superglue

We all show and experience love for one another differently. Part of my training means it's important for me to show my love to people by showing that I respect their thinking, and don't want to impose my needs on them as being more important than their needs.

I'm mainly terrified about losing people - not seeing them again, people dying, people moving away,  etc etc. So I always feel particularly pleased with myself when I manage to do any letting go - it's really important to me that I don't let my fear inhibit my respect for people to choose what's best for them. The not letting the fear outweigh the love. I suspect I will do reasonably well around my kids when they are ready to leave home, and I will simultaneously find it incredibly excruciatingly hard. I still have much to learn about really loving people the way they need to be loved, not the way I want to love them. The way I try it involves a lot of trust and risk - by not insisting on what _I_ want and instead encouraging people to get things right for themselves it means people can and do choose to walk away, to not turn up when I've put effort into an event, and generally to not do things the way I would do them ;) I suspect whatever ways we love people, we risk getting hurt, and my way is clearly no better than other people's ways.

As someone who is fiercely independent, I'm wary of coming across as clingy, but underneath that's all I want to do really - cling on desperately and apply superglue!! And sometimes, with my eagerness to respect people's decisions to get things right for themselves, I maybe over compensate, and don't show the degree of anxiety that I sometimes think people wish I would show. My "I trust you to get things right for yourself so if that means doing your own thing then that is ok" can come across as "I don't care if you stay or go, it's no skin off my nose." And yet, after, I am more in touch with how I'm hurting - the possibility of the loss. What if I have got it all wrong and the person doesn't realise that it's my best shot at loving them. And maybe it's not a reasonable attempt at love at all, but a defence mechanism - I don't want to be hurt again by someone going so I try to make out like it's no big deal. I don't know. But for now it's the best I can manage. And I'll keep working on that fear of loss so that I'm freed up to love as boldy, and as honestly as I can.