"Breaking up it's never easy I know, but I have to go.." (ABBA)

I know that we can't prevent breaking ups, but what I truly wish is that when it happens I can keep only warm feelings, good memories, lessons learnt and feel gratitude to my partner for all our journey together. 

"Hello dear

Its so strange to call u this way now, after such intensive and unclear month which followed after beginning of tension between us.

I could never imagined in a moment i was leaving you in airport that less than in a 2 weeks all that missunderstandings will start, i will cry my eyes out almost every night and probably will never meet u again.

I couldnt stand calm even single day without u after i left U, keeping all memories, feelings, talks, touches, nights and days about us. I felt so happy and incredibly lightened...

I want to open up myself and to share some important things with you about my experience, becouse i feel it can make me feel better and maybe can be interesting for you too.

I want to start from the one spring day when i was sitting in my kitchen and dreaming about man i want to meet... I was thinking about someone who can help me grow as a person, teach me something, let me open the best in myself. Someone who can be responsible, successfull, mature enough to stand my emotional instability, see the best in me and help me to learn about relationships.. It was some more details in that (something like dream to live in huge house with windo walls) and I was shocked when in a couple of minutes i got this message from you with " come to me, I  have huge apartments with large windows".. And then I got your call and was smiling all the talk , becouse i felt so good just being connected to you...

Trough all that time I felt that by being with you and with your help I  opened and discovered a lot in myself. It is not visible  from outside, but  at least i know how many huge steps i did to overcome my internal barriers, which grew since my childhood and play huge role in fact that I closed my heart to other people.

Remember our visit to that photoexibition and how tough i felt there? It reminded me a lot about my childhood when i was sexually, physically and emotionally abused for many times by different people. I forgot it and suppressed it for a long time becouse pain which was concealed under that was huge.

But of course it influenced all my relationship and emotional patterns, and looking back i am proud of who i am knowing what i went through. I am telling it to you not to excuse myself but just to share and maybe to give you more clarity of who i am and what happened to me all that time. This is my step towards being more open and not showing only my strong side.

I asked Universe for relationships where i can grow and learn my life lessons. i truly believe that all what happenes to us we chose and created  by ourselves in order to learn our lessons.. So i know now that all what happened during this time with you is only for my benefit even if it was sometimes so painful. The way to growth cant be only easy and fun, it is challenging..

I learned how to share and think abut other person, by trying to find something what can bring joy and smile on your face. I learned how to spend sleepless nights creating handmade gift and trying to be on time to make some surprise.. I learned how to close my mouth if i want to say something judging , I learnt how to stop my blaming thoughts and changing it into compassion and understanding... I learnt how to be grateful and admire other person... 

Of course i dont speak that i learned how to cook, to dive, watch good movies, relax, standing under waterfall, riding motobice.. So many simple things... 

When i look back on the time we spent together i only  can remember the best time and memories.... And when i look back for last month i can remember only tears, worries, anxiety, doubts.... And it brings me back all  my emotional pain which i dont want to remember. I want to feel to be loved, accepted, supported in whatever happens with me. I want to learn and grow together openely, without hidden thougts and agendas. I want and i need it becouse alone i cannot go over my past experiences.

I still  dont feel i am worth enough to be loved, that is why every coldness or distance in relationships makes me feel pain and I starting afraid of being abonded. Yes its difficult for me to trust becouse a lot of people whom i trusted and opened myself used it against of me.

yes its not easy for me to keep being calm when my man keep distance because of some problems in his life, so i dont know what happens and consider it as a sign of breaking up. 

Yes, i take it too personal.. And yes, i know u can say its my issue and i have to deal with yet- yes,i have to , i will do it and i already in the process. But i need support....

And i cant allow any situation in my life which brings me back to my old track... 

Last month i feel very bad. Its very unclear for me what happens and where it goes. 

I feel very grateful to you, i can truly say you are the first man in my life who opened  so many new experiences and learning for me. Without you i would never have this changes and growth and personal transformations. And i hope it was good time for you too..."

