RELATIONSHIP RECIPES...Key Ingredients

Every recipe - every food we eat - whether basic with only one or two fresh veggies - or processed with way too much stuff added - has ingredients.  Then there are recipes and ingredients of a different kind.  "Sometimes we are fed not by food but by the energy in our lives .  These moments and feelings demonstrate that everything is food." J. Rosenthal (2008) Integrative Nutrition: Feed Your Hunger for Health and Happiness.  Joshua calls this our Primary Food!!  He goes on to share this information with us, "The quality of relationships explains a lot about the quality of a person's life and his or her health.  Just as no one diet is right for everyone, no one way of relating works for everyone." (p. 145)
We have been training for DARE to AFFIRM: The Dance of Relationships (tm) and asking people what Nurturing Relationships look like for them.  We have developed, from multiple brainstorming sessions, a list of what we call the 16 Key Ingredients.  Gradually I am going to put each one of them - with a brief definition - up on the right column of this blog.  Then I will ask people to combine the ones that are important to them and create a Relationship Recipe.  Soon I will share some that we have gathered.  It's a different way to think about what matters most to each of us in building relationships - and also to realize that there is uniqueness in the ingredients in each relationship recipe - there is never a one size fits all.  We are all totally unique individuals and isn't that just totally special?!?!?