Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  And Happy New Newsletter – this is my inaugural newsletter and first time blogging on my new site.  I know, I am behind the times, but I am dedicating this next year to getting out there in a bigger way and sharing important information with the world about happy, healthy and satisfying relationships.  Yes, such relationships are possible, and crucial for your wellness.

Perhaps you have big plans for 2013?  If creating a solid, secure and satisfying relationship is on your list, please follow this blog.  I can’t promise that every post will be riveting, but I can promise you that I will do my best to share with you what I know about the new science of love and how you can use it to your advantage to create the relationship of your dreams.

My big WHY is to help couples feel safe with each other and connected in a meaningful way, and to help educate everyone that relationships are integral to our health and wellness.  It is important that we all come out of our caves and take risks to be together.  As an introvert who can get fairly comfortable in my own cave, I am trying to do that for you 🙂

Long term social isolation has been shown to be as harmful to us as smoking or obesity.  Further, there is ample research out there these days indicating that a happy relationship has so much to do with physical and mental health.  Happy and secure relationships translate to healthier and more connected families, and I realize this might sound like a stretch, but ultimately a more peaceful world.  I hope I can help do my part to help disseminate some of my expertise and knowledge in this area to reach more individuals and couples in 2013 than ever before.

If your relationship is in shambles, not to worry.  If you and your partner are both committed to working on it, there is serious hope for you, even if you feel desperate and maybe a little hopeless too.  I have worked with so many couples who have been on the brink of separation despite wanting to be together, who worked hard to create an even better relationship than when they started.  There are ways of doing this.  It requires courage, taking risks and strength, but on the other side of the wall, where you are connected and once again each other’s number one, it is so worth it.

If you currently aren’t in a relationship, read on anyway.  You will be in a relationship at some point, so you might as well know what it takes to make it work, and you might as well know about the latest science behind love and what that’s all about.  Great works of art, music and poetry have been lauding and scorning love since time began, and only in the last 15 years or so has science caught up with what the arts have known all along:  Love is crucial to our survival as a species.  Now we are finally starting to understand it – so please stay tuned for more information about this amazing topic and how you can have the most and the best of it in your life.

Lastly, if you are in a happy relationship, whether through hard work or just naturally, I applaud you.  You are already doing so much right, but please feel free to continue following with these posts if this is a topic of interest to you and if you have any room to deepen and strengthen your relationship further (who doesn’t?)

Regardless of whether your relationship is in shambles, whether it is the happiest relationship in the world, or if you have no relationship at all, I have a book recommendation to get your New Year started off right.

The book is called  Hold Me Tight:  Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, by Sue Johnson.  I urge you to check it out.  I’d say it’s the most important book out there for anyone interested in relationships and how to make theirs the best it can be.  It came out just a few years ago and has helped countless couples make sense of their relationships and come out stronger as a result of it.

Much of my work as an Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist is based on the some of the principles that are also detailed in Hold Me Tight. I have found this book to be an incredible supplement for couples who are coming to therapy already, in addition to being helpful for anyone who doesn’t want to go to therapy.  I recommend it to everyone – my friends, my therapist colleagues, and of course, my clients.

Please check out the book and feel free to leave comments on the public blog about your thoughts about it.  I’d love to hear from you.

So, with that recommendation & request, I am signing off, wishing you a Happy New Year filled with love.  I am so excited to get out here, connect with you, and help you connect with the one you love.

Cheers to your best relationship,