How To Change Despite Your Feelings

First, relinquish your role as Manager of the Universe

Jodi Barnes, PhD
6 min readJan 25, 2020

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David called to say he and his wife were back from visiting our daughter and her family over the MLK weekend. Technically, David is my ex-husband; more accurately, he is my friend.

There was once a time when our true friendship, post divorce, didn’t exist. No animosity, just what I’d call our readjustment years. Getting past our past roles and creating new ones that worked better for us, for our daughters and our spouses.

Before the call ended, I asked how our 17-year-old granddaughter was doing. I knew she’d been accepted to two universities and was waiting to hear about Chapel Hill. “I think she’s signed an apartment lease close to a technical college and plans to go there for a year.”

My heart sunk a little.

The danger of beliefs, based on feelings

Later that night, I investigated my little heart sink. Why did my body respond with disappointment and a little sadness? Hadn’t I been down this road, learned some relevant lesson before?

Our first-born (same granddaughter’s mother) had taken a different path at 17. She’d given birth to our granddaughter and soon began to work, delaying college despite a virtually…

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Jodi Barnes, PhD
Jodi Barnes, PhD

Written by Jodi Barnes, PhD

Writer and Collaborator-in-Chief of https://www.14wordsforlove.com where small acts of writing, art and conversation create multicultural connections for good.