Are You Loving Well?

The easiest reaction to a stressful world is to pull back, close the shutters, and decide you’re done with people. We’ve felt that impulse too, especially when politics, headlines, and even everyday friction with neighbors can make connection feel impossible. This mini episode of No Shrinking Violets is a reset for anyone who wants more peace and belonging without checking out of real life.

We start with a personal shift that makes the theme concrete: moving from a quiet, nature-filled home into a smaller city townhome with shared walls and nonstop sound. Instead of letting irritation turn into judgment, we explore a simple but powerful reframe that supports mental health and emotional resilience: what if the thing you’re labeling as “rude” is also someone trying to take up space in the only way they can?

From there, we walk through five practices inspired by a piece on how to love better: love yourself (including your “dandelion” traits you keep trying to uproot), see the innocence in others, stay permeable instead of armored, learn to listen deeply, and build a “house of belonging” where connection actually nourishes you. Along the way, we use nature metaphors, real-life examples, and practical cues you can try today to reduce stress, soften conflict, and create healthier relationships.

If you’re near central Pennsylvania, we also share details for the Nature Knows book launch party in Lancaster on May 12. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s been feeling disconnected, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show.

Transcript

Welcome And Why Connection Matters

Mary 0:00

Hi, and welcome to a mini episode of No Shrinking Violets. Today I want to talk about connecting more to the world around you. And this is a time where I think many of us want exactly the opposite. We are very frustrated by what's happening in the world. We feel that we may be diametrically opposed to even our neighbors, maybe some people in our family, because there's a lot of things happening politically that can make us feel disenfranchised, make us feel disconnected. And I want to talk about connection because of that. But it's also been on my mind because having moved into a very different living situation, moving into a city where if you had told me even a year ago that I would be doing that, I would tell you you're nuts. Because I love solitude, I love nature, and we are in a smaller home for sure. Really no garden to speak of. And you know, I'm a gardener. Um, but we're also in a townhome. We're sharing a historic townhome, but we're sharing walls with other people, which again would have you could have blown me over with a feather if you told me a year ago I'd be living in the city. So if you listen to any minis recently, you know we've done this, you know some of the reasons why, but I want to talk about connection in relation to that and a little bit in connection to what's happening globally or even nationally, and why it's important that we try to connect more. And I was thinking more about this because I was reading an old volume of the magazine Experience Life back from September, October 2024. And there's a very short article by Henry Eamons and Amy Preisek, and they talk about how to love better. And the reason that it is important to figure out how to not only love other people, but love ourselves better, it gives us a much deeper sense of well-being, and it certainly improves our health. So when I talk about love, let's think of in terms of connection, because sometimes saying love everyone, that's a little bit too much for people. So I'm gonna talk about five different aspects of really deeper connection to support your well-being. And I'm predicating these on this article. And the first one is sometimes the hardest one, and that is to love yourself. And in this short article, they talk about a fable, a story from Islamic tradition, and it was about a man whose garden was overrun with dandelions. Now I can relate, um, dandelions can be a problem, but I've had thistles, I've had English ivy, things that really were difficult to get out of my garden. I tend to love dandelions because they're very healthy for us. But anyway, so his garden was overrun with dandelions, and he asked neighbors for advice. How do I get rid of them? And he tried all these things, but nothing worked. So then he went to a gardening club and he asked them, what should I do to get rid of these dandelions? And their advice didn't help either. So finally he went right to the top. He said, I'm gonna talk to the king's gardener. So he asked the king's gardener how to get rid of dandelions, and the gardener thought for a moment and then said, There's only one more thing you can do. Learn to love the dandelions. And when we think about ourselves and loving ourselves, we can get caught up in the yeah, but it's like, yeah, but there's this part of me. I don't really love this part of me. And I can talk about the dandelion part of it too, because a lot of people they only look at dandelions like the man in the fable, that it is that they're terrible, they're invasive, they're a pain. They have a very deep taproot, which means it's very hard to get rid of them 100% because if you leave any bit of root, it will typically regrow. But here's the thing: dandelions are one of the most adaptable plants. They have wonderful nutrients in their leaves. They can really kind of procreate anywhere. Those fluffy seed heads go everywhere. So if we look at it just as a plant, it's an amazing, amazing plant. It just happens to often grow in places we don't want it to. But when we think about the parts of ourselves that we don't like, that those are things that they're just part of who we are. If you have strong opinions about things, you know, I always say our strengths are are our weaknesses. So maybe you really like things to be orderly, and sometimes you can get bossy. Or maybe you um conversely, maybe you're somebody that really goes with the flow to the point that you don't plan well enough. And so you try to have a party, or even you try to get to work on time and you you aren't able to execute because you know, you're like, oh, I just go with the flow and it'll all work out. So try to embrace those parts of yourself that make you feel a little cringy. They're your dandelions. Okay, the other thing that I'll say, number two, learn to see the innocence in others. So I think that when we look around, we can do that with a very judgmental eye. We'll look at someone and see what the problem is. And I can go back to my current situation where there is not 10 minutes during the day that goes by that there is not a car going by in the street in front of us with their music blaring. And you might even hear it sometimes. I try to sort of clean up my audio, but every now and then there's somebody going past and literally can shake the walls. And