Debra Smouse's Blog - Posts Tagged "henri-nouwen"

“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.”    
--Henri Nouwen

If the advertisements and pop holiday tunes are to be believed, then December is the “most wonderful time of the year). The Christmas season is supposed to be about love and joy. And even for those who don’t celebrate Christmas in the Christian sense still often celebrate the more secular side of Christmas (or Hanukah or other holidays that arrives this time of year).

Who can resist the trappings? The lights, the decorations, the food, and the music are all things I delight in. One of my favorite things to do is to sit by the tree before going to bed and breathe in the serenity of beloved ornaments and twinkle lights.

Yet, from my experience has often been that this is the most stressful time of year for many.

There is pressure to buy loved ones the “perfect gift”. And there is a pressure that WE need to be perfect: the perfect hostess, the perfect guest, the perfect daughter, the perfect mother, etc. And if you’ve been in my world for long, you know that I don’t believe that perfect is possible. Rather, our imperfections is what makes us beautiful and special in our own, unique way.

It’s a hard time of year for many thanks to the Ghosts of Christmas Past. Loss, sadness, loneliness, anger, and being haunted by memories can turn even the cheeriest of us into Scrooge.



And in more than a decade of being a life coach, my number one piece of advice to you is two-fold as we wrap the final days of 2021 and step into a bright and shiny new 2022.

Keep the concept of compassion and forgiveness loosely in your mind for it will serve you as a saving grace.
And be mindful of what little (and big) things can trigger you into going down a rabbit hole that’s hard to climb out of.

If you’ve done much self-development work, you are probably aware of triggers that can send you down paths of sadness, anger, fear, and self-pity. Sometimes, you react internally. And sometimes you turn to tried and true ways to comfort and numb yourself from those uncomfortable feelings.

While I am all about feeling ALL your feelings, this time of year is can be especially fraught with landmines. And those landmines can cause us to linger in bad feelings and fondle the stories around them rather than simply feeling it and then choosing to move forward.

This is where I’m talking about the concepts of forgiveness. Because negative feelings when you should be full of gratitude and joy can be particularly heavy.

Yet, the awareness of what triggers you can be that moment of feeling badly, and then allowing your logic to kick in and remind you “Oh, this reminded you of that time when…” so that you can move through it and enjoy your holidays.

It helps to recognize the ways in which we numb, too, because sometimes we unconsciously slip into numbing behaviors immediately.

Because while we associate numbing with less than healthy activities like overindulging in food or alcohol or spending 10 hours binging Netflix. Numbing can also look like ensuring there are perfect vacuum lines in every room of your house or excessive exercise.

And, like feeling your feelings, I am all about comforting yourself. Eat that Christmas cookie to feel good in the moment but don’t eat a dozen. Clean your house while also finding the humor in how it’s helping you cope with things you can’t control. Otherwise, the way you comfort can lead you down a whole ‘nother path of triggers and self-loathing. Especially if it involves food or alcohol.
While the exterior world is a big trigger for a lot of these challenging feelings this time of year, the other big trigger for many is family. Outside those grieving for the lost family members, folks who “should” be grateful for being with loved ones feel guiltily for not always feeling grateful.



Because even if you love your family dearly. And even if your childhood was free of neglect or abuse, our families know how to push our buttons in all kinds of triggering ways.

In part, it’s because we are expected to fill a particular role in our family: the smart one, the pretty one, the funny one, etc. And in most cases, those are roles that we long exited.

Yet, our families expect us to BE that person we were when we were 16 even when we’re closer to 60.

And the other thing I realized is this: even if you regularly spend time with your family members, often times they don’t really know the man or woman you’ve become.

It isn’t that they don’t love you, it’s just they are human. So wrapped up in managing the ups and downs of their own lives that they expect you to be that person they always knew. And often lost in their own pain.

So, basically, I am sharing with you that sometime during the holiday season, your family members may behave badly. It's easier to manage if you aren't surprised by it. And even if that feels personal, it isn’t.

I am gently reminding you to be compassionate and offer forgiveness. Of others and yourself.



That doesn’t mean that you accept or approve of bad behavior. And it doesn’t make their bad behavior acceptable. And I sure don’t encourage you to accept bad behavior nor put up with attempts to manipulate your reactions, feelings, or behaviors.

