Just spoke with W on the phone - our daily lunchtime phone call. No big surprise... she's going to make it easy for me to find ways to use the stuff in this book! She's talking about joining Weight Watchers, as she wants to lose weight but has no idea how to go about it herself, and doesn't trust herself to figure it out on her own. At the same time, she's also heavily into trying to find some kind of menopause "magic bullet". To me, she seems to be going in many different directions at once, and thereby watering down her efforts. She's not prioritizing. She's also freaking out a bit about all the things coming up on the calendar - our family has some busy times ahead. So I got some practice at self-soothing. I refused to get infected by her anxiety. I'm also willing to wait a bit, as I've got some more reading and learning to do before I'm really ready to go with this. However, I now know that my first real self-differentiating move is likely to be over getting her to read this book with me. It'll be something along the lines of "Yes, I know that all the things you're working on are important to you, and you have a right to work on them, and you feel like you are doing these things for the good of our M, but this is important also, and it's important to me, and I'm entitled to ask for this. I won't nag you to do it, but if you're not willing to work on this with me, that's going to affect how I interpret your intentions."
I think that's about how it should sound, but I'm new at this... I may not have it right just yet...
(hmm... that sounds like I'm asking for validation from someone here... )
