Normally I charge $150 per 1-hour coaching session, but for two days this month, with very limited availability I will be offering $75 coaching secessions! Only 10 coaching slots are available at this rate, so if you have been wanting relationship or dating help and have not known where to turn, this is your chance!

Why would you want to be coached by me?

I won’t toot my own horn, but will instead let you explore a couple of resources to see if working with me is for you. See below, but don’t take too long. This sale is only good for two days this month and one of those days is tomorrow (Thursday 8/19/10)…

~ Take a look at the two most recent testimonials from clients in the right hand side bar of this site
~ Read articles I have written on dating, singlehood, communication and relationships
~ Get to know me

Finally learn about the kind of coaching I offer and what it can do for you.

If after exploring these pages you decide that having a session with me will be of benefit to you, go to the coaching session page and click the “register for your coaching session” link.

In the discount code field enter Love and update the cart. Proceed with payment and registration and I will get in touch with you by email shortly to schedule your session.

I am looking forward to speaking to you and helping you resolve the issue that is keeping you from having all the love you want!

CNN published a great article yesterday in their living section. The article pretty much summarizes everything I tell my clients about why they end up in bad relationships and what to do about it.

In essence, people tend to attract partners who are very much like their parents, specifically the opposite sex parent. If your opposite sex parent was loving and supportive, if the relationship with that parent was wonderful, then you are very likely to attract wonderful relationship partner(s).

On the other hand, if your opposite gender parent was emotionally unavailable, or critical, controlling, etc, you are very likely to have a negative relationship pattern and attract partners who cause you grief and pain.

Here are the reasons the CNN article lists for why people tend to attract partners who are like their opposite gender parent and my explanation:

•    “Comfort in familiarity – that feeling of knowing someone your whole life”

People with traits similar to your opposite gender parent may feel familiar to you. You may not realize that this feeling of familiarity is not a good thing. It may feel comfortable, but it’s not a good kind of comfort in the end. It’s comfort in knowing that you will experience a very familiar kind of pain.

•    “Wanting to resolve the parental relationship in relationship/marriage”

Parents who are less then loving leave behind life-long wounds in their children. These wounds may be well hidden in all areas but love relationships. That childhood pain wants to be resolved, which is why people often choose for partners people who will reject them or hurt them the same way their parent did. The unconscious hope is to overcome the rejection and to MAKE this person love you, so that the childhood pain can be finally healed.

•    Working through family history in relationship/marriage

Similar to above, people will often attract partner who are like their parents in order to come to terms and learn to survive that kind of pain. It’s as if they are reliving their childhood, but this time they think they will overcome, heal and that will somehow set them free from the early-in-life pain.

Keep in mind that these three reasons are often subconscious. No one who has had less then stellar relationship with his or her opposite gender parent goes out and finds a partner like him or her on purpose.

Never the less, it would be safe to say that if your relationship with your opposite sex parent was less then great, you are nearly doomed to attract less than great relationship partners. At least that’s where the CNN article leaves it’s readers. The solutions for how to deal with this very real dilemma of attracting the wrong type of partner are, well, weak. They are: Don’t jump in, Don’t be afraid to disagree, Talk about life issues.

Let me tell you, you don’t need to know what to do when you once again attract the wrong partner. If you attract partners who cause you pain, what you need to do is learn to recognize your relationship pattern, learn to recognize potential partners who fall into that pattern, before you get into a relationship with them, and say no. And then you need to break your pattern, learn to attract a completely different partner and live happily ever after.

Let’s start here. I have created an ebook called PatternTracker to help you discover your relationship pattern. You can purchase the PatternTracker by clicking here. It’s only $15 and truly is an investment in you. If you diligently answer all the questions in the eBook, your relationship pattern will become obvious. Knowing what you keep repeating is the very first step to freedom from it.

Next, you need to know that even thought relationship patterns are natural and built in, breaking them, attracting partners who are not like your opposite gender parent is possible. How? It requires coaching, and the right kind of coaching.

