How a challenge became a gift.

This morning, my husband, Jan Albert, and I had a moment of disconnection and it led to a most wonderful insight…

The background… we will soon have two house-cows with full udders, wanting to be milked. Over the last few days we have been talking about sharing this task of hand-milking around 20 litres of milk from two cows and whether we invite support for this. I had expressed that I was maybe keen to do more milking but that I would take a bit more time to get clarity.

Over our ritualistic, early-morning espresso coffee (with 92% chocolate) I shared that I was having second thoughts about taking on more milking. I had realised that more milk also means more cheese-making <duh> and that it might be a bit much. Jan Albert said ‘I hear you, but I think…’ and he shared some strategies of how it could still work.

That conversation didn’t go well! Bang… I got so annoyed and we ended up deciding to leave it for a bit and talk more at another time.

Then I went for a run and I had this epiphany…

When I heard Jan Albert say: ‘I hear you’ but I didn’t actually experience ‘being heard’ it really stimulated something in me. I was surprised and puzzled at how quickly I got annoyed. In hindsight that was the trigger: his words didn’t match my experience!

In the future, when I am about to say ‘I hear you…’ I want to bite my tongue, take a pause and rephrase it: ‘do you have a sense that you’ve been heard’? If the answer is ‘no’, I would like to make some empathic guesses (feelings and/or needs). And once the other person has experienced ‘being heard’, I can choose to respond with my insights.