What I learnt from my divorce...

Some days ago I met my colleague, with whom I met last time more than three years ago. We had a business meeting together and then after it was finished she came to me asking to talk privately. 

She said: “Elena, I have a very personal question to you.. Hope you can share answer with me. 

What are you doing in your life that today you look much better than three years ago?..” 

For the first second I was shocked, catching myself on thoughts like: OMG,  was it really soooo bad three years ago??”. Than the answer started knocking from the very bottom of my heart and I stopped for a while before I spoke it loud. I looked in her eyes and said: “you know… I can not advice it to everyone, but I got divorced three years ago..” She looked back at me smiling, commenting that she already tried this recipe, which gave me more insight to share my feelings with her. “Since that moment I promised myself to learn how to be happy by myself, how to love myself truly from within and how not to depend my happiness on men..” And looking back on all my steps towards my happiness for last years I can admit that I absolutely 100% grateful for that experience and my ex-husband for pushing me to learn that spiritual and life lessons of transformation. They could seem quite tough, but they all helps to go out from victim consciousness and take full responsibility for out lives. And this is only way toward true happiness.

Lesson 1. Whatever happens, has a reason, even if we don’t see it

Nothing happens without reason. Tree can not grow in a one night. There is long process from seed to branches. If partnership breaks in a one night and one day he or she leaves you, it is an effect of something happened long time ago. And this is your responsibility if you have not noticed it. I prefer to live in illusion that my marriage was good. I preferred to close eyes on all betrays which happened from both sides, all lie which was around us, all distance that became bigger and bigger. I preferred  to live in that illusion rather than feel pain of disappointment, unfulfilled expectations and fear of future. Looking back now I see all  signs that marriage was not fine and we had problems, and I see all my responsibility in that. And if you see in your garden bananas instead of apple, it can happen only if you planted banana seeds.  If we look at result of our life or relationships we have now, we can reflect and understand what seeds did we plant sometime ago. And if we don’t like result, the best option is to think through and find out what negative seeds you have planted and find the way to plant new one. Its easy to go in to fault mood while doing that, that is why I have next lesson for you.

Lesson 2. Thee is always responsibility of both partners, but fault of no one

There is no such thing as fault in broken relationships. Looking from spiritual point of view, nothing happens without agreement of your soul for that. I truly believe, that our soul planned all lessons it wanted to learn in this life time and planed all experience we have to go through in order to achieve it. And we carefully chose people who will help us. Just when we are born  as a human beings, we  don’t remember it. I know that one of my life lessons is to set healthy boundaries, and my ex-partner did everything to create best circumstances for me to learn it. And you have to know that we learn best and most not when everything is comfortable for us, but when we are going through tough times and leave our comfort zone. So only then you can really start acting differently, in a new way and finally to built new life habit.

Lesson 3. Most important one…

If you decided to start relationship, the best way to show and experience love is by actions of  acceptance  and sharing. The most common mistake we do in relationship – we jump into them, charmed by our partner or winged by feelings we experience near that person. And as famous proverb saying “love is blind”, after some time we start noticing some imperfections and things which are bothering or irritating us. And it doesn’t mean they have not exist before, it only means we were so busy with our excitement that didn’t really pay enough attention to real another person. And what happens after? We are trying to change him. “Please do that.. Don’t do that.. I Feel bad when you are… Your habits are irritating me.. etc”. But we are not in this world to change another person. We are here to transform ourselves! And as I mentioned in lesson 2, other people and especially our partners, are our best teachers! So my main lesson about relationship is: My partner is my reflection. He was sent to me by Universe to help me to learn and to change. So all I don’t like – is a sign for me what to change in myself to become better, and all what I love about him – is a sign of my  hidden talents. Isn’t it a miracle? To look into eyes of other person and see yourself. Simple. Impactful. Challenging. But only one way…

What you should know about your parents...