I can’t exactly spell it out for you, because the process is somewhat different for each person. I am not trying to hide it, I wish I could lay it out to help you do it yourself. Breaking your relationship pattern is such deep and profound work, there’s pretty much no way to do it yourself effectively. But I can say that this is exactly the kind of work I do with clients in coaching – I fix their broken partner picker.

The process takes about six months of weekly coaching sessions and work between sessions on the client’s part. It’s definitely a time and financial investment. But in the process the clients gains the freedom from automatically attracting unhealthy partners and having bad relationships and starts to automatically attract loving, nurturing partnered. And that is priceless!

Please know that you very likely do have a relationship pattern, that it very likely has something to do with your childhood and parents and that you can figure out what it is, with help. And that you can change it and have the love you want, if you are willing to work on it.

The Columbian, A Vancouver, WA newspaper, just published an article about me in it’s Sunday edition. You can read it here.

Very exiting!

My friend and coach Jeanna Gabellini and her business partner Eva Gregory are the US Ambassadors for the for the first ever International Happiness Day on July 10th!

The goal of the International Happiness Day is to get 1,000,000 people or more to choose to experience deep inner happiness starting on July 10th!

194 countries will be participating!

How much happiness and joy are you willing to experience in your life? Why happiness? People who choose to experience happiness daily enjoy great health, fulfilling relationships and success.

The International Happiness Day Panel have created tools, mp3 audios and live phone events to support people in choosing happiness for themselves…all FREE!

Decide that this monumental day will be the first day of the rest of your happy life!
Check out the events, tools and video and the Happiness Panel here.

Masters Of The Secret: A free online course featuring 8 stars from The Secret revealing how to use the secret to create anything you want in life…

Jumping on The Secret bandwagon…

I have had an abundance coach for years so when The Secret came out I wasn’t that exited about it. I know all that stuff already! I live attraction, blah, blah, blah. Well you know what? Someone urged me to get the secret, bugged me for weeks actually until I broke down and got the audio version. And I love it!

I think you should get the audio version even if you have seen the DVD. That way you can listen to it over and over and have the information really sink in. I do think it’s that good.

Now I just got an email about Masters of the Secret free online course with interviews with stars from the secret. It’s free and it’s more exposure to principles of attraction. Get it here.

Last Coaching Session of Love Coaching Social Experiment – watch me coach Jodi, a single, bright, beautiful, late-thirty-something lady to help her attract the man of her dreams – reality TV style, right in front of your eyes and ears.

Read full introduction to this social experiment, follow the links from there to previous coaching sessions and then back to this post.

In general coaching has been hard on Jodi because she didn’t think we would do anything deep in coaching, and here we are, having gotten to the bottom of her issues.In my last coaching to Jodi I asked her what she would be willing to do to move herself forward in dealing with her relationship issues. I told her that she will have to find a way to take daily action towards growing herself into a warm, open, and connected person.

You see, at the very core, Jodi’s issue is that she does not trust people. She believes that ultimately everyone will hurt and abandon her, turn on her or just plain turn crazy and then turn on her. After all the two most significant people in her life – her parents – did just that. Her dad abandoned her and left when he divorced from her mom, and really only occasionally came back into her life when he needed something. Her mom is manic-depressive, although not abandoning Jodi physically, she was basically never there. To top it off, a significant man in Jodi’s life, Ron, turned out to be some sort of mild pedophile. Who could trust people after that?

Yet, if you were to meet Jodi on the street, talk to her on the phone, date her or even become her friend, you would never know that Jodi is terrified of being hurt and abandoned. What you would see is a well-adjusted, happy, productive lady who is a go-getter, a doer, and a self-starter.

This is a good thing to know for many of you out there. You may function well in your life, you may look good on the outside, but if you are struggling in relationships, deep inside of you lurks issues that are not going to go away until you figure out what they are and deal with them.

It’s this stark contrast between what’s going on inside and outside of Jodi that gets her into trouble. People don’t get her, people think she doesn’t need them, that she doesn’t want to connect with them, and so they don’t connect with her. Meanwhile she is starving for connection. She won’t admit it most of the time, but she is.

On top of this, when Jodi is in pain or uncomfortable she runs. After all, this is what she learned to do from her parents. When life gets too much run physically – dad – or run emotionally and mentally – mom. This means that people never get to see her fall apart, so they can’t offer her love and support – connection – because when she falls apart she runs and hides.

Finally, because Jodi can’t trust she only allows herself to connect with unavailable guys, that way she never has to fall in love and risk being loved back, never has to trust and never has to deal with her trust being broken.

The key for Jodi to attracting real love, and real friends, is to learn how to trust the right people, to learn to know that just because three people in her life were not trustworthy does not mean everyone is not trustworthy. She has to learn how to tell trustworthy people from non- trustworthy people, and only give her heart to trustworthy people. She needs to learn to let herself fall apart in front of these people, so that she can be loved, because to be loved takes a certain amount of vulnerability.

However, this kind of emotional learning does not come easily or without cost. When a person who has been protecting herself emotionally all her life starts to experience the cracks in the mask of happy-go-lucky lady, things don’t feel so great for a while.

That is what’s happening with Jodi now – she is feeling very distressed. Having realized what really holds her back from love, and faced with dealing with pain of her childhood and her past relationships, she can’t really take strong action to move forward. She is submerged in her emotions.

The major difference between working with a coach vs. a therapist is this: A coach will recommend action that will help a client’s emotions and goals and will support, motivate and cheer the client on to take that action. A therapist will sit with client in the emotions and help sooth them.

For now, in her distress and inability to take decisive strong action towards healing her heart, Jodi needs a therapist much more than she needs a coach.

While I continue to be available to Jodi to support her, I have strongly recommended to Jodi that she go find a therapist, do a few individual sessions then join a therapy group to both get support and get more true connection with more people. It is this connection that will ultimately help her heal her heart, so that she can become ready to open it up to a healthy, available man.

Jodi and I will be taking a break from public coaching while she handles the distress resulting from getting to the heart of her love issues. She will possibly come back into being coached publicly when she has gotten a handle on her trust issues and when she has learned to connect deeply with people. I will then be able to teach her how to distinguish available from unavailable men and how to attract and build a loving, life-long, sustainable relationship.

Jodi has told me that although we have not yet gotten her to her final destination if attracting a wonderful available man, she is thankful for my help in unearthing her relationship issues, so that she can finally work on resolving them.

Do you want my help in getting to the bottom of your relationship issues? I have created a special one time coaching session in which I do just that – go to the bottom of your issues and give you an action plan on how to resolve them.

Update: Jodi was not only being coached by me, but was also working as a pro bono assistant in my business.  She was offered a well paid position as an assistant to another relationship coach, and to prevent conflict of interest, she had to permanently stop working with me as her coach and as my assistant. I wish Jodi well and send her deep love.

Coaching Session #13 of Love Coaching Social Experiment – watch me coach Jodi, a single, bright, beautiful, late-thirty-something lady to help her attract the man of her dreams – reality TV style, right in front of your eyes and ears.

Read full introduction to this social experiment, follow the links from there to previous coaching sessions and then back to this post.

Jodi and I have come to a certain point, a junction in our coaching relationship.

This happens in every coaching relationship with my clients – the point when the client realizes that we are not playing around in coaching, that this is no lighthearted matter of patching up some holes in their relational ship, so that they can sail happily along. At some point, every client who works with me comes to realize that if they are going to get what they want – a thriving, loving relationship – they will have to change and grow themselves. Then the client realizes that change and growth is hard work that it will require them to learn how to interact and respond to the world and people differently. The client also realizes that change and growth takes time and energy.

Did I just turn you off to growth, change, coaching, and working on your love life? I hope not, because although the price for growth is high in terms of energy and time, the reward is an open heart and a quality of connection and love that most people can only dream about.

That is where every client gets to make a choice – stay and work with me on changing and growing or stop and go back to their life the way it was. This is the point where I make it very clear to every client that going back to the way things were means very possibly never getting what they want. Meaning, if they came to me because they wanted love and didn’t have it, and they walk away without changing, they will walk back into that same exact life where they want love but do not have it.

About half the clients at this point choose to walk away and about half the clients stay and transform themselves. I hold no grudge and wish well to those who leave. I feel sad, though, knowing that if they were willing to walk through the fire of self-transformation that they would be much happier and more satisfied on the other end. Yet I know the work we have done together makes a difference in their life. I know the words I have said will rumble around in their heads, slowly helping them to make changes in how they live. I let them go hoping that they will return when they are ready to tackle their personal transformation head on.

The clients that stay either move forward quickly, or struggle and plot along for a while, until they gain momentum and can finally start to see the fruit of the changes they are making.

Jodi and I have been going around and around for about a month now on whether she will leave or stay, and how, and what work she would be willing to do. Jodi has decided to stay and I am proud of her, and she is plotting along towards transformation.

Jodi said the path has been hard for her. The conversations she and I have, and the work I am asking her to do keeps throwing her off center. She regains her equilibrium and then she is thrown off center again. The thing is, she thinks the equilibrium is good, but she is actually more open and real when she is off center. So I keep encouraging her to be off center more, therefore allowing her to be herself more.

Jodi talks about a crisis at her work and ends her post asking me if I think she will make a good supervisor, a position she was just offered at work.

My answer is: Yes Jodi, you will be a good supervisor. Yes, you can supervise well, in spite of having unresolved relationship issues. You obviously know your job for your boss to offer you this opportunity. You are bright, and a go-getter, yes, you will be a good supervisor.

However, there is another question embedded in Jodi’s email, one that she didn’t ask, but one that rings more real and relevant to me. I think Jodi is asking if she will be ok, having discovered that she really does have relationship issues. She is no longer looking out there and wondering why every man is unavailable. She finally realizes that the issue has been with her all along, and she now knows this not just by hearing it from me – she feels it in her own being.

And my answer to this unasked question of whether she will be ok is a resounding YES! Stick with me kid and I will lead you through the dark valley of your issues and out into the light of connection and love. You will be ok.

Since Jodi is tiptoeing into her issues, our coaching relationship might go on much longer then any of us had unanticipated, but that’s ok, we have plenty of time.

So, Jodi, what are you willing to do next to move forward?

Do you want help fixing what’s not working in your love life? You can get help from me, privately, by hiring me as your love coach. Learn more about working with me as you coach.

Coaching Session #12 of Love Coaching Social Experiment – watch me coach Jodi, a single, bright, beautiful, late-thirty-something lady to help her attract the man of her dreams – reality TV style, right in front of your eyes and ears.

Read full introduction to this social experiment, follow the links from there to the coaching sessions, and then back to this post.

Jodi and I have been doing a lot of coaching by email these past few weeks. This is a problem in a way, because we are supposed to be coaching in public, and not by private email. However, I love working with clients by email.

That’s how I coach people on an ongoing basis – I work with them by phone and email. The beauty of email coaching is that as people write their thoughts and read my coaching they change and grow faster – many times faster than they would if they were just speaking to me and listening to my coaching.

Back to Jodi’s coaching.

What you will find below is the transcript of almost all of our email interaction over the past week. I am publishing it here with Jodi’s full permission.

Let me give you a bit of background to the conversation you are about to read. On Monday of last week I put up coaching for Jodi. What you will see here is a conversation she and I had by email as a result of that coaching.

4/24/2006 Jodi wrote:

Rinatta, all has been quiet for a couple of weeks and then whamo!

I am feeling overwhelmed and depressed. I feel like I am supposed to do to much. You are asking me to do too much and I feel like I don’t have a clear goal or direction.

4/25/2006 Love Coach Rinatta wrote:

Jodi, I am sorry, perhaps I have overestimated how much I can put on you or ask of you. There is nothing you are supposed to do. There is only what you want and what will work to shift the fact that you can’t connect and attract an available man.

Let’s take this one piece at a time.

Guided meditations – do them when you feel emotional pain and or are ready to heal another part of your childhood or feel disconnected and want to feel connected.

I have asked you to find a way to connect with people daily, to learn to connect through practice. Does that feel overwhelming? I don’t care which groups you join to do that. Groups where people are growing are more likely to have people who will be interested in connecting.Dustin is another story. What you don’t know is that the Internet and other places where there are singles are full of people like you, but are also full of people who are not like you. If Dustin is just a friend and you are not developing feelings for him I have no problem with him. However developing feelings for another unavailable guy at this point in the game is just not a good idea.

Ok, I don’t want you to give up and I don’t want you to wander away aimlessly.

I want you to pick a path. You are the one who lives your life. You are an adult. I have given you choices – I have spread out the banquet of choices in front of you. If you want, I can give you more choices.

Now you pick what you are willing to do and can do daily. Let’s create a schedule/action plan of what you will be doing, so that we are both clear, and then let’s move forward with it.

How does that sound?

4/25/2006 Jodi wrote:

Rinatta, I am confused about my direction and can’t tell you how to coach me, I don’t know.

I am using the experience with Dustin to better define my emotionally available guy qualities, not to wimp out and follow the same pattern. The physical unavailability is minor compared to what I have been used to. This is a different experience for me and I feel like he has something to offer, a positive role model and a nice person. Granted I will be doing other things to continue my journey to find my ultimate destination.

I am not going to find an available guy if I am in the unconnected state. I can’t do any more jumping around from one mission to the next.

If you would like to do the meditation/visualization stuff make that the path. Right now, I don’t see any steps, just jagged edges. There is nothing wrong with the end of the project being I, connected with myself, with the tools you have provided.

I can’t comment any further because I can’t put anything else together, I am wandering. I just wanted to give you what I have in my head now….

4/25/2006 Love Coach Rinatta wrote:

Jodi, somehow you want me to tell you what to do yet when I have, and you have told me you didn’t want to do it. I suspect that when anyone tells you what to do you resist. I am not asking you to jump around from one mission to the next.

I am not asking you to tell me how to coach you. I am coaching you by asking you to create a set of activities that you are willing to do on a daily basis to help you open your heart. I am simply and clearly asking you to choose activities.

Here are the choices. Can you, will you, decide on a set of these choices and start practicing it? You don’t have to choose all of them, but you do need to do something every day. Pick at least one from group A and one from group B:

Group A:
1. One or two guided meditations daily

Group B:
1. Joining a spiritual group or community
2. Joining an interest-based group or community
3. Joining a growth-based community

Dustin: Jodi, you would not be the first person who becomes attached to an unavailable guy while trying to grow emotionally. It is always a barrier to grow, because it’s like trying to go forward with one foot nailed to the floor. He may be a great guy and so here is my coaching for you: Be his friend, don’t sleep with him (I know you have not so far), don’t kiss him, don’t flirt with him, and don’t fantasize about him. If you really are learning about nice guys and using him to learn about healthy qualities in men, then just be friends.

On 4/26/2006 Jodi wrote:

Hi Rinatta, I choose.

Group A: This guided meditation. I have been setting my alarm for 30 minutes prior to my normal wake up time for meditation.

No time for B items unless you consider kickball and inline skating groups B items.

I am now committed. Dustin will be a friend as you suggested. I can do that and I understand where you are coming from.

I am less overwhelmed and not so confused anymore.

Thanks for your support!

On 4/30/06 Love Coach Rinatta wrote:

Jodi, more on Dustin. I am just wondering, you don’t just want to be friends with him, do you? You want it to be more.

The whole thing with Dustin started like this. You started to sound like a young giggly girl about to fall in love.

