Relational Well-Being
Listening to relationship in daily life
Your partner has been away for a long time.
You’ve missed them.
In the meanwhile, you’ve been going through one thing after another in their absence. Normally you would be chatting about your daily ups and downs with your partner day in and day out.
You love each other.
You have a habit of listening to each other.
It’s beautiful.
But it’s a long, busy trip. Your partner has not been available for constant contact.
And it’s fine. You understood. You adjusted. You noticed that you could handle things just fine, even without the frequent listening and reflections of your beloved.
But now, at long last, an opportunity: a phone call.
How have you been all this time?!
You both have the same question, but one of you will answer first.
Probably the one on the long, adventurous trip.
So many places, faces, missed flights and expenses, family dramas, you name it!
You want to know more.
You ask questions.
You get fresh new insights into this lovely human being.
And there is always another story.
And another.
And another.
There is also the story in your head, the one you're waiting to share.
You want to tell your beloved all that’s been happening with you during this time of diminished communication.
Perhaps not as exciting as overseas travel, yet - well, it’s your life, isn’t it?!
And now your partner is finally here to listen again. Not because they must. Because they want to, because that's what they do, because they love you.
Also, it's been quite a trip, and they are very tired.
You understand. You only give a few short updates.
Somewhere inside, is a sensation of lack. A childlike part wants to make protests about equal allotments of time. You are still holding something.
But you allow those sensations simply to live there. You have learned that the movements of love are not to be recorded and tabulated in a ledger.
You know that you will be together again soon.
Not tonight, but soon.
All those plane flights.
Your beloved wants to rest.
And you want your beloved to dream sweet dreams.
Goodnight, sweetheart.
It’s these kinds of little vignettes which are the daily practice of relational well-being.
At last week’s Grounded Connection open house, partners in breakout rooms talked about their relationship to creativity. One report that came back was about a “heady” creativity meeting the creativity of a landscaper, resulting in playfulness.
This too is relational well-being.
We also felt it in the large room, tracking the ripples between more than a dozen squares on the Zoom screen.
Yes, you can feel these things via Zoom!
Especially after the guided somatic attunements that begin each Grounded Connection call, a practice of Anytime Anywhere Awareness that participants also use in their daily life as a continual reset that restores breath, ease and clarity of mind.
A second open house is scheduled for July 8, 6pm EST. (It’s free)
To experience what it's like to build relationship on the ground of well-being in a community dedicated to cultivating embodied presence, register below.