PATHLIGHT by Annie Wenger-Nabigon: Love Lessons
Originally from the U.S., Annie now enjoys retired life at Pic River First Nation. Annie Wenger-Nabigon, MSW, RSW has been a clinical social worker since 1979 working in mental health, family therapy, and addictions services. She is a doctoral candidate at Laurentian University in Sudbury, ON. Annie also works part-time as a consultant for LYNX, owned by her husband Herb Nabigon, MSW. Herb provides traditional Anishnabek teachings and healing workshops for both Native and non-Native organizations. Together he and Annie provide training and education to professionals on a wide range of topics blending mainstream and traditional approaches in healing. They also provide cultural safety and anti-racism training. Do you have questions re: mental health, living a good life, relationships, etc. ? Annie would love to hear them and may even include your questions in a future column (published by-monthly exclusively on OntarioNewsNorth.com) Send your comments or questions to Annie via email to Pathlight@OntarioNewsNorth.com
Love Lessons
The month of February is famous for its romantic holiday, Valentine’s Day, named after St. Valentine, a Roman monk in the Third Century. Most of what we know about the (unofficial) patron saint of love comes from the Martyrologium Romanum, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2001. On page 141 it tells us that he was killed for his faith on February 14. A quick review of Wikipedia shows the mythology surrounding this person, who may have been a woman, St. Valentina, martyred in Palestine in 308 AD.
So little is known about the individual whose life we celebrate by giving flowers, candy, and cards with love messages every February 14. How is it that we say this holiday is about love? It is apparently a story about death as much as it is about love. I’ll leave it to my readers to do their own research on these matters (simple as the click of a “mouse”), but I do wonder – is Valentine’s Day a day for love, or is it about something else in our times – maybe profit margins?
I was looking for some Valentine cards to mail to my grown-up daughters the other day when I started thinking about “The Love Lab”, which in professional circles is known as The Gottman Institute (http://www.gottman.com/) in Seattle. Dr. Gottman and his colleagues have been researching love for several decades to better understand the role of love in healthy relationships. They focus on couples, but what they have learned over the years can apply to other relationships, too. For example, they have been able to determine within the first 10-15 minutes of observing married couples’ interactions whether or not the relationship will end in divorce. How can they know this? Time and experience, and simple scientific principles, tell them that a couple with less than 5 positive interactions for every negative interaction will not survive.
Think about how this can apply to your other relationships with your children, relatives, co-workers and neighbors, and add up the number of times you interact positively with them. This can even apply to pets! Check yourself, and see if you consistently provide at least 5 or more positive “warm fuzzies” for every time you hand out a “cold prickly”. If you want to have happy, healthy relationships it might be good for you to ditch the criticisms, yelling, and moodiness, and look for ways to interact positively. If a correction is needed, find ways to give feedback and make observations and requests in a positive way, instead of behaving aggressively, cursing, complaining, or being passive-aggressive.
Recently I started seeing information on Facebook about the abuse of women and girls around the world. The non-profit organization, One Billion Rising (http://onebillionrising.org/) is organizing events to take place on February 14, Valentine’s Day. The goal is to end the violence that 1 in 3 women worldwide will experience in their lifetime. Evidently, the sacrificial love shown by St. Valentine/St. Valentina has taught us very little if so many women experience so much violence. Men also experience violence in their lives, as do children and animals, not to mention our Mother Earth.
What is the root cause of so much violence in our societies? Can the love we celebrate on Valentine’s Day inspire us toward happier, healthier ways of relating? A Cherokee proverb says, “A man’s highest calling is to protect woman, so she is free to walk the earth unharmed.” What can we do so all of us can walk unharmed? What needs to happen to heal the earth? What do we need to know and do in order to bring more love into all our relationships? I doubt that sending flowers, chocolates and cards are going to do it. I doubt that possessiveness, jealousy and controlling behaviors have any part in love, or any type of relationship. I think people will need to make greater efforts to learn how to have a good relationship with a love interest, or a family member, or a neighbor. What can help people learn to do that?
I was pondering this question one morning as I was waking up, and remembered the first time I got a Valentine Card. I was seven years old and in the second grade, attending a new school with a rule that was new to me – all the students were to buy or make a Valentine Card for each of the other students in class and bring them to school on Feb. 14. At my “old” school, a small building tucked into the side of a mountain in an isolated region of north-central Arkansas, no one even talked about Valentine’s Day, probably because we were all too poor to buy a card or art supplies to make a card.
I can still remember going to the store with my mother to pick out a small box of Valentine Cards, and candy hearts to put into each envelope, and being excited as the cards from my classmates piled up on my desk. What a wonderful way for a new student to be welcomed! No one was left out. In the years to come, I noticed that it was a day which sometimes seemed more like a popularity contest than a day to practice good-will and fairness. I learned the painful lesson that Valentine’s Day can be a source of real heart-hurt for children, and even adults, who are empty-handed at the end of the day. It is hard to learn how to care for yourself lovingly when holding that heart-hurt. You have to dig deep to find love within yourself. Learning to love you first and best is the key to the ability to truly love others.
What will you do this Valentine’s Day to exercise your ability to love and make a little more of the “love that makes the world go ‘round”? The lessons of love I have learned, from the “Love Lab” of second grade to Dr. Gottman’s writings, tell me that self-respect and respect for others, is a precious gift we can give. Think of love not as an emotion, like falling “in love”, but as an action taken with every breath. Acts of love begin with respect and caring, and grow to nourish the hearts of everyone and everything around us. It isn’t always easy but it will always bring something good into our lives (and I’m still going to buy chocolates on Feb. 14!).
Have a happy Valentine’s Day!!
Annie Wenger-Nabigon, MSW, RSW
Pathlight@OntarioNewsNorth.com
ANNIE RECOMMENDS:
- The Hollow Tree by Herb Nabigon
- EldersTeachings.blogspot.com
- Pathlight: Journey to a Good Life archives
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