So I said something. You agreed and said you would not see him. Then the comments and the giddiness continued. The time line is something like that.

That is why I asked you to drop him – you may intellectually see that nothing will happen, however, I think the hunger for connection does get the best of you, and the last thing you need now is to be attached to another unavailable guy.

It may seem that something is better than nothing, but in fact it is not. In case of love, it’s better to go hungry then to be satisfied by empty calories. The hunger will make you more likely to make changes, which in the end will get you satisfied, while the empty calories will only hurt your heart more after the initial rush.

So, stay friends with him, that’s fine, but don’t allow yourself anything more. Remember, he is unavailable and you need men who are available.

Jodi has not replied back yet about her mediation experience this morning or about Dustin. When she does, I will update you on what happens next.

Do you want the same help and coaching Jodi is receiving, so that you can find your way out of being single and into a healthy relationship? You can get help from me, privately, by hiring me as your love coach.

Coaching Session #11 of Love Coaching Social Experiment continues. Watch me coach Jodi, a single, bright, beautiful, late-thirty-something lady, to help her attract the man of her dreams – reality-TV style, right in front of your eyes and ears.

Read the full introduction to this social experiment, follow the links from there to previous coaching sessions and then back to this post.

Two weeks ago I asked Jodi to get number of meditation CDs and work with at least one of them daily. Instead she went to a bookstore and got a book on relationships, one that helps her mind but does nothing for her heart.

Jodi called herself a spoiled child for not following the coaching and getting the CDs I recommended. Here is my reply and coaching to her.

Coach Rinatta says: Dear Jodi, when a person is in pain about his or her love life, he or she can’t see the solution, can’t even see that there may be a solution. Just because I say there is solution, even though the person may trust me, it still doesn’t seem right or real. If the solution does seem real, the road to the solution may seem hard, convoluted, and endless.

Some people can make big changes quickly and grasp onto any opportunity to improve themselves. However, most people can’t handle personal change at such speed, in fact they avoid personal growth because of fear of change and the pain. The pain they fear is that pain of having to confront the thing that holds them back. This pain is often far worse than the pain of doing nothing differently. This dilemma of feeling more pain for some unbelievable reward, versus feeling less pain and living life as is, is what prevents most people from making life and love life changes.

You are not a spoiled child. You have resisted the steps I asked you to take, and that’s ok. Let’s deal with your resistance.

Awhile back we figured out why you don’t have the love life you want. We have known for a while that the reason you attract only unavailable men is because you are generally disconnected from everyone in your life. We know that you have no experience with being connected and deeply loved, nor being connected and loving deeply. We know that you feel empty and drift, seizing opportunities – and men – that come to you. Finally we know you are terrified of connection, terrified that you will get hurt and abandoned.

Jodi, in order to be able to have a loving relationship in your life you are going to have to change how you relate to yourself, your life, your children, your friends, your community, your parents, everything and everyone. You cannot maintain your life and function as is and get the love that you want. And that is what I see you trying to do. You are somehow hoping for change without doing much to actually change.

Your ability to acquire the love you want directly depends on your ability to change and grow yourself into a warm, loving, open, and connected person. The only way this is going to happen is through daily action that facilitates connection. Can you hear me on this? I am dead serious here. No daily action to facilitate and practice connection equals no change in how your love life works. And the connection you need to work on facilitating needs to be with people who are available to connect with you.

I suggest you get involved in either spiritual or growth community. I would love to see you joining a couple of groups, to meet new people and practice connecting with them.

On another front I suggest you try the guided visualizations I suggested. After all, each one comes with a money-back guarantee, so if they don’t work for you, you are not loosing anything. And I think they will work for you.

Here is why guided visualization is so poweful.

Visualizing means seeing with your mind’s eye, intentionally projecting an image into your mind. Your body and mind experience, seeing with your mind’s eye, in the same way as seeing with your physical eyes. You get transported into the experience, much as if you were living the experience.

