I can do this because I’ve done it before…

If you’re like me, you often conveniently or accidentally forget how hard you’ve worked to make it through some of the rough times.

How you talk to yourself and what you think about yourself is extremely important. Your words and thoughts do affect you and your well-being.

It has been postured that talking to plants can help them grow. Imagine if you spoke to yourself in a way that would help you grow, what would that sound like? What would you say?

(To learn more about why talking to plants might be helpful, visit the following site: https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/does-talking-to-plants-help-them-grow)

So take some notes about your life, especially about the times you overcame what may have at the time seemed like insurmountable odds, write yourself a letter, document your successes and read it to yourself over and over again when you feel all is lost. Speak to yourself the way you would to a loved one.

Perks of being a counselor? Witnessing growth and change in others when I sit with them in therapy in that painfully uncomfortable space where their doubts and sorrows live, seeing what happens when they are fully validated and accepted for who they are without any judgment and are truly seen and heard. Then knowing that I can do exactly the same same for myself, sit with my own pain and sense of failure, have a loving dialogue with the hurt parts of myself, because while I am no better than anyone else, I am no less than them either and deserve to be loved, cherished and cared for.

Working together…

No, we’re not getting married or running for office. Lol!

The picture you see here is one of me and my ex-husband, walking down the aisle together as co-parents at our eldest daughter’s wedding this past December.

It took us a few years to get to this point, time I’m hoping many of you who are newly divorced will not waste on parenting against each other instead of with each other.

No, we’re not the perfect co-parents after our marriage ended as the picture above may insinuate. We are not nor will ever be perfect at co-parenting. However, we can learn to work together instead of expending energy working against each other.

I don’t know about you, but as I get older, I have less and less energy to spend on arguing and fighting with anyone, much less the father of my children.

Besides the personal health benefits of not being in a tug of war with your ex-partner/spouse, your children are the ones who benefit most from an amicable co-parenting situation.

And this is the key point here, that your children deserve to have two parents who work together to ensure the best outcome for each of their children despite possibly having their own personal, less than favorable thoughts and opinions of their ex-partner/spouse.

So learn from me. Don’t spend your time negating each other. Find a way to harmonize whatever time you have to co-parent with your ex-partner/spouse and find it in yourself to be the bigger person, if you have to, in order for your children to have peace of mind and heart that they are loved and taken care of by both of their primary caregivers.

A win-win situation for all.

**Disclaimer:

Please note that I recognize there are many situations in co-parenting where the other person is simply absent, non-cooperative, abusive, dangerous and manipulative. I am by no means stating that you have any control over how the other person is behaving nor that you should subject yourself and/or your children to abuse, danger and/or physical harm. Each situation and each family is unique. Please seek professional help if you feel you and/or your children are in danger.

Besides 911, I have provided other helpful phone numbers below.

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233

National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Anger isn’t always bad.

Anger gets a bad rep. Counselors, psychologists and just people in general have a hard time addressing anger at its core. Often times anger is dismissed and “underlying emotions” are addressed as the core emotions.

Sometimes it’s true that other core emotions such as fear, sadness, anxiety, and such are actually the root of the anger displayed. But this is not universally and always true. Sometimes anger is just anger. Pure, raw, powerful and full of energy.

Can we try to accept anger for what it is and instead of dismissing it, channel it into something productive and life changing? This is a challenge I want to put out there to you. Instead of dismissing the anger you feel, channel its awesome energy and power into something useful in your life and try to make a positive change using your anger as fuel for your transformation. Empower yourself by telling yourself it’s okay to feel anger as long as you use it for good instead of destroying yourself and your relationships with others. Stop believing you don’t have control over your ability to take charge of your feelings. Feel your feelings, all of them. Don’t label them as good or bad. Just feel. And take the energy each feeling produces and channel it in a meaningful way so that you can make a positive difference in your own life as well as the life of the community in which you live.

There is no such thing as a “bad” feeling. All feelings are valid and equal in their ability to be useful or destructive. You get to choose how you will use your feelings. YOU are the one in charge. Breathe. Observe. Think and reflect. And then…Carry on.

Lesson: Anger can be used as fuel to get you to where you want to be. It’s not about being destructive. It’s about being constructive with whatever you have and whatever you’re feeling at the moment. Believe me, I’m a counselor. I get angry and it pisses me off when my anger is negated or villianized. Being pissed off is life’s way of giving you a little shot of caffeine so you can get off your ass and do something different. Don’t be calm. Rage on and conquer your life!