Dear Brooke,

Sincerely,
Greater Good

Dear Greater Good,

No warming up. No small talk. Let’s unpack this baby right frikin’ now.

Your if-it-didn’t-happen-exactly-the-way-it-did-or-you-wouldn’t-be-as-fabulous-as-you-are story… journey…process…was just described by you, little miss good-or-bust as “unfortunate” and “dirty”. OK…could anyone judge themselves more right now? I don’t think so. You need the biggest hug ever, and at the same time… a major ah-ha moment. So, let’s have it.

Seriously my love, who is really judging your past… your man? Nope…It’s you. You are judging your past so much that you are assuming that others will too. You were emotionally abused and coped with it in a way that many humans do…you did the best you could with what you had, and I’m proud of you. Yes, really. But now, you are emotionally abusing yourself. The truth is, once you accept, honor, and respect your past and your journey, so will everyone else.

I know you’re looking for answers…for me to tell you what to do. This actually isn’t about lying or telling the truth or the details or whatever… this is about something that goes way deeper than that. It seems to me that the reason you’re troubled by what to tell and what not to tell is you’re looking for some validation of your story. You want someone to say, “It’s OK, I love you regardless of what you did”. The truth is, my darling, you don’t love you regardless of what you did. You don’t love your past; you don’t respect the choices you made. You are justifying yourself all over the place… “approximately one month” “literally only a few” and right now, in this moment I want you to pause. Take a breath. And listen carefully…

One of the reasons you were able to realize how special this man is, and allow yourself to fall in love is because of your story, because of all the things you did and went through…simple and complicated. If you didn’t do things that felt wrong, how the heck would you know what feels right? It’s time to thank your story. It’s time to celebrate your past. It’s time to love yourself not only regardless of your past, but because of it. Yes, really.

The thing about your story is that it’s well, yours…and it’s important to treat it with care, and big time love. You get to decide what to do with it, where to put it, where not to put it. Your story is a precious gem, a true gift that this life has given you to become your best self. Your story is about a woman who has journeyed through crap relationships and come out alive…a woman who has made decisions that seemed perfect at the time, and learned from all of them…a woman who has a juicy rich beautiful past that made her one strong and capable cookie…a story that is only hers to judge.

I invite you to be proud of your story… especially the parts that you aren’t proud of. Once you embrace this, you’ll know exactly who to tell and how much to share.

Love love love LOVE,

The thing about doing what you love is that you really should. Like really, really. And should is my least favorite word. But I’m shoulding. It just feels right in this context. Go with it.

Yes. Do what you love. Not so simple, I realize. But what other option do you have? Joy and passion… those are sustainable. Discomfort and dissatisfaction… ugh, that stuff is like poison. So, in an effort to begin a “do what you love or bust” revolution… I decided to step up to the plate. Here I go…

I love getting on my soapbox. It’s true. I love writing to you, for you, with you…I frikin’ love it. I love wondering who is being affected by which post? Who is getting curious about themselves? Who is growing? I love every part of this. I could cry of joy. Seriously.

I also love helping in person. I love creating a relationship with a beautiful human being and seeing them grow and fall in love with themselves and become the person they want and hope to be… right before my very eyes.

That being said… I’m so excited to announce that beginning today, September 1, 2009 I am officially taking private practice clients! Certain times of the week I will step off the box and onto the couch in my cute office in San Francisco. Life is good.

A little about the way I work…on the couch. I integrate as many different theories and ideas as there are different people in the world. Everything works for someone, but no one thing works for everyone. Get it? I see everyone who walks in my office as a separate amazing complex human being with light and fabulousness inside… even if they don’t. Yet. And the most important voice in the room is the quiet one coming from inside of the person sitting across from me…

I love Carl Jung, feel very strongly about humanistic psychology, and connect to relational therapy as well as self-psychology (Oh, the fun you’ll have on Google today…) My specialty: Working with, treating, and strengthening relationships of all kinds…including the relationship you have to yourself. Love it.

