Salee Reese

ballet

Love doesn’t involve pain or control … it sets you free. 

   ~Don Armstrong

Not long ago, a former client—who’s in her forties—was telling me of an incident involving her father. He was giving one of his typical straightening-out-her-thinking talks and at some point he began shaming her . . . “just as he did when I was ten,” she said.

That was a definite mistake on his part. Why? Because she doesn’t just sit and wilt anymore. Nooo. She’s earned her black belt in speaking up. So she called him out—objecting to his unwelcomed shaming tactics and firmly declaring that it wasn’t okay thirty years ago and it isn’t okay now.

He excused it away by saying he “does it out of love.”

Her black belt response:

“Dad, being loving is building someone up, not tearing them down.” He had no words.

Wow!

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