Setting aside New Year’s resolutions that are physically health and nutrition related (admirable ones by the way), let me focus for a moment on stress-reducing resolutions. Most of our lives are bombarded with stress-inducing events, whether of our own or external origin. How one copes with stress is highly individual and notwithstanding the exaggerated expression, there are a bazillion articles, books, etc., that address this issue. I want to talk about just one of those in this post. “Don’t take it personally – he/she meant well”, or “He/she only has your best interest at heart”, or a similar statement. Uh huh. And that can be true. We can be on a path that isn’t necessarily good for us, be making poor decisions whether it’s something as mundane as trying a new hair color that really doesn’t work, or something like remaining in a dead-end, emotionally draining job because we don’t have the courage to take steps to change the situation. Those are the times when someone who genuinely cares should take a deep breath and venture hurting our feelings to offer good advice.

On the other hand, do you have friends and/or relatives who are so convinced that they know better than you what you need, what you should be, do? These are the people who breezily or perhaps passionately frequently start with the phrase, “I’m only telling you this for your own good…” Their rationale of course is that they mean well. Except that isn’t necessarily the case. There are people who are simply unable to refrain from meddling in other people’s lives. These same people are often control freaks, acknowledged or otherwise, and they can be breathtakingly oblivious as to how they come across. How do you deal with this? If you have one or more person in your life like this who causes you stress, then perhaps it is time to examine that relationship. If you can look at the person clearly (and you may need a third party to help you see it), and recognize that this is one of those individuals who simply likes to tell people what to do, then you can make a decision about that person. If this person needs to remain in your circle for whatever reason (and there can be complicated ones), then accept that as a fact, and allow their words to become “just noise”; that same kind of irritating noise that a buzzing mosquito makes. You may still need to “vent” about this person at times, and that’s okay. What I am talking about is no longer allowing their words to burrow into your mind where they can be like an emotional splinter. And yes, if you want to give a shot at trying to change one of these people, go for it, but I wouldn’t expend a great deal of emotional energy in doing so.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” is something we often say in a casual way, in casual circumstances – late for a meeting, forgot to send a timely email answer, pick a hundred things that we do to trigger this response. That’s usually a gesture of good manners, notwithstanding people who apologize to the point of being emotional doormats, but that’s not the focus of this post.

Let me say upfront that I don’t have a degree in counseling or psychology. I’ve lived long enough though to learn that most people struggle with giving an apology for a genuinely substantive matter. I’ve spoken words in anger and haste that were just flat wrong and hurtful. I bear unresolved anger from an incident or two in my life that I would like to have someone apologize for. I have no idea how many books and articles have been written about this subject, and I have a Facebook friend who finds all sort of posters with meaningful sayings about forgiveness and letting go of anger. That comes later in this post, but as a building block to that, one of the first difficulties is recognizing that you have done damage to someone. Perhaps it was on a very personal level, perhaps it was on a professional level, perhaps it was a social setting. At times it is easy to recognize – a hurt look, a project you let someone down on, a slight that embarrased someone. Now comes the other difficulty – acknowledging to yourself what you did. I don’t mean rationalizing it, I mean looking at it from the other point of view and seeing it for what it was. This is one where you may need help in talking to friends or other people to get another perspective. If the hurt party (parties) has expressed their anger and requested (more likely demanded) an apology, that usually sets the defensiveness and rationalization into play again. How often do we snap out/stammer out apologies while inwardly saying, “Fine, but it wasn’t really my fault”? There is no question that people can take offense where none was intended and that is another aspect of being human. Valuing a relationship, whether personal or professional, may lead you to one of those apologies that are in fact done solely for the sake of keeping peace.

The deep personal wounds though, the grievious errors on the professional side, the apology that forces you to openly acknowledge that you were at fault comes with the risk of exposure of your flaws. If you adhere to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (glossed over too quickly by many people), Belonging is an important one; a vital one to we humans. If you have committed an act that requires an apology of the magnitude that I am talking about here, then on some level you realize that you risk “not belonging”, or in the popular venacular, “being voted off the island”. This is at the core of why making those apologies is difficult – what if our action causes us to no longer belong to that person, that group? Make no mistake about it, that could be a consequence. If that does occur, how you handle it is most assuredly a different subject.

