“All appears to change when we change.”
Feb 11th, 2008 by Jill
“All appears to change when we change.” — Henri Amiel
I didn’t always know Kathy the way I know her now. In the second half of our interview at Continuing the Stepparenting Journey, I told Karon that Kathy is “flexible, warm, open, willing to keep showing up and trying, and willing to start over and over again” and that I loved her, and Karon suggested jokingly that maybe we could clone Kathy. The thing is, I didn’t always know that I had this treasure in Kathy.
There was a time — when we were both deep in protection mode — when I saw her as unreasonable and unpredictable and when I was scared of the havoc she could wreck — and that sometimes I thought she was wrecking. The funny thing about going into protection mode — whether we’re protecting kids, ourselves, our homes, our reputations, our partners, our boundaries, our feelings, our money or anything else — is that it’s one tiny step from good guy/bad guy mode. And going into good guy/bad guy mode is about as effective as trying to drive on the freeway while looking through fun-house mirror goggles. We can’t really, truly see the territory or the other people anymore, and the potential for doing damage — without realizing that our perception is leading us to steer in ways that can cause accidents — is huge.
It took me the longest time to figure out that I even had these goggles on. I’m so sorry.
