Supportive Partner Stops Being Supportive

You are excited. You finally took the big step to pursue what you have been wanting to do for a long time. You are energized and feel yourself evolving in new directions. Although at times you are scared and feel uncertain you stay focused and start having success.

Then comes the clincher. Your partner, [...]

How to Strengthen Relationships

I was asked the other day if there was one thing I could recommend that would improve relationships.  I came  up with many little things that would have immediate positive effects. For instance treating the other  with kindness, showing appreciation and love, going away for a special weekend etc. Yet, I wanted to give [...]

Living Together

I read an interesting observation today stressing a big drawback of living together before marriage.  The reason given was  that  many people begin to live together before they have had a chance to experience what it is like to be independent. As a result they miss out on the growing up step of standing [...]

Rekindle Intimacy

Today I have a guest post which I wrote on my blog http://budurl.com/rekindle.  I am not sure if that makes it a guest blog; however, I very much wanted to share it.

The news that Tipper and Al Gore are separating after forty years of marriage has taken many by surprise.  They [...]

Hold on to Your Power

One of my mentors, Virginia Satir,  taught me something that has been useful to  me and everyone else I have shared it with.  She said “treat everything that comes at you from the outside as something with which to cope, and not as a way to define yourself.

How often do you hear yourself [...]

Challenge Yourself

In order to strengthen our personal foundation we have to be open to challenging ourselves.  I love to kayak and yesterday I paddled further than I ever had.  It was a beautiful peaceful  Memorial Day morning. What I realized was that so many times before I had said to myself: that is far enough, [...]

30 Day Challenge Good for Self-Growth

One of my mentors, Connie Ragen Green, has just presented a thirty day Power Blogging Challenge. That means making a blog entry daily until Jan. 7 when the challenge ends.  Not an easy assignment when it falls right during the holidays.

Yet many of us accomplish the most when we have a challenge.  I [...]

Menopause Challenges Relationships

Recently I was asked if I thought that menopause freed women up or caused trouble.  What a perceptive question since the answer is that both things happen.  It is not an either/or.

The most tumultuous time for women are the few years (anywhere from 2 to 10) prior to menopause  where most women experience [...]

Relationship Building: How to Create a WE

Most couples who are struggling with their relationship will say that the problem is communication. It looks like communication is the issue but the difficulty generally is more than words.  Indeed they are frustrated with their communication but beneath that struggle is the dilemma of not knowing how to create a sense of WE [...]

And The Walls Came Tumbling Down

An artist friend of mine is working on a series about walls going up when relationships end. I will be eager to see how she depicts that in her paintings. As we talked I said to her that so much of my work is helping people take down emotional walls that have been in [...]