Tomi,

You speak of passing along what you have learned. I will pass along something that I have learned. I have spent a lot of time teaching, and people say that I am quite good at it. One thing I know to be true is that a lesson will never be learned unless it is presented with respect for the person I am trying to teach. And I have had plenty of students who required the same thing to be repeated over and over again...but if I lose patience with the person and say or do something disrespectful, I know that regardless of the flaws of the other person, *I* was wrong, and I owe them an apology.

And I have also learned that it is not enabling to stay with someone who is stuck in a bad place. When I was in my own bad place, there were plenty of people who thought I had been sick long enough, and it was time for me to "grow up" and "get over it". These people refused to see my struggle, how hard I was fighting just to keep from sinking completely. If it wasn't for the other people, the ones who stayed with me, who accepted that my struggle sometimes involved one step forward and two steps back, who believed that I was in pain even when they couldn't understand it, who offered a gentle guiding hand instead of criticism...if it wasn't for them, I might not be here today. And if they are enablers, then I thank God for enablers, because they saved my life.

Well, those are some things that I've learned.

mj