Quotes from Robin Norwood

Self-will means believing that you alone have all the answers. Letting go of self-will means becoming willing to hold still, be open, and wait for guidance for yourself. It means learning to let go of fear (all of the "what ifs") and despair (all of the "if onlys") and replacing them with positive thoughts and statements about your life.

True acceptance of an individual as he is, without trying to change him through encouragement or manipulation or coercion, is a very high form of love, and very difficult for most of us to practice.

Hungry people make poor shoppers.

There is an old joke about a nearsighted man who has lost his keys late at night and is looking for them by the light of a street lamp. Another person comes along and offers to help him look but asks him, "Are you sure this is where you lost them?" He answers, "No, but this is where the light is.

Women from dysfunctional homes (and especially, I have observed, from alcoholic homes) are overrepresented in the helping professions, working as nurses, counselors, therapists, and social workers. We are drawn to those who are needy, compassionately identifying with their pain and seeking to relieve it in order to ameliorate our own.

it is this very practice of acceptance that allows another to change if he chooses to do so.

I always thought I just wanted to be loved and the reality is I chose only people who weren't capable of loving me.

It has already been noted that children in dysfunctional families feel responsible for their family's problems and also for solving them. There are basically three ways in which children attempt to save their families: by being invisible, ,by being bad, or by being good.

We all tend to believe that suffering is a mark of true love, that to refuse to suffer is selfish, and that if a man has a problem then a woman should help him change.

Pero cuando usted trata de solucionarle sus problemas, él queda liberado de su propia responsabilidad por su propia vida. Entonces usted queda a cargo del bienestar de él, y cuando sus esfuerzos fallan, él la culpará a usted.

To be without the relationship, that is to be alone with oneself, can be experienced as worse than being in the greatest pain the relationship produces because to be alone means to feel the stirrings of the great pain from the past combined with that of the present.

After all, he had secrets to keep about his sexual identity and behavior, and having a wife made him look more 'normal' than not having one. I guess that was what he meant when he said he needed me.

Cuando sucede algo emocionalmente doloroso y nos decimos que la culpa es nuestra, en realidad estamos diciendo que tenemos control sobre ello: si nosotros cambiamos, el dolor desaparecerá.

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