Visualization is a powerful, universally used technique in enhancing sports and test performance. It works as well in emotional healing as it does in these other fields.

By listening to, focusing on and following the guided visualizations I have recommended, you will have the experience of receiving love and opening your heart in safety – experiences you have not yet had in real life. Over time, if you work with the guided visualizations daily, the experiences of love will become more familiar to you and attracting love and connecting with people will become easier.

Here is the list of guided meditations I have given you. Choose two of three and start working on them:

• Guided meditation CD to rewrite and heal your childhood (use tracks 1 through 4 for this)
• Guided meditation CD to learn healthy relationship behavior (use tracks 5 through 8 for this)
• Guided meditation CD to change how you feel about yourself and how you view yourself
• Guided meditation CD to help you actually have the experience of being in a healthy relationship
• Guided meditation CD to help you get more spiritually connected and feel more loved and in tune

Do you think you can work a few of these guided visualizations without resistance? Will you make time for this work daily?

And Jodi, what else are you willing to do daily to get to the goal you want of having a loving man in your life?

Do you want to get help and coaching that Jodi is receiving, for yourself? You can get help from me, privately, by hiring me as your love coach.

Coaching Session #10 of Love Coaching Social Experiment – How to Build Self-Love. Watch me coach Jodi, a single, bright, beautiful, late-thirty-something lady, to help her attract the man of her dreams – reality-TV style, right in front of your eyes and ears.

Read the full introduction to this social experiment , follow the links from there to previous coaching sessions and then back to this post.

This week Jodi is wondering how to find the voice inside of her that is louder than her addiction to unavailable men in general and louder than her latest interest in Dustin – a geographically-unavailable man in particular.

Jodi said: If this path I am on is love addiction and not true attachment, it comes down to saying no to the addiction (to Dustin?). I have to find a voice that is more powerful than the addiction is. Where to find that voice is the challenge.

Love Coach Rinatta says: Jodi, the voice that is louder than love addiction to Mr. Unavailable, i.e. emotionally unavailable man, one that’s louder than settling for crumbs of love when you are so hungry for connection, is the voice of self-love and the voice for how much you are loved by the divine.

All right, let me clarify this, before you, dear reader, take me for either a religious fanatic or a complete flake.

Self-love and the feeling of being loved and supported by God, the universe, Buddha, or whatever your name for a higher power is, begins from being deeply loved by parents in a way that fills the child up. Most parents of Jodi’s generation, and the previous generations, did not know how to do this for their children.

The result of that kind of limited-love parenting: children who grew up feeling empty and unloved, lacking self-love and lacking the sense that they are loved by the divine.

The cure: re-imagine your childhood so that you experience your parents being deeply loving and create a deep connection with the divine, so that you feel deeply loved.

Work with this meditation CD to re-imagine your childhood. Work with this guided mediation CD to start building your connection to the divine. Also, get involved in a religious or spiritual fellowship of your choosing.

Jodi, while you hunger for connection to another, what you don’t know is that when you establish a deep connection with yourself and the divine on the inside, you will feel wonderfully full and quenched. Not that you will not want a relationship, but you will want one in a different way, for a different reason.

Here is the key. You have to be hungry for healing from all this, for change in yourself. You can’t just do the exercises I give you dispassionately and hope they bring results. You have to deeply want to be connected to your inner world of feelings, to gain the ability to love and sooth yourself, in a way that no one has ever done it for you.

It’s kind of like the connection with Dustin right now. When he calls, you hold your breath, waiting for him to tell you he wants you. That’s how I want you to be when you are working on growing yourself. See yourself becoming whole and integrated and connected to yourself and the world around you and be willing to do anything it takes to get there.

P.S. Jodi, by the way, did you know you and I are attached? I know, it’s long distance and so much of our connection is public. However, there is a very real connection and I deeply care about you.

Dear reader, do you want the same help and coaching Jodi is receiving, only private, so that you can find your way out of being single and into a healthy relationship? You can get help from me, privately, by hiring me as your love coach.