Last weekend I had a retreat with my women that I coach one on one. I like to call them my “Love Ladies”. Here is a picture of us at a beautiful apartment in the hottest area in NYC.

It was a weekend of celebration and appreciation. I envisioned them feeling abundant in love and life, and I created a weekend to help them feel that way. The scarcity with love thing is SO last century!

There were so many moments where it was reflected back to me that what I write about every week to you, my peeps, is the truth of what gets to the heart of finding love.

I have a follow up to a story that I had previously told you about Kathy, my client. She had a pretty big moment with her dad, and I wanted to tell you how that has made a difference in her love life.

Kathy is a daddy’s girl. She is 38, but still identifies herself that way, like so many of us. Ever since she was little, she placed her dad up on a pedestal. She was the apple of his eyes, and she knew it. As she got older, her dad would express his complaints about her mom and her brother to Kathy. Kathy felt like she would have to handle things with her mom and brother, or just keep her dad’s secrets about them. This felt heavy for Kathy, but she couldn’t express how heavy because this was something that she had decided to help her dad with when she was really young.

There were even moments where she would say to her mom, “Daddy told me this, did he tell you?” and she would say, “No he didn’t say anything”.  Over time, Kathy became frustrated. This had now been going on for years, but she didn’t want her dad to feel bad or blame him, because she felt the burden to help her dad in this way. The problem being unknowingly created by her dad was that it kept Kathy seeing her mom through her dad’s eyes instead of through hers. Because her dad would complain all the time about her mom, Kathy had decided when she was a little girl that she didn’t want to be like her mom.

Well, in our last conversation I told her that she needed to take her dad off the pedestal so that he can be human again. She needed to get vulnerable and tell him exactly what she FELT when he complained about her mom and brother. I told her that she couldn’t leave that conversation with her dad until her dad understood that this is painful for her and something that he could not do anymore. (I emphasized this because she had tried to talk with him a couple of times and he wasn’t really understanding her frustrations)

Also, know that when I told her to take her dad off a pedestal, I am not saying to not respect her dad. To the contrary, it merely means to see him as human instead of superhuman.

So, I told her to not leave that conversation until he got it, because she had to get vulnerable enough to really reveal what was in her heart to her dad, and that her dad’s response was merely a reflection of how vulnerable she was getting. I told her that she would know that she was getting truly vulnerable with him when SHE felt that he got why she was frustrated with him.

She took another shot at it, and was in tears in the conversation with her dad. He totally understood her, and she felt understood. Her dad even apologized for putting her in that position. He didn’t realize that she was taking it that way. This is very common. The way we see them and what they are doing to us usually lcan’t be understood until we reveal it.

Alright, so now to what shifted in her love life!

The guy she had been dating (this is the one she really, really liked and who had given her the “I just want to be friends” line) spoke with after she had talked with her dad. And suddenly she wasn’t impressed. Kathy said the conversation was dull, and there just wasn’t any chemistry. This was odd to her because she thought it was all there before.

Then she received a text message from a man that she had placed in the friend category. He texted “I was just thinking of you and wanted to send a text”. Suddenly, she starred at that text message and realized she DID have feelings for him.

I pointed out to her how weird it is that when you can release something with your parents, there is more clarity in your love life. She completely agreed, and was just amazed how different she saw the two men after having this conversation with her dad.

Lovework for you:

What ways are you not able to express yourself fully? Is it because you place your dad on a pedestal? Or do you feel your dad is weak and so it is hard for you to be with a man that is powerful because all of your insecurities come out?

Identify what boat you are in. If it feels like you are not in either, I promise you even if by 1%, you are in one of those. Once you have identified what boat you are in, either take your dad off the pedestal or if you see him as weak, find ways to see him as powerful. This will shift what you desire in love, and provide clarity!

As you read this I will be on a plane to Barbados with Hemal for my birthday!

I am one of those people that obnoxiously celebrates her birthday. I think birthdays are super important since it was the day on which you graced the world with your presence. THAT is worth celebrating.

In Love,