Rather, I am reminding you that you can still forgive the person and love them. Even when you don’t condone the behavior.

The older I get, the more important these things are: compassion, forgiveness, and love.

And while I had planned for this love note to focus on the topic of forgiveness, I recognize that the companions of forgiveness are compassion and grace. Oh, and using awareness to set good boundaries.

Because if one of your relatives or friends goes over the edge in their ability to manage their own triggers and stressors this season, you don’t have to be the person they take it out on. Instead, you can walk away…and circle back after they’ve calmed down with a big dose of compassion.

Again: compassion and forgiveness doesn’t equal condoning bad behavior.


We have two choices in our lives as we get older and approach the 2nd halves of our lives: you either choose to soften with the aging process. Or be bitter.

If you’re here with me, then you desire to create a life that nourishes you. So that means you’re aware of the need to make this choice. And though softening sounds much better than bitterness, it isn’t always an easy choice to make.

Because it means allowing anger to simply flow through you rather than fester and make you harder, letting go of grudges, and being compassionate.

Not just to others. It requires being compassionate with yourself.

Because if there is one thing I leave you with as we approach 2022:  it’s that I want you to find compassion and forgiveness for yourself.

Being human means being imperfect and making mistakes. And while some mistakes shift the choices we make as we traversed this life, that doesn’t mean you can’t find the grace within them as lessons rather than a life sentence.



You are a brilliant, shiny being, my dear. And when you make the choice to move forward in your life in a loving, kind, and positive way you’re on path to loving yourself and your life no matter what. This may take a large dose of Awareness (which we explored in August) I And it always relies upon being self-compassionate as you choose to let go of the grudges.

The grudges you hold against others. And the ones you hold against yourself.

So, before 2021 morphs into 2022 with the stroke of midnight, find space to forgive someone for a past misdeed. And most importantly, find compassion for an older version of yourself. And finally forgive her. She did the best she could with what she had.

Sit by the fireplace with a cup of cocoa (or glass of eggnog). Get lost in the way a book transports you to wonderful places and different times. Actively look for kindness and compassion beauty as you run errands. Find the spark of joy in every day activities.

Because when you make a choice to soften into life rather than be bitter, it makes the world better for you. and for everyone you encounter.

If you'd like to read the December 2021 love note in full, you can do so here.

And, if you'd like to receive my Monthly Love Note, sign up here.
Here's to remembering that no matter how challenging the world may seem, you are surrounded by beauty in the ordinary. Because within you is a spark of magic. 


Here's to celebrating the joy in the season, finding compassion, and  offering forgiveness to others. And especially ourselves.

“Hope is not an emotion; it’s a way of thinking or a cognitive process.”
--Brené Brown

I doubt the last thing you expected as the theme for my 1st Love Note of 2022 was Hope. Because I pretty sure that I’m not the only one that is mentally “done” with the pandemic yet here we are still.

One of the decisions we made in our house revolves around making peace with what is...while also making choices that allow us to get the most out of our everyday lives.

This can sometimes be much harder to implement than simply typing that statement out. However, the number one thing I’ve come to rely upon is an underlying sense of hope…. No, not necessarily from the folks in Washington (you know I prefer to not discuss politics).

Rather, is the invitation to entice hope to come from my own heart and soul with a lot of inspiration from JB’s brilliant mind. I am also leaning into the spirit of hope and kindness from ordinary people in my daily life. Both in person. And from folks I encounter virtually.

(Which is why I often will remind you to curate what you read and the people you follow on social media.)

Because our thoughts creates our reality, choosing hope and leaning into having it is a saving grace.


One thing that has helped me is to better hone the semantics of what hope is...and as is my nature, I turned to research. In a 2004 paper from the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, two psychologists used survey data better define "hope" and "optimism".

They determined that  “hope focuses more directly on the personal attainment of specific goals, whereas optimism focuses more broadly on the expected quality of future outcomes in general.”

What I take this to mean is that while optimism is the belief that things will turn out all right, hope makes no such assumption. But it is a conviction that each person can take actions that make their own life better in some way.

In other words, by choosing hope you commit to creating a daily life that nourishes and serves you.

