Writing Group Topic: Emotional Independence

A very timely topic for me, this. I don’t have a marriage relationship to look into but my visit to Austria in a few weeks’ time looms heavily on the horizon and I know there will be many days when I need to retain (or reclaim?) my emotional independence. In our family, we didn’t argue.…

Writing Group Topic: My right to do badly

I have a right not to do well: this is something I need to remind myself of because it’s a revolutionary concept to my way of thinking. For me, it’s not that I have to keep anyone else in check to see that they are respecting my rights – it’s myself who is taking those…

Adult Child of an Alcoholic

I suspect I could be an “Adult Child of an Alcoholic”… this is a new concept to me that I had never thought applied to me, before. I mean, obviously I am the daughter of an alcoholic, but the term “Adult Child” implies something about stunted growth, a child that hasn’t grown up except physically,…

Writing Group Topic: Emotional Sobriety

Emotional sobriety isn’t something I tend to think of as being a problem for me. That is to say: I am sober of emotions, period. However, I would argue that this isn’t altogether a good thing! To what degree that is simply a stoic personality and to what degree I am suppressing or just not…

I choose my attitudes

I choose my attitudes. That is so true – but I’m not always aware that I have that option. I am getting more aware of it more often, though! This week there was a great example of this. I had to go to Birmingham for a week of studies. It’s about 2 hours 10 minutes…

The unexciting life

Somebody recently shared the saying, “carry water – chop wood”, meaning that we continue to do the boring stuff of life, that we can’t stop doing the basics. I’d never heard the phrase before but it got me thinking. I tend to expect some sort of excitement even from the most basic of tasks… or…

Topic: Getting out of isolation

Isolation. Am I an isolator? I think I didn’t have that tendency, growing up, but I became one. When I was a child, and in my teenage years, I thrived on being around people. I was open – I found it easy to speak to strangers and make friends. In fact, in my teens, as…

Writing Group Topic: I am responsible for my thoughts

This is something I’ve been aware of for a long time. I’m not responsible for the thoughts that enter my head, but I am responsible for which ones I choose to entertain there – that’s just a different way of saying what I learned in church, that I’m not responsible for being tempted but for…

Writing Group topic: the insanity / psychology of binge eating

This is the part of the book that I get. I’m totally there. These things are so obvious to me, and yet, I needed to be told – because I wasn’t smart enough to figure them out myself, but once I was told, everything clicked into place. I can’t think myself into right thinking because…

Living calmly and efficiently

I had an interesting experience a few weeks ago, my boss asked me to come to a meeting with a VIP: a lunch meeting. This person is highly important to our entire organization, and the Directors are very, very careful in their relationship with him. So the fact that my boss wanted me to come…