Good morning from Martha’s Vineyard. What’s on my mind this morning is the beauty and joy of feeling included, and here’s why. Yesterday I was recording an episode about my experience here on Martha’s Vineyard when I got super emotional and nixed the whole thing. I’ve been noodling ever since what it was that triggered that emotion. I started thinking about a recent episode called the prisms of our wounds and how we experience things through past experiences that wounded us. Without going into my wound in this particular case, I remembered a great story.

I was in Italy. I was just turning 40 years old when I got divorced. Now I had been in a long-term relationship and married for 14 years and I found myself starting a new life. I had a new apartment in Milan. It was beautifully decorated, and I felt this exuberant sense of freedom and positive expectation.  But on Sundays, I felt this crippling sense of isolation and loneliness. Back in those days Sunday was a family day and families came together for lunch or dinner, and I inevitably found myself alone. So, I decided that instead of waiting to be invited, I would be the one that invited everyone into my home. Let’s just say that feeling went away, yet it still lingers  and I often hear myself say thank you for including me.

Fast forward to why I got so emotional as I was trying to tell the story. Here on the Vineyard, I’m privileged and delighted to be with my friend Gail and her family. Both of her children came to visit, and one of the daughters brought her boyfriend. It was their last day on the island and I started telling myself this story that I should let them be together as a family. Basically, I should stay behind.  So I told them I’m going to stay behind and do my podcast and use the computer her daughter was lending me to do the show.  Then they told me that they were going to the airport directly from the beach, and of course that meant the computer was going with them and I wouldn’t be able to use it.

It was an incredibly beautiful and sunny day, and as they were packing their bags and getting water for the beach, I started to feel badly that I wasn’t going with them. So, I made it into a joke and I said, Oh, I’m feeling a little FOMO here. And in unison, all three of them said Come with us!! I felt this incredible sense of joy, I ran upstairs and threw on my swimsuit and off we went. The end of the story is just basically that we had the absolute best day ever, and what stuck with me was how incredibly meaningful and beautiful it felt to feel included.

I know from my own therapy that telling myself this story that I should let the family be alone is partially a defense mechanism. And I know the origin of the wound related to being included or left behind, but that’s not what this is about. For me, what stuck with me is that incredible sense of joy and feeling loved.

Anyway, I’m not sure where I’m going with this except for my note to self that not only does it feel good to be the person who invites people in, but it also feels wonderful to be the person who is invited. It takes so little to remember to call someone or to invite them out for a walk to get an ice cream cone on a sultry summer night.

I’ll leave you with that for today until next time from my heart to yours.