During a recent girls' evening out, all the conversations among the women started like this: "My son told me I'm
the worst mother ever." "My son-in-law told me I was ridiculous." "My best friend kicked me to the curb right after I started a business that she invited me into." "My daughter so
hated the gifts I bought her and her family last year that she told me never to buy any of them gifts again." When those
you love hurt you so deeply over their disrespect that it literally derails your life--knocks you off your feet for awhile--it's okay to feel the anger and the disappointment. When your journey is
significantly wounded and impacted by someone you loved and trusted, it's okay to feel the feelings. But then you need to let it go. Making a cognitive effort to release the negativity or hurt,
sorrow or grief, doesn't mean you  accept what circumstances are coming your way—it simply means you are
giving yourself permission to cease being the target or the victim of those conditions one more day. You don't have to make it your job to endure another's lack of respect toward you. In
A New Earth, author Tolle says that sometimes you may have to take practical steps to protect yourself from deeply unconscious people, and that accepting things as they are and
letting them go will strengthen you. If someone disrespects you and there are rules and boundaries you must set up and maintain, know that you are worth having those boundaries.
Elizabeth Lesser, in Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow, reiterates that it is how we are, even more than what we say, that's
significant. If we know we're not the worst mother ever or if we know we're not the ridiculous person someone says we are, why give the people who said those things one more
thought? When your best friend or your daughter try to kick you to the curb and you know the issues at
hand are their issues, dust yourself off and get back up. When you know who you are in the face of their lie, you don't need to waste any more energy or words on them.
None of us can say that we've always been successful in responding properly to others who hurt us, but if
we realize that other people usually don't recognize in themselves the things they don't like about us, we
shouldn't feel a need to get caught up in their smallness. You can love someone and not dance their dance--dance your own dance without them!
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June's MONTHLY MANTRA: