Friendship & Deep Relationships are Vital on Our Path to Healing

Today is a good moment to share a few essentials of living a full, healthy life. 

Caring for our bodies is number one on the list of living a full, healthy life. This can take many forms as we move through our life changes, changing careers, starting a family or even moving to another country.

I have spoken about how we change during life’s different ages or stages, especially how we keep our passion and sexuality alive. When we are younger, just starting out in our adult lives, our physical bodies feel indestructible. We assume our effortless, pain-free life will continue indefinitely, with no upkeep needed.

Then, as we enter the next phases of our lives, we begin to notice a few aches and pains creeping in. It slowly dawns on us that the effortless health and well-being we took for granted may have been temporary.

At some point, we discover pains that don’t go away!

Those pains may be the faint beginnings of knee pain, which is what happened to me. Thankfully, that pain never stopped me from doing the many activities I love, like swimming in the Pacific Ocean or taking incredible, long hikes.

I never stopped enjoying horseback rides in the Rocky Mountains and rafting down exhilarating rivers either. But now, fast forward to today, and I find that the padding in my knees has worn away.

The time has come for me, perhaps many of us, to have our knees, hips, or other parts repaired.

And for me, going into the medical system was frightening at first. Like when I had to have my heart scanned before my knee surgery. I was frightened because I thought they might find something wrong with my heart that I didn’t know about!

They didn’t find anything, and I found out my heart is in excellent condition – the next day! That news was a huge relief and made my day. But I was frightened as I waited 24 hours to get that news.

After that, I was more relaxed and felt safe again as my faith in the doctors began to return. I had to go through all this to remember that medicine is advancing rapidly, and I have a very good doctor and a good hospital.

I wanted to share this story as I’m sure many of you may have similar experiences in the future if you haven’t already.

I encourage you to ask lots of questions and learn enough to relax and feel safe with your doctors. Keep going until you feel confident that your health is a top priority to your healthcare team.

Once we can all be calm and ask our doctors our questions, we will start discovering more about the medical miracles that are happening regularly these days.

We live in auspicious times! Medical breakthroughs are happening all around us.

Like my dearest friend, former husband, and current (and always) beloved Charles, who had a near-death sentence from lung cancer. He never felt that was meant to be his fate, so he kept asking questions.

In asking around, he found an immunotherapy program at Stanford University. And now, here he is, a year and a half later – robust, healthy, and without cancer. Incredible miracles are available these days, but usually, the patient needs to be proactive to discover them.

Conversations with your body can calm your fears after a scary diagnosis.

When our doctor says cancer, we become terrified. However, one helpful thing we can always do to eliminate the fear is to have conversations with our affected body parts. Have a conversation with your knees, hips, breasts, or prostate, and express gratitude to those hard-working organs and joints.

That gratitude in your heart will immediately push out all the fear, leaving you feeling grateful and peaceful.

Speak to yourself silently, internally. You can say to your breast or knee, “I love you. I’m so grateful for you and all the important body functions you are supporting. Thank you for helping me to be alive and experience all the wonderful things in life! I love you. Thank you.”

That’s it. It doesn’t have to be complex or fancy. Just honest and heartfelt. Try it: have a good conversation and feel the fears evaporate in a moment.

The next crucial aspect of living a full and healthy life is making friends!

Once our physical self-care becomes a daily routine, we can focus on creating nurturing social relationships again.

We all have an excellent opportunity to begin new friendships with the pandemic changing gears into a different phase. In this new phase, we can connect, have lunch, and let other people in. We can share who we are and perhaps have deeper conversations than we would have had before the pandemic swept in and turned our lives upside down.

Not every attempt at being friends will strike gold.

Sometimes, we meet neighbors we like and chat with, and it doesn’t work out for one reason or another to become friends. Other times the magic works, and we slowly become friends with someone or a couple.

Probably many of you reading this story have also gone through a failed attempt at friendship, as we have. It’s normal and to be expected. It’s all part of the process in our pandemic world. We don’t know these new people whom we are being friendly with from the person down the street. So, we must move slowly, with a bit of caution, as we get to know each other.

Friendships from my Private Immersions have been fantastic!

Yes, I am blessed by the work I do! When it comes to making friends, the neighbors are lovely, but the people who come to stay here in Panama for my Private Immersion trust me and are open almost immediately. We have already gotten to know each other quite well with a few Zoom calls, so we begin with a big head start. Once they arrive, the friendship and love between us is palpable. It is deeply nourishing for us all!

My last observation for living a full and healthy life is – It is essential to deepen our communication and our connections.

The pandemic has been challenging for all of us. Our communication and connections with each other have most likely gone through a few rough patches.

Overcoming obstacles to connecting is easier with a skilled mentor.

We, as women, don’t always know what part of us is showing up today. Is it the emotional one, the hormonal one? Is it the frustrated one? You don’t know what I want. How can you tell your partner what you want when you don’t know what it is? It can be challenging, complex, and frustrating for both.

So, I want to leave you with this final idea: find a mentor to help overcome obstacles to connecting. Find someone you can work with either online or in-person who can help you as a couple to bridge the communication gap so your connection can deepen.

It’s time to break free and declare your intention for happiness and connection.

Nothing is more important to living a full and healthy life than a fabulous connection with your partner or spouse of many years! It will bring the twinkle back into your eyes and the love back into your heart. Your blood pressure comes down, and your life expectancy goes up!

There is no need to live another moment in pain and frustration! You can do this. And I can help you.We will talk more about this soon. Stay tuned!

Thank you so much for joining me in this blog. As always, I look forward to our continued dialogue.

Until we meet again, please have a wonderful summer.

Conversation with Caroline adaption and writing by Wordsmith – Peter D. Black