I could judge that, I could focus on that. Actually, someone recently had a theory about that. When people live in the city, they take up their space in a different way. And you don't have a lot of space in the city. We came from a half acre property where I lived before. We had plenty of space, but in the city, you don't have a lot of physical space. So people can take up their space through sound. They don't think about, oh, this might be infringing on my neighbors because we're all sharing a space and it's a really different mindset. But I think what I try to do is I try to think about, okay, what music is that? You know, I try to be open to someone doing that just because they love music. They're not trying to be a pain in the ass. They are just playing their music. It's a different way of thinking. So it's shifting from judging to just giving people the benefit of the doubt. Okay, the third thing, this is a little bit related, be permeable. I love that word. I love the way the authors, Eamons and Prasic, say that permeable, because we are part of everything. And I think sometimes, again, especially now, we might want to just pull the shutters closed, cut ourselves off from everything. It can be painful to read the headlines, we can see um others suffering, or we can really disagree with others' opinions, and it can be a good excuse to say, I'm done, like I'm just not going to do this. And I talked a little a couple weeks ago about a walnut tree, and that it puts a chemical called juglone into the soil through its roots, and it can damage other plants. So it really has this kind of toxic way of being in the world. And we can sometimes want to do that. Say, I'm just gonna put it out there, I want people to stay away from me, but we are part of the give and take of our ecosystem. And while we can say we're going to not get hurt, we're not gonna open ourselves up to anything, we're gonna put our defenses up, that in another sense is hurting us. Because when we do that, we're keeping everything out. And some of the best things in life are the messy things. And we don't grow unless we're stressed. And that's actually trees. You've heard me say this, I'm sure, if you've ever listened to other episodes, that trees are stronger when they're challenged because when the wind blows, the roots have to go deeper and get stronger. So start to ease up a little bit. If you're somebody that really loves those strong, impermeable boundaries, try to just take a deep breath. Drop your shoulders and try to think about yourself as being permeable. Number four, learn to listen deeply. And I actually at one point, though this was decades ago, I dated someone and he said to me, and that he said it in a way that he was kind of proud of it, he said, you know, I don't really listen, I just wait to talk. And I mean, at least he was embracing his own self. But um, when we listen deeply, we can more easily access lack of judgment. Because when we're really listening to someone, and that isn't just with our ears, we're watching their body language. We are trying to put anything aside, like our phone, what's going on around us, really focusing on that person, we build a connection with them. And listening deeply might also allow us to consider things that we haven't before. And sometimes to go back to learning to see the innocence or not judging people, not jumping to conclusions, when we listen, we're gonna hear more and we're going to have an easier time of not shifting into judgment because we're just trying to be present. And number five, they call this learn to build a house of belonging. We all want to belong. And I think when we don't feel that we belong, we start to do the shutdown, we start to do the judging other people. Um, and so I think if we can think about where do we belong, sometimes we instead of instead of reflecting on where do we want to connect, we sometimes look at where we are and say, well, I don't belong here, but I'm just gonna have to deal with it. And so one of the things in my book, Nature Knows, which actually by the way launches May 12th, um, I talk about belonging as like plants, there's certain plants that can't grow in certain climates because they just it doesn't suit what they need. And so I think sometimes building that sense of belonging, we might have to step a little bit out of our comfort zone, but we also might have to consider do I need to go in to a different space? You know, is it that I'm trying to connect to people that I don't really have anything in common with, or I wouldn't feel fulfilled if I did connect with them? So belonging is sometimes something that we can't always, I guess, describe as much as feel. Like we feel when we don't belong, it doesn't match. So are you connecting in ways that nourish you? Are you, in a sense, building that house of belonging, building that community? Because when you feel that you belong, and that might be another thing to reflect on, what does it feel like when you are in a space where you feel accepted, where you know you belong? And sometimes it might be, and this can take us back to number four, learning to listen. When you do that, you will probably help someone else feel accepted and feel a sense of belonging. And in turn, that will come back to you. So trying to be open, trying to, in a sense, love well, it's very challenging because we have been wounded. And when we have wounds, there, I mean, you can see scars, right? Often from many of the physical injuries you've had. When a tree gets a wound, it actually gets a callus. It's called a callus and it's a rough spot. And where we can see where the injury has been. So we probably all can, you know, tell everyone, here's where my injuries have been, here's what injured me. But the challenge is to stay open and to stay connected because we really are meant to be a community and we are stronger when we not only accept ourselves, but when we listen and accept other people and then help ourselves find that area of belonging. So that is my thought for the day. Before I go, in three weeks, I am having my book launch party. I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. So if you are living near me, if you're in central Pennsylvania, it's going to be in Lancaster on May 12th in the evening. It's gonna be a fun time with free things and um hopefully some special snacks. I'm working on that. But if you want to sign up for my launch party and get more information, I have a link in the show notes. It's maryrothwell.net forward slash launch party. And you can just give me your name and email, and you will be RSVP'd, tell a friend, forward this episode to a friend so they can sign up too, and you can have a girls' night and it'll be fun. And I hope I get to meet so many of my listeners that night. So thanks for listening. Those are my thoughts for the week. And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.