There’s one group of people who refuse to allow me to heal because of their particular mindset. They continue to insist that I am highly incapacitated and am unable to do things that I am actually now able to do. While in the past my poor health limited my abilities, healing has allowed me to regain what I have lost. So even as I am attending events and participating in activities that I previously could not, these people around me continue to insist that I am not able to do so.

I’ve had to ask myself why these people won’t believe the evidence in front of them that I am healing. I’ve found a few different reasons. The first subgroup of people who refuse to believe that I am healing are others with chronic illnesses. For them, it is understandably frustrating that I am no longer sicker than they are. They see my progress and healing and outpacing their own recovery, and jealousy fills them. I used to be the one whom they would look at and say, “Thank heavens my health isn’t that bad!” Now that I have been able to heal in ways they haven’t, they can no longer console themselves by seeing me as beneath them. They are having to shift their world views because of my healing, and that’s too much for most of them to handle. Hence, they refuse to admit my life and health have changed.

The other subgroup who can’t accept my healing are those around me who have used my illness to define whom they are. They need me to be sick in order to be my caretaker, my hero, my healer. If am better, they no longer are needed in that same capacity, and therefore their self-definitions must change. This is simply too much for many people to handle. They’re set in their ways and roles. They don’t want to grow and change along with me. Unfortunately, that’s resulted in me having to leave some of these people behind as I move forward.

The last group is the most puzzling group to me. They are people who are very open-minded, very smart, and very important in my life. However, they’ve defined me as ill or disabled for so long that they have forgotten that I can change. They try to peg me into this role even when I’ve healed beyond it. I’ve been able to call many of these people out on their behavior toward me, and most of them are unaware they are even doing it. Once I’ve pointed out to them how they are treating me, most choose to evolve and allow me to be a healthy person.

My experiences in healing and recovery are one of the reasons I adamantly believe that individuals should not define themselves by their illness and/or disability. If their lives change in any way and they lose that part of their self-definition, it can be a huge challenge in living with whom they truly are. Fortunately my battle with Lyme and its associated troubles has forced me to figure out who I actually am. That person is not someone who is defined by the malleable parts of me including disability, and I refuse to allow others to define me in any similarly unhealthy way if they want to remain in a relationship with me. Were I to have defined myself through the illness that I experienced and if I had let others force me to believe that I couldn’t heal because of their personal needs for me to be ill, then my chances of recovery would have been close to nil. Instead, I was able to overcome a terrible uphill battle because I understood that I was not my illness. I am an amazing soul who had to face the challenge of a major illness in order to find my true self, but that illness is not whom I am at my core. All of us are much more than the challenges we face in life. 

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Before Lieutenant Commander Worf’s marriage to Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax on Deep Space Nine, the leading men undergo a four day Klingon equivalent of a bachelor party, the path to Kal’hayh. In true Klingon tradition, the ritual includes many trials to prepare the groom for marriage. After Worf breaks the news that they are about to begin a four day fast, Captain Sisko inquires:

Sisko: What are the other five trials?
Worf: Blood, sacrifice, pain, anguish, and death.
Doctor Bashir: Sounds like a marriage alright!

I’d beg to differ that all of marriage is as tortuous as that, but the process of divorcing certainly is painful. It’s a very difficult step. The majority of people getting married don’t think that they will want to get divorced in the future. Most of us believe we’ve found our happily ever afters, never expecting that one day we will be viewing our spouses with a “What was I thinking?” mentality.

In a recent post on LinkedIn, someone commented that having kids doesn’t impact the decision to divorce or the process very much. I very much disagree with that statement. Having kids definitely changed how we approached the divorce as much of what we did was in their best interest. My ex and I made decisions that we definitely would not have made if we didn’t have kids.

To start with, my ex-husband and I were separated but still living together for 15 months before he was able to move out. Only our closest friends knew about this. There were financial considerations involved that were related to the kids, and we weren’t sure when we would have the resources for him to be able to move out. It was definitely less than ideal, but as the house we were living in is big enough, it was manageable. We each had our own rooms. When I was “on duty” with the kids, he’d leave the house and go to work or a coffee shop or the movies. When he was “on duty” with the kids, I’d lock myself in my room and turn on the tv, pretending I wasn’t in the same building. We told the kids that we were no longer spending time together to help us fight less (true!). They could understand this, especially when we put it in the context of someone in their classrooms who was really annoying and whom they didn’t want to sit at a table with since they didn’t like that person very much. They understood that just staying away from someone you don’t get along with can be a very good solution.

After that initial in-house separation time had passed and we reached the point where he was going to be moving out, we went public with the separation, shocking many people who’d had their eyes closed to the reality of our relationship for a long time. The kids were not surprised as they knew we were in marriage therapy and were very unhappy. Our goal when my ex moved out was that he would find a rental within the neighborhood of our then-mutual house which I would be staying in. I wanted it to be on the same side of the major street in our neighborhood. What we ended up finding through word of mouth before it even went on the market was a house nine doors down from my house. The kids were able to easily walk back and forth between our two places for the two years that he lived there. I can’t tell you how much that helped the kids, knowing they could always go see the other parent by walking down the street. The arrangement eased a great deal of their stress about their parents divorcing. It was also incredibly convenient as we got used to the intricacies of the kids going back and forth between houses and forgetting homework, musical instruments, and most often, shoes! However, I can guarantee you that my ex would not have rented in that location if it weren’t for the kids. He would have picked something closer to his work and further from me.