Also in my research, I also came across the story of Jim Stockdale. I'd read about him several years ago but it was good to have the reminder of him and his life. Stockdale was a Navy officer and POW in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973. That's eight years of being held hostage, often also being tortured. Yet, he came out of his ordeal as a man unbroken by his experience.

He said rather than focusing on getting freed by a certain day - say Christmas or Easter, he focused on hope. Because when you focused on specifics, you it broke your heart and your spirit...and that led to many deaths. What’s now known as the Stockdale Paradox comes from his statement

“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
--Admiral Jim Stockdale

Of course, none of us are POWs in a war being tortured by our enemies. Yet the current reality of our lives can make us feel trapped without any sense of control.

What’s happening in the outside world simply IS. It’s reality. And rather than fight with reality, I choose to focus on what I can do with the present moment no matter what.

So to dive more deeply into the semantics of hope, I will share that in  my personal world, hope and optimism are buddies. But that isn’t the same for everyone. And that's OK because I also know intimately how easy it is to get lost in our own fears. But hope comes from a space of taking responsibility for my own feelings rather than expectation that someone from the outside world will magically make my life better.

And frankly, you can have hope and be a bit of a pessimist. Not trusting that the outside world is going to change much, but still have confidence that you can improve things in your daily life. And extend that hope into making life better for others around you.

So, pessimist or optimist, we can all channel and lean into hope. And my research confirms that you can have hope, yet also make peace that hope doesn’t mean avoiding any conflicts or crisis.

Rather, it’s an opportunity to choose hope as a part of loving yourself and others, as a path to practice kindness, and to shore yourself up to be more resilient in life.



It's not an oxymoron, but the reality of what can live side by side.

Life has always been uncertain. Yet it feels more uncertain than ever thanks to the events in the outside world. Yet, uncertainty doesn’t have to be a barrier to making choices that serve your own higher good. Every single day you can create goodness in your life. And spread that goodness to others around us.

Now, more than ever, we need small acts of kindness in our world. Because kindness comes from hopeful people. And I want to be a kind person even more now that ever.

This can be as simple as being kind to the cashier that checks out your groceries or bringing up the trashcans from the curb for your neighbor. Kindness can be found in making your partner a cup of coffee when you make your own or resetting the Peloton bike seat to his settings when you're done with your workout  (see my favorite things in the full email).

And you can spread kindness by sending card in the mail to an old friend to let them know you’re thinking of them warmly.

One of the most critical aspects of keeping hope alive in your life is to also not forget that kindness extends to yourself.

Move your body. Ensure you get enough sleep. Create a beautiful meal just because it brings you pleasure. Lovingly tend your own body with a beautifully scented shower gel or lotion up every part of yourself after a shower.

Our daily, ordinary moments are ripe for opportunity for us to live in a way that is hopeful, loving, nourishing, and kind.


Hope also invites you to work on your own healing.

No one is free from experiences that feel traumatic and stressful. And we certainly cannot control what has happened to us in the past - be it wounds from childhood, a marriage, or loss. So, rather than continue to fondle the stories of how you were done wrong, choosing hope gives you the courage to pursue what healing looks like for you right now.

The truth is that you have the responsibility to your own mental (and emotional) well-being to take charge of moving forward in your own life.

So as a part of choosing hope as a mindset, know that it will assist you in your path of healing.

Healing can look different for many folks...

Maybe it’s time to finally begin a real journaling practice that helps you find your answers. Or finally commit to that meditation practice.

Perhaps it’s time to take stock of what triggers you to tumble down a rabbit hole of unhappiness, reactiveness, or numbing. Choosing hope and healing gives you the power to notice when something triggers an old memory or feeling and stop it in its tracks.

And rather than cope by turning to food or wine, you discover the way to sit with the emotion in a non-judgmental way that allows you to apply logic to being safe now...even if you weren't safe in the past.

To be brutally honest, making the choice to act from a space of hope and find the courage to journey towards healing often requires help.

Because as much as I know that we often have answers inside us, no one is an island. 2022 may be the year that finally invest in a good therapist (highly, highly recommend!).

Or hire a coach or engage a spiritual director to serve as a witness to your journey.

You do not have to do everything on your own. And having hope as a companion will lovingly and gently remind you of that fact.