With that said, there are two other components to the type of apology that I am discussing. If you muster the courage to make the apology, that has to be accompanied by at least the genuine intent not to commit the same offense again. I say genuine intent because personal relationships and professional situations are different. Let us say that you made a business error that caused a project to fail. You understand what went wrong, you learn from it, and have the ability not to make that same mistake. You ask for a second chance and it is granted. On a personal level though, you may have a flaw that you can work on without necessarily overcoming it. Promising, “I’ll never do that again,” sounds good, but it doesn’t always work out that way.

The second component is whether or not the other person accepts your apology and forgives the action. As in the words of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “Ay, there’s the rub.” You’ve done your part, and the other party is not willing to let go. How dare he or she!, can be the reaction, either articulated or not. When that occurs, the barriers almost always go up again and can set yet another cycle of emotional responses into motion. Deep hurts cannot always be resolved and you may indeed, “no longer belong” with the individual or group, and as painful as that is, it too is a part of this human life.

This type of experience, personal and observed in others, is one of the reasons that I chose Living Forward, Looking Back as the basis for this blog. As I mentioned in a previous post, holidays can be times of reflection as well as celebration. If you owe someone an apology, or if you think someone owes you one, perhaps you should reach out.

I touch on this theme in my story, The First Step, if you want a fictional presentation of struggling with asking for understanding, if not out-and-out forgiveness.

“How do you develop your characters?”, is a question that I am often asked. They are essentially composites, although in some cases, a certain character may have several traits of a real individual. It is important to me for readers to be able to genuinely relate to the characters – even the minor ones. One of the themes of my latest novel, Irises to Ashes, is young Maggie Stewart’s intense desire to leave home and travel – not because of dark circumstances, but because of a yearning that she cannot explain in the early part of the novel. Her older sister is the most vocal in disapproval of Maggie’s wishes, and the rest of her family is unable to comprehend why their lives aren’t “good enough” for her. This conflict is something that many individuals who have left home have experienced. And that brings me to the subject of this post as we approach the holidays when, unfortunately, but truthfully, family strains can pop up and sometimes erupt.

Squabbles are commonplace within families – I can’t imagine a family that can’t count a number of them. Quarrels are different though – deeper and potentially hurtful with the possibility of escalating into a rift that can last for years and perhaps never be healed. I have several friends who are estranged from brothers, sisters, or parents. The cause of the rift may be clearly traceable to a specific event, but that is not always the case. At times, the telling is easy to follow and at times, it is obvious that the stated event was more likely a “straw that broke the camel’s back” scenario. In some situations, the individual telling the story appears not to know how the emotional wound occured, much less how to resolve it.

These kinds of issues can be complicated and despite what families are supposed to be about, let us honestly state that genuine ill will can be a reality. However, unless the situation is of that magnitude, the holidays can also be a time to reach out, or to accept a hand that is extended. Anger can soften over the years, words that were once spoken in haste or in younger days may be forgiven. Misunderstandings can be recognized as that rather than as intentionally inflicted pain. The special meaning of holidays can lead people to reflect, to feel the urge to reconcile. So, as this holiday season unfolds if you are in a place where there is a family rift, perhaps this could be the time to try and bridge the gap.

I will warn you that this is a teary type of post. It is becoming evident that a dear friend is losing her struggle with cancer. There is some hope, but it is not likely that she will make it and I will refrain from writing more beyond today. This tragedy is compounded because she is one of those who was a cancer survivor. She, her family, and friends, so many who love her had already gone through this, and in her way of gentleness and bravery, she had been a model of what you like to think that you would be under the same circumstances.

This blow, this impending loss is painful on many levels. The death of an elderly parent is something you prepare for, understanding that it is the natural order of things even as it leaves a hole in your heart. For those you love who are yet in the midst of a full live, you want to somehow reach out, to say, “No, this isn’t fair, it can’t be time.” In doing so, you want to alter the balance, to set things right. It is my deepest hope that I will write a post later and say, “Ah no, it did work out. That slim possibility came about, and all is well.” But if that does not occur, I want to take a moment here to remind everyone that there are people in our lives we care for and we forget to say it. We’re busy, they’re busy, we mean to… So today, please find someone that you’ve intended to reach out to and let them know that you’re thinking of them.