Good morning from Milano. Before I get started today, I want to acknowledge the many comments I got about my episode on Monday called ‘Close to Quitting’. I don’t want to spoil it if you didn’t listen to it. I’ll just say that I think the title gives you a good idea of what it’s about. It definitely landed with a lot of people and I’m glad I didn’t talk myself out of it. In fact, I’m going to talk about something today and just now, as I was getting ready to sit down, I was thinking wow, maybe that’s something I’ve talked about in the past. And to be honest, one of the little negative birds that sits on my shoulder says to me – you’re repeating yourself, don’t repeat yourself you’ve told that story before –and that does get in the way sometimes. So I’m going to use this moment as a disclaimer. Of course, I am going to repeat myself sometimes. That’s because what I do here is I talk about things that are happening in my life or things that I notice, and there are themes. And part of having an awareness practice (I consider Dear Constance part of my awareness practice) is noticing themes and recurring thoughts one has. In fact, recurring thoughts are a clue that there is something you need to pay attention to.

Anyway, moving on. One thing I have noticed recently is I’ve had a conversation with many different people about their relationships with their mothers. Mothers are a fraught theme for many people. I was talking to my friend yesterday and we were talking about another friend, and her relationship with her mother and how complicated it is. We were discussing the fact that this particular woman is an only child, and it all came around to my friend telling me that one of her closest friends has been warning her that she’s going to have regrets if she’s too tough with her mother.

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