As we worked through our divorce agreements, the kids were a HUGE part of the discussions. We had to figure out custody, medical agreements, finances, vacations, clothing, college, interactions with future romantic partners, visitation rights for grandparents, and more. We were able to do most of that with little strife as we agree 99% of the time about what is best for the kids. The finances were much trickier than the rest, but in general, the kids were a huge consideration in all of the negotiations.

Because there were kids involved, my ex and I were a lot more cautious about how we moved forward. We agreed that we would wait one year after he moved out to make certain that divorce was the right thing. However, after four months of him being in his rental, we both knew without a doubt that it was Over. Neither of us needed the full year to come to that conclusion. We let the kids know then that the marriage was definitely over though the legal divorce would be a while longer for financial reasons. Since they’d had four months of us living separately, they had realized how much better life was with two happy but separate parents. None of us questioned that it was for the best at that point. We all found the 60 day “cooling off” period required by Texas law after filing for divorce to be highly amusing as we’d already been separated for over three years at that point!

After two years and right before our divorce officially became final last summer, my ex-husband bought a new house of his own. Again, the kids completely determined which area of town he bought in. Our oldest kids had two high schools in the area they wanted to attend, and either was a possibility. When it became clear that one high school was the winner, my ex found a house that was districted to that high school. His new house is 3 miles and 8 minutes from my house. Again, this is not likely where he would have bought if the kids weren’t part of the consideration, but he loves the house and has several co-workers who live in the same neighborhood. We both appreciate that even though we have some distance between us, we’re still in the same basic area of town. Texas law says that parents can move up to two counties away from each other, but my ex and I both agreed to change that and limited our agreement to the four county area immediately surrounding Austin. Even then, neither of us has any desire to live more than about 15-30 minutes from the other while the kids are still in school because we don’t want the extra driving.

I have actually reached a point where I am considering leaving the Austin area, but because of the kids, I won’t be doing it for at least another six years. I’ve already told the kids that if I haven’t met someone who is tied to the Austin area, after they graduate from high school, I may be moving to another part of the country. I hate hot weather, I hate mountain juniper (aka cedar allergies), and I don’t have anyone besides my kids tying me to the Austin area. Because of the nature of my work, I can easily move to another side of the country without losing many clients. For now, though, I am staying here to be with my kids.

Finally, the biggest issue influenced by divorcing with kids is the constant communication. We truly co-parent; it’s not a fluffy meaningless term as it is in some divorces. We each have the kids about half of the time, but we both play a huge role in making all decisions for the kids. That means that it is rare that a day goes by that we don’t text each other, and we talk to each other several times per week. Even when he was on vacation with the kids recently, I texted him several times and talked to him twice about the health of the kids. This is what’s in the best interest of the children. As anyone who has gone through a breakup can tell you, it’s much harder to get over someone you deeply loved when you have to be around them or talking to them constantly. Our individual healing processes probably would have been faster if we hadn’t had to communicate so often. However, because it is in the best interest of the kids, we do talk frequently about them and their needs and scheduling for their lives. I can guarantee you that this would not be the case if the kids were not involved!

I can definitely see how in a case where parents aren’t focused on their children’s best interests that having kids might not affect the divorce in any way. I’ve seen some nasty divorces where the best interests of the kids really aren’t taken into consideration. I feel deeply for those kids, especially those whose parents end up using them as pawns in a power play situation. However, in the case of my divorce, that wasn’t an issue. We viewed our kids as very important people whose needs were a vital part of the divorce negotiations.

As we have moved forward after the decree was signed, my ex and I are truly co-parenting and working to make sure our kids’ needs are met the best we can. The relationship my ex-husband and I continue have is determined by what we do for our kids. We both agreed strongly that as much as possible, our kids shouldn’t have to pay for the fact that their parents divorced. Instead, we’ve worked hard to make sure that their quality of life has actually improved in many ways because of the divorce. As a result, the kids showed almost no stress or strife in the process of us divorcing. They’ve felt secure and loved by both parents through it all.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

On a recent afternoon, I curled up to watch The Best of Me, a Nicholas Sparks film from 2014. The movie was a good romance, though it wasn’t the best I’ve ever seen. At one point, however, a young woman asks an elderly gentleman about his late wife:

Amanda: How long were y’all married?
Tuck: We’re still married. We’re just on different schedules.

That line definitely tugged at my heartstrings. My paternal grandparents had been married for 57 years when my grandfather died; my grandmother lived for five years after that. During the majority of my life, my grandfather could not drive due to macular degeneration, a condition that can cause major vision impairment. Every year on their wedding anniversary, my grandfather would have my grandmother drive him to the grocery store so that he could buy her roses.

After my grandfather died, I knew how much my grandmother missed him even though I was living in another state. When their wedding anniversary occurred six months after his death, I decided to continue his tradition, and each year on their anniversary I sent her flowers with a note that I was remembering them both on their special day. Love did not end just because he had died. It just transformed. Every year on their birthdays, death days, and anniversary, I still remember them even though I can only send them energetic roses now.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC