Applying The Work to Family

During a recent event I spoke with Emily. She is a mother that just recently reunited with her husband after six and a half years of separation! It should have been a time for happiness, but Emily felt otherwise.

During her separation, Emily served as the single parent while her husband was away — mostly in Australia. Because of his absence, Emily felt pained by his inability to pay child support when Emily had asked. Furthermore, she resented him for being away while Emily had to be the only parent. That’s when she joined me onstage.

Emily told me, “I am angry at Jim [husband] because he hasn’t paid child support in six years.” The first thing I had to ask was something long-time followers of The Work know by now, “Is that true?” To which Emily replied, “no.” From there, we began to dig into what was truly at the core of the problem. We began to reveal what the truth was and what was merely Emily’s perception of the issue. At its core, Emily felt cheated and punished by her husband. “You owe me” was where she went to in her thoughts. But was it true? It’s like I told the audience,

“The Work is meditation. It’s, ‘My husband hasn’t paid child support. Is this true?’ So, the answer is either yes or no to those first two questions. From there, you need to find where your ‘no’ came from.”

And that’s what we did. We explored the situation and Emily began to see the positive in Jim’s efforts. They included not paying child support when Emily asked — so that he could spend all his money to fly and be with the family on an important weekend. Additionally, she revealed times where Jim actually went to great lengths to support his family. Since returning home, he has been a doting father — showing up to the kid’s events and volunteering to prepare meals for the family.

He was making the efforts to show contrition for his acts, but was Emily reciprocating the effort?

It turns out Emily realized she hasn’t been paying her “husband support.” We looked inside to see she still felt large amounts of resentment that projected out as she rejected his offers of family vacations, or even refusing to laugh at his jokes she found funny. So, we turned the issue around for Emily to look at another perspective. We looked at Emily this time. By the end of the session, Emily knew what she needed to work on with Jim and her family.

Think about it yourself. Do you feel like someone owes you in your life? If so, do what I told the audience that day: “I invite all of you to close your eyes and just speak out loud one at a time. How do you react when you think the thought; that family member or that person close to you, owes you?” Do The Work as well and see what you discover.

One other great moment of the session came when another audience member suggested creating a worksheet for every person she felt owed her. I thought this was an excellent idea! I’ll leave you with my response to her:

“Isn’t that a good idea? You know those people that owe you? Write a list of every person and then do inquiry like, ‘They owe me. Is it true?’ for each one and notice what comes up. You’re going to see a similar strain that runs through every inquiry that will wake you up in ways you cannot even imagine.”