So… to begin this exciting venture I am introducing a group called “The Meaning Of Wife” The group is for women in romantic relationships of all stages… single and contemplating commitment, serious or engaged and considering marriage, married and discovering an expanded identity, recently divorced and reflecting on a new chapter in life…just to name a few. This group is going to be small and deeply supportive–a wonderful way for women to explore both their relationships and themselves.

Oh, and it’s 12 sessions. Wednesday nights from 6-7:30pm. Starting September 23, 2009.

My darling readers… please consider this group for your friends, family, or co-workers in San Francisco, Oakland, Marin County, or anywhere in the Bay Area! Pass along the information about the group, the blog, and and and… and tell them to contact me! Questions, concerns, pricing… just call.

I want the group to be small and intimate…so it will fill up fast. Thank you. You are my starlets! My private practice line is 415.294.4044.

And that’s the thing about doing what you love.

Love,

Dear Brooke,

Bipolar disaster lover.

Oh my darling dearest Bipolar-disaster-lover,

Here’s the deal. First of all, you are officially validated for “no longer putting up with BS and giving up the enabling”. That being said, let’s talk about patterns.

We all have patterns. In love-in life-in everything in between. Some patterns are fabulous and work well for us…and some don’t. Our patterns in love stick around until we either give up and settle, get so hurt we wake up and change, or reach out and ask for help because we feel in our gut that something is just not right. You are stuck in a pattern of being with people who are not healthy (this guy…not healthy) so I’m glad you asked for some guidance…but just because you’re asking, doesn’t mean it’s going be easy to hear the answer.

My first question is: do you really want to change? Do you really want a better, healthier, more mature relationship? Because you say it well and you say it proud, but the truth is you, honey child, are just saying it. I know love, I know. But it’s true. It sounds good, it sounds noble, it sounds healthy…but it’s just talk. Let me explain…

One of my favorite questions to ask in therapy is “Has it traveled through your neck?” This means, you’re thinking good thoughts in your head, you are definitely smart enough to really understand that you want to find a good healthy partner who doesn’t have an alcohol problem and isn’t abusive to your person-hood. But these amazing ideas, these perfect understandings are stuck in that head of yours… they haven’t traveled through your neck; they haven’t touched your heart. You are intellectualizing love, you are thinking, not feeling. But there is a reason for that…low self-esteem. Same reason you “ignored” and “suppressed” in therapy in the past. Your heart doesn’t think it deserves these good juicy thoughts.

So imagine this… there is this gorgeous ball of gold goodness in your heart but it’s surrounded by yuck. It’s caked with past hurt, family ick, and experiences you would rather forget. There is literally a film of low self-esteem covering up your inner gold! The low self-esteem does everything in its power to make sure that “I want and deserve a good healthy fabulous person to share my life with” never gets through to your heart. It’s like the ideas are one side of a magnet and the self esteem is the other… they just can’t get close… one keeps the other away.

A challenge from me to you… or maybe, a gift: Work on building your self esteem. This is going to take a ton of work and commitment. Chip away at that gunk on your heart and reveal that inner ball of gorgeous gold that you and every other human has inside. You are a smart, strong, proud Latino man who anyone would be lucky to be with…so start acting like it! Have you ever seen an extremely confident person allow themselves to be treated the way you got treated last weekend? Um, I don’t think so. Do you deserve a delicious fantastic human being as a partner? Of course you do. Are you a delicious fantastic human being? Of course you are… if you want to be. If you choose to be. So choose.

The thing about low self esteem is that when it’s loud and present, and we aren’t truly madly deeply ready to work on it, we unconsciously seek out partners who will help us out in keeping our self esteem exactly where it is. Low. If we’re not ready to change, we’re not going to find someone who will push us. We like to be comfortable. Period.

Patterns are hard to break. It’s uncomfortable As soon as you’re ready though, as soon as you believe you are lovable and truly deserve happiness you will find someone who is kind, smart, funny and who doesn’t abuse substances or people. Then you will most likely feel a little… bored. Where’s the drama? Where are the games and the making me feel like crap? But hold tight… that’s just growing pains… your patterns are changing. Congratulations.

Love love love,