[JohnnyBravo]

This randomly popped up in my YouTube feed this morning, about "let go or be dragged." (It looks like there are a lot of videos about that concept, but I couldn't resist someone named The Functional Melancholic.) He puts a lot of different angles into 34 minutes, but the idea that people get stuck in the Bargaining phase struck me as the most interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAKG_LFOT1E

[Nas]

I like this take:
https://psyche.co/ideas/true-resilience-is-not-about-bouncing-back

Bold emphasis is mine:
“I find resilience talk cowardly. It makes pain tidy. It replaces responsibility with admiration. Praising endurance is easier than changing conditions…
The language we use matters. When we tell people to be resilient, we ask them to stay the same. When we talk about recovery, we invite change. One hides pain; the other honours it.…”

🎵 https://youtu.be/NRI5fDAtw5s?si=BhxwqM4tJqnuF4Po

[xyzcf]

This book is getting a lot of press:

Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage
Book by Belle Burden

It's as though the idea that a spouse leaves a good marriage and it is a complete surprise to the LBSer is something new...We all could have written this book, and it is uncanny, the "similarities"

Although I have not read it and I am not sure I will..I think from the little I know, it reaffirms that this happens and it truly has nothing to do with us.

Here is Oprah's interview with the author:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctXbYb8OdEk

[Nas]

https://deconstructingstigma.org/latest/language?utm_medium=email&utm_content=421122525&utm_source=hs_email
Came across this while researching something for a project and it may not resonate but I found the topic interesting -  in terms of "what's the whole story, really?"/labels don't account for individual circumstances - and it got me thinking about the ways people sometimes use terminology about themselves or others. Sometimes, unintentionally, we stop actually seeing ourselves or others clearly precisely because we think we see them clearly - I know that sounds daft. But I think our certainty about who a person is can become a blindness, and we've probably all done it - particularly in long marriages, we may get complacent and just create an emotional file: my spouse is this or that kind of person - as if people are 2D rather than humans with psychological depth that contain sides we just haven't yet seen...or haven't looked at, or haven't wanted to really see, which is a subtle difference. Reality is both objective and subjective, and sometimes to avoid discomfort, subjective (our interpretation) can take over in a way that blurs, like an emotional astigmatism.
I think there's a risk sometimes that labels can unintentionally freeze a moment in time, if that makes sense.  What we say about ourselves too - what might have been true at one time is not the whole story: "I am this thing" is different from "I'm experiencing this (present tense)" is different from "This is a pattern I'm actively working on (not passively waiting out)" is different from "I experienced something (past tense)"...


https://youtu.be/X2iHXlCShmY?si=8G3wfBY2tVkK92cj