Loving the Ones Who Challenge Us

After a beautiful meditation on Sunday during my live session we had time for questions. One question came up that is certainly something that affects most of us, especially at this time of year.

How do I love and be with family who challenge me?

While this is a challenge for anyone who isn’t easy to be with it’s particularly hard for family members especially ones who raised you.

I wanted to share a further reflection here.

First, and always first, we must have compassion for ourselves for even having a hard time. You see triggers are tricky business and try as we might to be kind and at ease some people are so good at pressing them. It’s not your job to be perfect and to be “good”, whatever that is, all the time.

But in that same vein is the fact that it isn’t their job to be the perfect version of themselves you had in your mind. We often compare our parents, family and partners to some ideal that doesnt really exist. Who told us that we would have models of absolute love and grace at all times? Nobody did. It is time to free those people to be who they are and let them play the role in your life that they were meant to.

If you imagine your soul, before you chose to incarnate, was writing a script for you to experience and each person came with areas that would feel easy and areas that would feel challenging to feel loved in, you might have some deeper understanding about these complicated figures.

Most of the time, these people aren’t trying to hurt you (even if they think they are) they are trying to control their own inner hurt and freely live as they are.

But sometimes its hard to accept this because it feels like settling. Like somehow you are saying that was enough, when sometimes it wasn’t even close. And if you stopped here, it might be settling.

However, the next stage of this process, after accepting, is to realize that you have desires born in to this situation from the difficulty.

Look at those desires, maybe its for more love, deeper acceptance or support. Don’t deny yourself those desires just because a relative cant hold them for you. Realize for whatever reason that wasnt their role in your story but that those desires exists realized in the universe.

If you meditate upon the feelings you wish were in that dynamic and you start to create a pathway in your mind toward them, you will start to heal as well as become the version of you that was loved in that way.

As this happens you will free them to be accepted as they are and yourself from needing someone who cant give what you ask for.

Remember, the way someone treats you is not a reflection of your value, as much as your mind jumps to thinking so, its usually a reflection of someone else’s’ value of themselves. How you experience them is, however, a reflection of where you close the door on self love and experiences of your worth.

Its important to note, that boundaries and showing up in a way that feels right to you is inherent in this path. As we love ourselves and connect to our own healing, we must listen to our intuitive response on how to engage in relationship with anyone. Loving someone does not look like people pleasing, it looks like seeing their value and your own while not shutting down your natural impulses to be who you want to be.

Loving someone where they are does not mean we can’t change our dynamic with them, it often means we must. But the new dynamic will be the most authentic expression of who you are, and that is true self love. It’s not about blocking them, its about being you. You do have that right. You do have this ability.

So I encourage you to take this in to account and practice before entering a space with someone. Sit down and feel into the desires you have for the dynamic and give yourself a small experience of what you would feel and be like. As you do, release that person from your need and see who they are and how they might have gotten to where they’re at. Then when present with them, try to hold that feeling. And if you cant, just come back to the breath and be in your body. Your safe in the present moment.

If you would like to join in the second installation of the live meditation, send me an email and I will get the information to you.

In Love