Healing the World Thru the Majesty of Nurture

I know, I know, I know,  I have not written an entry in many days.  I love all the emails I have gotten,  with people asking about what is going on and missing me and my musings. Thank you. I have not written because my experience since the last entry has been incredibly emotional on many levels; Personally and Professionally. I have been working extremely hard and felt very alone on a personal level.

In summary,  last Shabbat, I attended the Reconstructionist Minyan.  To say the least I was one happy Jew. I was in the land of "My People"  and truly being with "My People",  I am a very happy Reconstructionist. During Mariv, we chanted, a Shefa Gold chant which clearly spoke to my life. 

Healing the World Thru the Majesty of Nurture-as tears silently fell on my cheeks I realized this is all I can offer to my loved ones and to the world. The love,understanding, and energy I have to give to others; my ability to nurture humans and ideas, is majestic and is my primary resource for healing and change. 

Today, Thursday, I was the Keynote speaker at the 40th Anniversary Conference of Shiluv, one of the first Family Therapy Institutes, in Israel.  The title of  my talk was: Creating Refuge in Ourselves and Our Families.  As I wrote the, talk..........at this moment all of my friends and colleagues are saying, you don't write talks, you have never written down one of your talks............Correct, I did not write my speech......... so as I organically experienced my ideas and intentions of the talk, I realized that  Creating Refuge is about creating a place of healing, soothing, which is what we all search for and what we work toward providing as therapists.  We create the refuge within our spirits and the spirits of others, and then healing and change may emerge.  So it began to come together,  Creating Refuge and Healing does come through the majesty of nurture. 

Which then took me wondering what is nurture? How do I define nurture? How do I practice nurture?  How do I teach nurture?  How do I provide nurture? How do I nurture my own heart and soul while trying to nurture others? Healing the world and relationships is a complex endeavor; an extremely delicate balance of giving and receiving.  Giving and receiving of ideas, of love, of conflict.  Can we nurture all of this to promote change?  Some days I do better than others,  some relationships I do better than others.  I have been so filled with these ideas in the last few days, I have been overwhelmed into stillness. 

In this stillness, I have felt great pain about my failures in nurturing and have seen light, that I will continue to move toward, to keep my heart and brain focused on the Healing Nature of Nurture. I wonder can I really nurture anyone if I don't know how to nurture my own spirit.

So as you can see I have had some interesting thoughts.  On top of all this thinking, feeling and writing.  I have seen between 2-4 families a day, and providing training based on the work I have done with the families.  I am also working closely with Encounter.  A wonderful organization in Israel, working to transform conflict between Israelis and the Palestinians through face to face connection.  For the next month I will be working in Bethlehem a couple of days a week. I also began a paper, with the working title: "The Greening of Therapists: Sustainable Care for Caregivers"  Another entry into my thoughts of Healing and Nurture.

I am off for a weekend of Nature and Nurture.  Meditation and Hiking in the Galilee. I hope I return with a renewed sense of what it means to truly nurture others, to love and care for others, while loving and caring for myself.  And with a renewed clarity, of the Present.