Allowing another to be as they are is more what I think of as "space." The space to express yourself and know that you're going to be accepted. That's more where I go than with the actual physical logistics of how much time you have together and how much time you have apart.

Mindfulness is a pause - the space between stimulus and response: that's where choice lies.

There is something wonderfully bold and liberating about saying yes to our entire imperfect and messy life.

When we relax about imperfection, we no longer lose our life moments in the pursuit of being different and in the fear of what is wrong.

When we put down ideas of what life should be like, we are free to wholeheartedly say yes to our life as it is.

Observing desire without acting on it enlarges our freedom to choose how we live.

The mistake we make is that when we're feeling another person is not treating us in the way that makes us feel secure and loved, we fixate our attention on that person and what's wrong with them. We also fixate on what's wrong with us. Instead, we can bring forward two wings of awareness: the wing of mindfulness (noticing what's going on inside us) and the wing of kindness (compassion to what's going on inside us).