Learning to love ourselves with compassion is vital to all relationships, both personal and professional. The work is, perhaps, especially important for caregivers—parents, teachers, doctors, nurses, therapists, and others—for caregivers can only give care to the extent that they know how to love and care for themselves. The practices of Love, Loss, and Forgiveness are also vital for men and women in the business world, where the bottom line receives far more attention than soul and spirit.
People choose to participate in the practices of Love, Loss, and Forgiveness for many reasons. Participants have come to the program with questions and thoughts like these:
“I never had the words nor took the opportunity to say what I wanted to say to my alcoholic mother before swhe died. I’ve been in therapy but continue to grieve and blame myself—how do I make peace with her, and myself, now that she’s gone?”
“When I was young, I was always told to put others first. I don’t seem to have any time for myself because of all I have to do. I’ve read that the greatest gift my husband and I could give our children is to love ourselves and each other, but how do we start?”
“I have never been close to my siblings. In fact, I was glad to get away from our miserable family when I left for college. Now I’m really struggling with my teenage children, and I don’t know how to make our family life different.”
“My parents are getting old. I feel responsible for their care now, and I’m really worried about the future, when they become unable to manage for themselves. We’ve never talked about dying, or much of anything else that’s personal. I don’t know if I should get into it, or how to begin.”
The practices of Love, Loss, and Forgiveness are as simple, practical, and down-to-earth as they are lifechanging, for when we learn to love, the answers to the questions above become apparent to us. Through this work, it is possible to discover opportunities for positive transformations that are available to us when
we attend to and let go of painful experiences.
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