Choosing hope means making the decision to no longer allow the past to create your future.

Focusing on hope has led me to the deeper belief that perhaps it's possible despair has the ability to transform and strengthen our hope. Life is a balancing act; light is meaningless without the darkness, and vice versa.

Having hope doesn't mean tossing realism to the wayside. A hopeful spirit is not led by naiveté; it's rooted in the belief that uncertainty and hope can coexist and even offer us peace.

Because no matter how pessimistic you may have been in the past, hope invites you to have faith in your innate holiness as you build your ability to be resilient.


If you aren’t quite sure where to start inviting hope into your own life, begin small. Practice hope through rituals that invite you into the present moment. Create a way to ground yourself in the here and now in a way that is kind and nourishing. And lean into your rituals and routines as a path of stability and certainty during an uncertain season of life.

For me, this always turns back to ensuring that first cup of coffee each morning is a prayer. So find ways to ground yourself in the reality while loving yourself and nourishing your own life.

Hope is not just expectation, it's manifestation. It offers us the dream of better days while encouraging us to pave that way forward.

Hope is both/and that we can lean into because sometimes, having hope at the end of a long, long day can be all that we have left.
My invitation to you this month is to commit to choosing hope and breathe nourishing into your ordinary days. That even when it feels like you are blind to what the future holds, to light a candle in the darkness because you have hope.

For when you find the path to kindness, loving, and healing you can be an active participant in creating a life that feels good from the inside out.

If you'd like to read the January 2022 love note in full, you can do so here.

And, if you'd like to receive my Monthly Love Note, sign up here.

Here's to remembering that no matter how challenging the world may seem, you have the power to nourish your life, find the path to healing, and sow seeds of hope for a better tomorrow.

“Desire is often talked about as something we ought to overcome. Still, being is desiring: our bodies, our minds, our hearts, and our souls are full of desires.”
--Henri Nouwen



I’ve been thinking a lot about desire. I’m sure with this being February you probably expected this love note to be about love. Or exploring self-love again like I did last year.

But I’m going to tell you something, my dear: it’s hard to love your life without playing with the concepts around desire.

Our souls yearn. Our hearts secretly lust. Most of the time, we neglect these deep-seated needs of our souls because what we want doesn’t seem practical or sounds selfish to our critical minds. So, our desires lay fallow in our hearts and continue to be secretly pushed into the back of our minds when they surface. And life shouldn't be or feel that way.

I'm the first to admit that leaning into and playing with desires probably doesn’t come easy.

Many of us have negative childhood associations with desire. From being told “no” for a desire for a cookie to being told that our teenage body’s desire for another human made us a “bad girl” we’re often conditioned away from using desire as what it’s meant to be: a tool for living a life that is of service to us.

And aside from childhood morals and the rights and wrongs, desire for physical things can be viewed through a negative lens of materialism or as a proof that we are narcissistic or selfish. Because longing for something like a designer purse, expensive shoes, or a fancy car seems selfish.

But the truth is, God gave us desires to help us fine-tune our lives. Desire for something can propel us towards our goals – whether it be intimacy, love, or a specific goal. By exploring one single way to go deeper into your own life, you began priming your brain and your soul to think about the possibilities of wanting MORE for your life.



If desire feels like a challenging concept for your life, especially in our current times, let’s begin in small ways.  When it comes to exploring desire for myself or in discussions with clients, I like to begin with the body. As Mary Oliver says in her oft quotes post  Wild Geese:  “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

Valentine’s Day, of course, brings to mind romance, the longing for intimacy, and of course if we were more straightforward, sex. Yet, as I mentioned, we often can get stuck in the mindset that those are things we shouldn’t want, let alone talk about with anyone.

But if you desire something in the realm of sex or intimacy, I will challenge you to go a little deeper on unraveling what that means for you: is it just sex or is a desire for closeness? Is it feeling good in your body or the way you feel when you’re with another person in an intimate setting?

Listening to your body can be the clue you need to take action or make space for particular activities.

And if you found that a longing for something in the sexual realm when you were younger, but don’t seem to go there now when it comes to your desires, remind yourself of what it accessed for you.

Now, I’m not saying to take sex off the table if that’s what you’re desiring. I’m just saying this is a Yes, AND opportunity to allow your body to help lead your mind towards what desire offers.

