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After three decades and more than a few relationships, what I finally know to be true is that communication is what keeps love alive. Love cannot live outside of communication. The word itself comes from the root word, commune, which means ‘to be one with’. Interestingly enough, I learned this lesson within the context of friendship. Although, I admit it took a little romance to spark the conversation.

Not just any kind of communication will cut it however. One must be clear, genuine, and without expectation. This is not an easy way to be. If you look at yourself closely, in any conversation, you will find that many conversations occur beneath the backdrop of fear. We rarely say what we truly feel in fear of hurting someone or being hurt. Well, one good place to start is by sharing how scared we are. Letting your fear be present is a surefire way of letting the other person’s guard down. Once that is out of the way, you can get down to what’s important.

Love. It’s the counterpart to fear. Love and fear cannot exist without each other. Love is what is important and often acknowledging our fears is a good way to get back to love.

The kind of love I am referring to is not that crazy electrochemical wave of sensation that runs through us when we are falling in love. There’s no way to keep that feeling alive. If there were, someone would be making billions. Certainly, we can keep chasing the high and there’s nothing wrong with that but how is it any different from chasing any other high? Whatever the high, the primary function of it seems to fill the void of something or perhaps it is just for pure fun.

The love I speak of is available to us at any moment, it’s eternal yet it takes some work to get in touch with it. This love encompasses all loves, including the kind that creates butterflies not only in your physical core but also in your soul. This love is so powerful it brings you to tears when you look at someone and are able to see just how amazing they truly are. In its’ greatest expanse, this love unveils the raw beauty of every human being and piece of life on earth.

I spent the last three years of my life in a serious relationship. We were engaged to be married and we chose to end the engagement, not in marriage, but in friendship. I am happy to say that as I write this, we are friends. We are the best of friends. We are support, respect, inspiration, and a stand for each other’s individual happiness. We have promised each other to do whatever it takes to support each other in living a happy, inspirational, and powerful life.

This has only been possible through communication and some introspection. When our romantic relationship ended, we were devastated. It was like something died and the next logical step was to go our separate ways. This is how so many relationships end up, they just end. What we don’t realize is that the very thing that hurts us the most is withholding our love for that person. We confuse love with certain expectations and if those expectations are not being met, well, how could that be love? Right?

The thing about expectation is it’s all about us and as human beings it is only natural to experience it. The trick is when you feel yourself getting angry or tense, stop to look at it. Where is it coming from and why? You can even go the next step and share the experience with someone. You will be surprised as to how much unfolds in a conversation through the process of communication. This is how fear and anxiety from not getting what you expect can transform into understanding, peace, and ultimately love.

This is how my ex-fiance and I have kept our love alive. What an amazing feeling it is know we will always have this love. It starts here with me and you and all of our personal relationships. If we can master the art of keeping love alive at the personal level, imagine what is possible at the global level?

Life Coach, Pearl Lee Schroy, Ph.D., shares about her personal struggle with her bipolar mother

For some, going home to visit family is a welcome, loving even healing experience to look forward to. For others, like myself, going home begins with the sense of a welcoming experience that quickly turns into a battlefield loaded with triggers. The way I see it, I have two options: either get shot down by all the traumatic memories and emotional hostility or take it on as my training ground as a life coach.

The following is an excerpt from a journal entry I wrote about 8 months ago during my last visit home:

“…This morning, my mother was triggered into an episode and I remembered why it can sometimes be so difficult to come home.The last thing I want to do is fall into the role of playing victim. Indeed, my question is how can I transcend the pain and not dwell in the sadness of the situation? I’m not really sure how many experiences could hurt more than the experience of being harshly judged and rejected by my own mother. I noticed as my chest became really tight and my whole body went numb. I tried to become a filter through which her force could just pass through with no resistance. When she enters that place, I watch her soul disappear, it’s as if a demon has resurrected her corpse. Who is this woman? I ask. She’s my mother. Yet I have no idea who she is. And I see she has no idea who I am. All she knows in the fiery moment is that I am her enemy so she goes into attack mode.

I feel myself disconnecting. Tears run down my face as she continues to scream at me. I call my father because I’m desperate to make it stop. In the past, I would’ve yelled back but who I am now refuses to battle and knows it would be futile. Only peace. That’s what I must bring into the space. My father lovingly reminds me that it’s her disease, not her. I pass the phone to her and she begins yelling and then changes the subject rapidly to how she needs a new music CD to listen to in the mornings, Al Green. She laughs for a second. Her sentences become incoherent. Her thoughts are fragmented and the anger begins to fragment as well.

Finally, she returns to herself and she sees my tears. She apologizes. She tells me that she loves me and I tell her I love her too. Meanwhile, all I really want to do is get on a plane and fly back to my home in Colorado that, probably by no accident, happens to be thousands of miles away.

I watch my thoughts take on the old unconscious, conditioned patterns, of not being enough, fear of all the hurtful things that she said being true, full disempowerment in my frustration of not being able to help her heal. I’m a joke, what kind of a doctor, what kind of coach am I?”

The human kind, I remind myself. I come back to the question, “How can I transcend the pain? How can I transcend the self-destructive patterns? All I want to do is run.”

This time, I’m not running. This time, I’m not surrendering to the machine created in the wake of some disease. If there is to be any hope at all, for me, and for others like me, I must rise to the challenge of reinventing myself so that I can love in the wrath of a violent storm.

I know there are many others, like myself, who are faced with the challenge of having relatives who have been diagnosed with psychiatric conditions. While it’s not easy to create and maintain healthy, loving relationships with those relatives, it is possible. The trick is to believe in the possibility and never give up. While my mother still relapses from time to time, I could write an entire book describing the leaps and bounds she has made over the years and continues to do so.

My family is living proof that there is hope. And my heart grows larger every time I choose to rise to the challenge.

If you have a story or an experience you’d like to share on this topic, I’d love to hear it.