Have you ever thought why parent-children issues areso popular in psychological theories? 

Or why we often marry partners who are similar by character (and sometimes even by appearance) to our parents? 

No less, is it popular in theories as it is more popular in cabinets of psychoanalytic and in friend-to-friend conversations. 

There are some explanations as to why this is so. For example, our parents are the first people we are in contact with in our life, that is why they are important. It’s true, as practical psychologists with more than 15 years of experience  can confirm that most  of our behavioral, mental and emotional habits we develop in early childhood come from the strong influence of our parental environment. But it can’t be the final core explanation, because we can still question- why then are these particular people are our parents?

From a spiritual point of view, nothing is accidental in our life. Everything that happens with us is the perfect plan that our soul made before we were born in our body in this lifetime. And this plan has as a main purpose and many lessons, which we have to learn.  These lessons always lead to a main goal- to make our soul overcome negative traits and become better. Much of the research about reincarnation confirm this and we can consider it as a very high possibility. So taking that into account, we can see that we choose before we are born into this life, who our parents will be and in which family and circumstances we will come to experience.

But again, how do we choose them? Will they be the best and most comfortable people for us? Will they be someone who will give us the most support?? What are the criteria? It’s all about our "individual developmental plan" - they are people (actually souls) who can help us learn our main lessons. They are the ones who will best trigger our fears, negative reactions, who will be the best players in our game of life and who will be the best creators for our spiritual environment. It’s all about making your life purposeful and meaningful from a spiritual point of view. 

For example, if your main life lesson is to set clear boundaries, you most probably will have parents who treat you with some level of abuse, push you towards their interests, not supporting yours, always telling you what to do and what to wear, and etc. So it’s all for letting us to take this challenge in early childhood, set boundaries, learn lesson, to go in our spiritual development one step up and become better. But what happens in most of the cases? First, when we are born we don't remember what we planned (this is actually the funniest moment in this quest of life), so we start either allowing them to break our boundaries, or we start blaming or complaining (very often it lasts till late adulthood), and then as soon as we have a chance to run away from them into marriage, we do it! And, voila, we have season two in our movie- our partner is treating us the same way! 

Why? Because our soul thought in advance and created plan B for the case if we don't learn the lessons with our parents and asked another soul or potential partner to come and take over this duty and continue our work.

So if we learn it with our partner,we get a bonus! Happy family life and one more exam passed in our list of marks:) if not? We go to a new marriage and another (and actually some people have more than 5 trials :), or we even attract a boss with the same style, or a best friend who is treating us this way orour kids somehow start repeating our parent’s pattern. And the longer we keep our self from changing ourselves, the more people around us start reminding us about this initial lesson.

So, what can we do?

1. Ask yourself, what are the most important challenges in communication with my parents now or were in childhood? What was the most difficult for me to do? What was bothering me the most in their behavior? Identify what they pushed you to learn? What could you do differently to change it?

2. Reflect on your relationships with people around you. Do u see the same pattern? What if you try now that new behavior? Will it change the situation? Is there any chance that these challenging people are souls who are reminding you about a lesson and helping you  learn it?

3. If you practice meditation, you can do a simple but very useful one. Close your eyes, breathe deeply preparing yourself for meditation and imagine yourself in front of your parents. Look at them, into their eyes, smile at them and ask respectfully: "Dear father, what was the lesson you tried to teach me?" and  listen for the answer. "Dear mother, what was the lesson your soul tried to teach me?" and listen to the answer. Whatever appears in your mind, listen to it. You can reflect on that and analyze it later on. Then after you heard what they told you or what appeared in your mind, look at them with the smile, bow with respect and gratitude and say Thank you.

This practice helped a lot of my clients to see their relationship with their parents and identify life lessons. You can practice it several times and just meet them in your mind with bow, smile and gratitude can help you grow spiritually, because by accepting their role in your spiritual growth you can see the big picture of your life and become aware of your life lessons.