Maybe it's about pure pleasure. Or perhaps it's about feeling in touch with your body, a deeper connection to someone else, or powerful in who you are. That's the way to expand desire.

So, to play with desire, brainstorm ways in which you can parlay a particular experience when it comes to your body in small ways – from long showers with a thick, luxuriant delicious smelling shower gel, to getting a pedicure or a massage, to crawling into bed with fresh sheets.

Perhaps you can rediscover a bodily pleasure by moving your body in some for of exercise like walking. And is there anything more pleasurable at times than a good stretch?

When you allow yourself to experience bodily pleasures you desire to feel and experience, taking action bodily gives your mind permission to pursue bigger desires.


“Desire is a teacher: When we immerse ourselves in it without guilt, shame or clinging, it can show us something special about our own minds that allows us to embrace life fully.”
--Mark Epstein

So ask yourself: beyond what you want to experience when it comes to feeling good in your body, play with what you desire to BE, do, have, or experience.

Because playing with desire can invite you to get to the core of the bigger things you want and desire in your life.
Yes, I’m talking about those bigger concepts of how exploring your desires can lead to setting goals that matter to you – heart and soul.

Sometimes the easiest way to explore desires is to think of something you want, set a timer for five minutes, and brainstorm all the little and big things that means to you.

Think about desire as an unraveling. Desire to BE a certain kind of person can help us align actions. Desire to experience pleasure.
Before you begin to explore your desires, please know that NONE of your desires are selfish. 

For example, wanting something physical isn’t wrong. Don’t let this exercise trigger feelings of being greedy if you desire something that might be judged as materialistic. It doesn’t have to feel noble, okay? This is all about exploring the breadcrumbs desire is showing you. Which then allows you to take action.

I'm going to challenge you to choose one thing you desire. And then make the choose to pursue for the next few months.
Write it down as a declaration to breathe life into your desires. And then, take some sort of action towards your desire.

Remember that the smallest steps towards what you want, especially those that give you physical pleasure, gives your mind more permission to keep going.

If you aren't quite sure where to go from here, don't be afraid to go a little deeper.



Maybe your desire is about that kind of esoteric thing, like a feeling.

For example: when I was first self-employed, my first thoughts were “I need lots of clients.” But the truth was I wanted more freedom, a sense of control over my own schedule, and more time at home. The answer wasn’t more clients, but quality clients that desired solid chunks of time instead of an hour here or there.

If you bypassed a desire because it seemed shallow or ignoble, reconsider, okay? Because your feelings aren’t shallow.

Say for example you want to feel sexy; allow yourself to pursue feeling sexy. Ask yourself what would make me feel sexy?

What makes me feel sexy? Nice lingerie, a fresh haircut, getting my nails done, high heels, and my favorite Lucky Berry lipstick.

Perhaps the path to pursuing your desires means you need to get in touch with tiny delights. What makes you “simply happy” throughout the day? For example: Is it walking your dog in the woods in the crisp morning air make you happy? Then, make sure you add a daily walk to your life. Wake up early if necessary.

These delights are breadcrumbs. They'll start to show you the way to the bigger picture desires that you've pushed away for so long! Be patient. Your deeper desires may need some time to trust you to honor them again.



And in the meantime, to strengthen your desire muscles, pursue some sort of small (perhaps bodily) desire as I suggested. Because exercising our desire muscles are like other forms of exercise: sometimes you need to build them up and strengthen them.

If you are ready to pursue a larger goal or bigger desire, start with a single thread and be willing to go deep... And, if you get stuck, ask "Why do I want that?" and then "And what would that give me?"

These deeper answers may surprise you, but these are the answers under the answers: Freedom. Passion. A sense of purpose. Empowerment. Accomplishment. Joy. These are not uncommon answers to this question.

Darling, it’s time to stop denying your desires and bring them into the light. Be honest and allow yourself to long for a secret passion. Dive into how you really want to feel.

If you'd like to read the February 2022 love note in full, you can do so here.

And, if you'd like to receive my Monthly Love Note, sign up here.

Here's to giving yourself permission to follow the threads of desire and allowing those thread to lead you towards deepening your life in meaningful and nourishing ways.