I mentioned earlier the two wings of awareness. The first step is recognizing the fear of getting close to others - this honest witnessing of where it is in the body, where it is in your beliefs.The other wing regards what's seen with kindness and compassion.

If you can, do a gratitude practice: Each day write down three things you're grateful for. There are different ways to do this. You can have a gratitude buddy, someone with whom, at the end of the day, you exchange messages listing these three things you are grateful for. Also, you can journal it or reflect on it silently.

Presence is not some exotic state that we need to search for or manufacture. In the simplest terms, it is the felt sense of wakefulness, openness, and tenderness that arises when we are fully here and now with our experience.

We are waiting for the next moment to contain what this moment does not.

There are some things we can't choose, but in being present we can choose how we want to relate to them

As I noticed feelings and thoughts appear and disappear, it became increasingly clear that they were just coming and going on their own. . . . There was no sense of a self owning them.

Telling each other the truth and being who we are, and having space for the other person's vulnerability in being who they are, allows us to move in a kind of dance together that's very fluid and graceful.