Words of Wisdom, Words of Love

Although I have begun this new year happily willing to leave our wedding celebration(s) in the year 2017, there was one special event that flowed into 2018, officially concluding the marriage celebrations. That event was my bridal shower. Even though bridal showers are typically the first in a series of events that traditionally take place before a wedding, I am sure that you have come to learn that our wedding was anything but traditional. My mother, sister and family friend Terry organized my bridal shower to take place at the beginning of January after all of the wedding festivities were complete. At the time, I felt a little trepidatious about this because there was a large part of me that wanted to be finished with everything. I mean, I had been celebrating my wedding since June, so I felt that the whole event was just a little tired (and people must be starting to get sick of it). However; I came to discover that this bridal shower was the perfect way to commence the new chapter in our lives that Jin and I were embarking on.

I wanted to express my gratitude to the women who attended by sharing their wisdom with you. I have also written this in an attempt to remind myself of what is most important in life: our relationships with others, especially the ones whom we love deeply.

Some of the wisdom that I received on January 8th, 2018....

• The importance of kindness. It is sometimes easier to practise kindness towards strangers than towards the people we are closest with. I think that this is because they represent a safe space for us to come undone in. The flip side of the coin is that we sometimes can take out our stress on each other because we feel secure enough to do so. Although it is important to feel secure with our partners, that does not override the necessity of kindness and compassion towards them. This also translates to how we treat ourselves. As the Golden Rule states, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." This rule should also be followed in the reverse. Be kind to yourself and be kind to your partner. Kindness and compassion are essential qualities of a happy marriage.

• The distinction between genuine love and attachment. A friend of my mother's Carol wrote to me about this distinction and shared it with us at the event. Where genuine love says, "I love you therefore I want you to be happy," attachment says, "I love you therefore I want you to make me happy." A distinction that for me can be so easily confused. What continues to become clear for me is how much I struggle to find my happiness and peace through people and external sources. It can become neurotic for me, the search for anything possible outside of myself that I can somehow grasp in order to fill my "happiness tank." It is very easy and almost instinctual for me to search outside of myself to satisfy all of my emotional needs. What I have come to learn is that true happiness comes from within. I need to be the source of my own happiness so that I can love my partner for who he is without expectation of him to serve my needs. Is that ever difficult? I suspect that will be a constant work in progress for me.

• Appreciation. How easily do we become accustomed to the roles we play alongside each other in life without ever stopping to acknowledge and appreciate what we mean to each other. For example, I live in Korea as a foreigner who does not speak the language here. You can only imagine the many ways that my husband has made my life easier by simply taking care of things for me; translating and communicating on my behalf, navigating complicated situations and advocating my rights. Something as simple as ordering the groceries which he does online for me so that I don't have to take the bus to the supermarket, is also something that I have come to expect of him instead of appreciate about him. It is so easy to go about life together doing the things we do for each other without acknowledging them at all. And how much it does mean when we do. The list of things that I appreciate about Jin is already long and I can only imagine how much it will continue to grow over the years as we build a family together.

• Conflict is natural and a healthy part of life. Take it as an opportunity to pause and reflect on what is working and what isn't working in the relationship. Another friend shared about how it is inevitable that we will have disagreements and there will be hard issues to deal with. This is not to say that those will be the end of us. We can grow so much from conflict in learning how to better communicate in the future and what our true values and boundaries may be as a result of them.

• Through trauma, challenges and loss, find a way to grow and work through things together. I think it is so easy to blame your partner when you have experienced something horrible or simply push them away because you're in pain. Sometimes when life is hard we make it harder by complicating things and retreating from our loved ones. This advice came from a family friend, Sue who in the past years has experienced very deep loss. I admired her courage in sharing this bit of advice and have witnessed her as an example of how you can come out of pain and suffering with a stronger partnership because of how much you have chosen to be there for each other through it.

• Pick your battles and trust your gut. I felt this was great advice because my long time neighbour Margie shared that in marriage there will be moments when even though you and your partner might disagree, it might just not be worth the struggle to try to make them see your point. It is always worth evaluating what is most important to you and prioritizing which issues are worth going to battle for and which are not. Sometimes, it is better to just accept your differences as who you are and love each other for them. This advice paired with "trust your gut" is imperative because there will be other times when you feel so deeply about an issue that it is very important to address it, regardless of the tension that it may cause in the relationship. It is important to stay true to yourself and voice what matters to you most.

• When you want something from your partner, ask for it. Simple enough right? It would seem so but in reality, it is very easy to place a lot of expectations onto our partners without saying them out loud. And how easy it is then to become disappointed by what they did not do.

• Say I love you as much as you can. This came from a woman who lost her husband years ago tragically on what started as any other day for them. She shared that she received a lot of peace in knowing their last words together were a simple "Goodbye, have a nice day, I love you." How important it is to tell your partner those three simple words.

• The final bit of advice that was shared was from my mother. It was to surround myself with a tribe of strong and loving women who can support me in life because they will serve as very important third parties to my marriage. Just as I acknowledged in my previous blog post, my greatest lesson from 2017: the importance of community, I felt the gift of that yet again during this event. As a woman who has always been a girl's girl, I continue to see the value in female friendships in my life. Getting married was a major life event for me, and what I learned from all of the celebrations that it entailed was that I have so many amazing people in my life that want to celebrate with me. What a gift that is. 

I hope to take all of these words of wisdom to heart and act with kindness, appreciation and compassion towards my husband. I can only hope that this leads to a happy, respectful and loving marriage. I also plan to continue nourishing the relationships in my life that I share with some truly courageous, amazingly intelligent and fiercely loving women.