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Ziji is the experience of being completely and powerfully in the presentTwo Winters
Year One
Him:
When her voice rises, something in me goes underground. I don’t mean to leave—I’m still sitting here, aren’t I? But inside, I’m walking away from something that feels like fire. My father taught me this: when the heat comes, you become stone. Stone doesn’t burn. I’m protecting us both, can’t she see that? If I stay quiet, the storm will pass. It always does.
Her:
His eyes go flat mid-sentence, like someone turned off a light inside him. I’m still talking but he’s gone—vanished into some room I can’t enter. The panic is immediate, cellular. Everyone leaves eventually; I’ve always known this. So I speak louder, reach harder, try to pull him back before he disappears completely. If I can just make him feel what I’m feeling, he’ll stay. He has to stay.
What Thaws When Witnessed Raw?
When my grandmother refused to speak about the war, she didn’t realise she was passing down silence like silverware. Her daughter learned to lock certain rooms. I inherited the keys but not the knowledge of what doors they opened. This is how grief freezes across generations—not as stories, but as their systematic absence.
Couples Therapy: Does It Help or Hinder
First, I suggest you read my couple's story Repaired There you may find it's not a straight line from dead relationship to growing together again. Life Happens! Few people can afford the six month commitment of time and money that the psychology today article...
Spaciousness in relationship
The space you inhabit as a couple is like a room. It is around you, in between you and beyond you. We easily forget to nurture our awareness of the space inside and outside of that room. As an exercise take a few deep calming breaths, and come to an awareness of the...
Parentified daughters as life partners
“One day when my mother is healed, she will finally be able to be a mother to me” or, “One day when I am good enough, mother will be here for me.” This is the dream forged in the heart of the parentified child, that her hard work will pay off one day and her mother...
Couple coaching and/or couple therapy
Coaches ask questions to help one or both partners in a relationship to improve something – for example, improving communication, personal growth or helping them respond to needs better.Improvement will be judged on metrics decided on by the stakeholders. Therapy is...
Men and desire
The idea that men can just have sex for the sake of sex and get enough out of it is a fallacy In 2016, a study published in the Journal of Sex Research surveyed straight men in long-term heterosexual relationships about what elicited their desire, and found that key...
Boarding school sets up intimacy disconnect
All of the tools, none of the feelings you cannot make good decisions without emotional information, you cannot grow a flexible brain without good attachments, you cannot read facial signals if your heart is closed down, and you cannot see the big picture if your...
Micro dosing for trauma spectrum responses
I recommend the following article as foundation. The documentary Fantastic fungi
Beware the BTN’s
AKA “better than nothings”, tease us with finite fixes for infinite yearnings. They’re the dead-end relationships, the otherwise-perfect commitmentphobes, the people who’ll never be that Into us, the Friends who can’t be more. The Coras. Yet if BTNs served no...
You cannot reason with a verbally abusive partner
The victim so badly wants to make sense of the behavior that he or she doesn’t put an end to it, instead continuing to search for explanations of what could have caused the abuser to treat him or her that way. The victim thinks that perhaps something about his or her...
Good relationships predict good health & long life
this research project has followed a group of men for 75 years, and their wives and children in more recent decades, and has come up with clues to good health and satisfaction in life. https://youtu.be/8KkKuTCFvzI