“Meet me in hard to love places”: The most helpful book I read in 2018

After a look at my Amazon order history for kindle books in 2018, I see I bought 32 books so far this year. Most of them I thoroughly enjoyed, some I haven’t even opened yet and there’s one in particular, that I’d like to share with you about: Meet me in hard to love places. It touched me and helped me on a level that I feel is worth sharing with the world and I’m convinced it can help so many more people out there. In fact, I’ve recommended the book to more people than I can remember ever recommending a book to in the past and if you know me more personally, you’ll see I recommend books often.  

The title is “Meet Me in Hard-to-Love Places” (not an affiliate link and I’m not paid in any way to write about this :), written by Eric Bowers, a counselor, NVC trainer and musician. From the very beginning, even the title itself already really drew me in. 

In short, it’s a book about having inspiring relationships. That’s a lofty goal I thought when I picked it up, because who doesn’t want to have those kinds of relationships with their partners, friends, co-workers? And yet, I also felt some slight despair reading it in the introduction, because of disappointments I felt in the past reading other or similar books that were intending to offer the same. It was even more of a relief when the book delivered so well on it’s intention for me after reading it. 

Since I read the book, I believe it has helped me dramatically improve the relationship to my girlfriend and my close friends. Most importantly, it’s given me a framework, backed by science how to move through difficult moments when they come up. Since I’m imagining that’s something many people out there would like, I can’t help but shout from the rooftops about it. 

Science, poetry and empathy

What made this book so helpful for me was how varied Eric pulled in resources to underline his point. A really important point for me to build trust is to recognize a scientific rigor in the way the content is represented. Very eloquently he pulls from the following research to highlight how relationship patterns to our loved ones happen and how they might be changed if we wish so: 

• IPNB: Stands for “Interpersonal Neurobiology“, a term that was coined by Dan Siegel, a brain researcher interested in how we make connections with other humans and with ourselves. A lot of the book builds on the basis of Siegel’s insights and that felt really safe to read. 
• Attachment Theory: This scientific model has become very popular based on studies of how infants and toddlers relate to their caregivers to signal either healthy or more problematic relationships with them. While I’ve come across attachment theory a number of times before, there are few places that have done such a great job to help me understand how I move from my current attachment style (“avoidant attachment” for myself) to a more desired, healthier style, called “secure attachment”.
• NVC: Stands for Non-violent Communication, and has been developed over the last 40 years or so as a way to create more compassion when we speak. The way Eric interlinked NVC with the above two scientific bodies has been a real home-run for me in terms of bringing science and practice together. It gave me a real sense of how exactly, with what kind of language, I could express myself and break out of the old cycles of relating to others that I wanted to shift. 

Eric also has a very unique style in his writing where he intersperses his texts with poems he wrote to express his points. In the book he describes how we use both of our brain hemispheres to integrate information and he makes you practice this purely by reading the book. The informational parts of the texts naturally engage our “problem-solving” oriented side of the brain, whereas the poems engage the other, more creative, free flowing side of ourselves. I believe that for me this was key to take in the very points Eric was trying to make. Too often I find myself reading something, agreeing with it intellectually, but then getting stuck in where to go from here or how to make this more a part of my life. 

Here is one I particularly enjoyed and cried some relieving tears over:

Dragons and Demons

Maybe our dragons and demons are waiting for us to love the fire
Maybe our walls can come down now
Are you ready, am I ready to meet you in hard to love places
Place your bets this breath with you is the best one yet
Let’s take another
Ever ending, ever beginning, ever in the middle
Maybe our dragons and demons are waiting for us to be bold and humble Maybe our love can melt the mortar
Are you ready, am I ready to meet me in hard to love places I’m all in.
What do we lose and what do we win
And what are the chances
Ever ending, ever beginning, ever in the middle
Are you ready, am I ready
Maybe our dragons and demons are waiting

Another thing I loved was whenever I was close to finishing a chapter, I got all excited and amped up to go for it and do it 100%. Every time I’d hit that point, Eric would ever so gently remind me that all of this work takes time and patience and won’t happen overnight. The perfectionist part that wanted to “Get everything right” was so relieved that that isn’t what I needed to do and instead I can gently move towards these things that resonate so deeply with me. Phew, what a relief!

9 concrete methods to practice to create more inspiring relationships

The last two chapters of the book are purely focused on exercises to help you slowly move into the direction of a new relating to your loved ones. A lot of them are long-standing, tried and proven methods from different wisdom-traditions, mainly from NVC and that has been also very helpful to me. 

In total there are 9 exercises ranging from how to provide empathy and relief to yourself when you’re in a tough spot, to doing it with friends to doing deeper healing work alone or in groups. Over the last year I’ve done most all of them with great success, where I’ve gained a lot of trust in the long-term efficacy of these practices. 

One practice I’d like to highlight in particular is called “Empathy Buddy Calls”, which is something I continue to do once or twice a week with dear friends of mine. The idea is to have a structured call with someone you trust to help you unpack or resolve something that’s been difficult for you. Eric describes in detail how to setup these calls for success, so that you, as the person wanting support will get exactly what you’re looking for and return to a place of clarity and understanding. 

That’s it my dears, I discovered I can handily embed a sample view of the book above. I hope you can give the book a read and if you do, please let me know what you think of it, I’m curious to know how it landed with you and how it compared to my perspective. You can always email me at l.widrich@gmail.com, I’d love to hear from you! 

Meet Me In Hard-to-Love Places: The Heart and Science of Relationship Success, by Eric Bowers