Healing

Healing from avoidant attachment is not just gaining the ability to be in relationship, it's gaining the ability to be in relationship with someone you see as your true equal (no bullshitting here) and whom you do not have significant, inherent power over.

Martha’s not my child, I’d say, as if I was joking, as if my feelings weren’t hurt. I would say: She’s my roommate. Now I can say, she was not my child, but she was the first member of my family. Martha was my best friend and my witness. I had been on my own for so long, swimming upstream, and now I had a partner in it. There’s a bright line betwee... See more

Oh, and: healing from anxious attachment means learning to choose partners you see as your moral equal (i.e. just as much as you believe your intentions are good, pure and loving, you genuinely believe the same of the people you choose to date).

The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. #eagertolove

Mercy is a way to describe the mystery of forgiveness. More than a description of something God does now and then, it is who God is . According to Jesus, “Mercy is what pleases me, not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13, 12:7). The word is hesed in Hebrew, and it means steadfast, enduring, unbreakable love. Sometimes the word is translated as “lovingkindness... See more

We do not attain anything by our own holiness but by ten thousand surrenders to mercy. A lifetime of received forgiveness allows us to become mercy. Mercy becomes our energy, our meaning. Perhaps we are finally enlightened and free when we can both receive mercy and give it away—without payment or punishment.

And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life.

“Fearlessness is what love seeks,” Hannah Arendt wrote in her superb early work on love and loss. “Such fearlessness exists only in the complete calm that can no longer be shaken by events expected of the future… Hence the only valid tense is the present, the Now.”

The father wound will have you looking for validation and approval from almost everyone you meet.