Deanna Bryant  
I'm so excited today I have Sondra Harmon on the show. She is a certified meditation teacher, a transformational relationship coach, and an author. She lives in Puerto Rico enjoying life with her much loved husband, where she writes leads, workshops, and host retreats. Today we'll be talking about her book The Power of Ouch, an Illustrated Guide to healing from hurt and creating a life of love and connection. 

Sondra  
Thank you so much. I'm super excited to be here and have a conversation with you.

Deanna Bryant  
 I want to give a quote because I want to ask you more about this. You said that "giving space to the pain gives you a path to embrace all your experiences, instead of pushing parts of yourself away." So how does not dealing with the pain push parts of yourself away?

Sondra  
 It's such a deep topic. Because one of the things that I've looked at a lot are the times when we've rejected something about ourselves, whether it's somebody prompted it perhaps a parent or teacher or somebody that we looked Up to send something that made us criticize ourselves, or it's something that we got a result we didn't intend. And we turned that upset inward than were criticizing ourselves, right. And the problem is, like, if you're blaming somebody else, and if you're critical of somebody else, and you don't like somebody else, you can leave them. Right? You can go to another room, another city, another country. But when you're the person that you're not accepting, and you're not willing to let be as they are, you can't run. The only choice you have, other than dissolving that upset, is to start saying, That's not me, I'm not going to go there.  I'm just going to live in my little safe box here. And that's not part of me anymore. Hurt isn't part of me anymore. And it's really limiting. And it really makes you shrink down. So it's really, I think, super important to be able to give yourself the latitude and the love to be you at whatever stage you are in whatever growth you're experiencing. And the other thing I love about relationships is they can be such a mirror. So if you can give your partner that latitude and that love and that acceptance, then you can give it more to yourself. And conversely, if you can give it more to yourself, you can give it more to your partner. So it really works together like this great Jacob's ladder. If you're always looking towards being more loving, being more accepting, being more compassionate, being more joyful, all those yummy things.

For the complete transcript, go to http://reviveyourmidlifemarriage.com/45