Good morning from New York City. What’s on my mind this morning is forgiveness, and here’s why. I’ve been texting with one of my friends. She’s from Europe and she lives in the United States. She hasn’t seen her mother since pre COVID, and when you live far from your parents, as I did for so many years, the stakes are really high when you’re going home. You are so filled with love, but there can also be a lot of anticipatory anxiety. My friend hasn’t seen her mother in so long, and she was having a lot of thoughts about how her mother was going to be with her. I think her mother has a lot of paranoia around COVID and my friend was fearing that she was going to feel anger. Basically, she set the bar really high over this trip.

I shared with her by text, a couple of things that. I think are worth mentioning here. One was what I’ve said before. My friend Dana talks about coping ahead. I was suggesting to her that she think through some of the things that she knew in advance were going to trigger her and that she sort of have an action plan about how she was going to handle those moments. I also mentioned that I felt like she needed to recognize that in her mind the stakes were high over this visit, and that no one visit can be more powerful or more important than a lifetime of love and the challenges and good times that come with that, right?

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