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b'ELIZABETH LESSER\\xa0 is the author of The Seekers Guide, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow, and the recently released Marrow: A Love Story. \\nShe is the cofounder of Omega Institute, recognized internationally for its workshops and conferences in health, wellness, spirituality, creativity, and social change. Founded in 1977, the institute welcomes more than 30,000 participants each year to its campus in Rhinebeck, New York. \\nPrior to her work at Omega, she was a midwife and childbirth educator. She attended Barnard College and San Francisco State University, and lives in New York\\u2019s Hudson Valley with her family.\\nGuiding Principle, Quote or Mantra\\nElizabeth was the bone marrow transplant match for her sister, Maggie.\\xa0 And even though they were a perfect bone marrow match, they were not a perfect \\u201csoul marrow\\u201d match.\\xa0 They had some things to clean up in their partnership.\\nIn this process she came up with a mantra Strength to Strength.\\xa0 Give from your strength to their strength.\\nThis mantra has changed all her partnerships.\\nWhen You Tripped Up\\nElizabeth and her sister Maggie are the middle two of four girls and they had a relationship that was loving but not all that intimate.\\xa0 She had been tripping up in this relationship pretty much her whole life.\\nThese trip ups had calcified over time into the definition of their relationship.\\xa0 And she found she was trapped in a bunch of unexamined stories about her relationship with her sister.\\nThey were aware that during the bone marrow transplant Elizabeth\\u2019s cells could attack their new home and there was a chance that her body might reject her cells.\\xa0 Either of those things could kill her.\\nShe realized that they had a long history of attacking and rejecting each other.\\nWhen they did the work they had to do to put down their old stories and picked up the truth of their unconditional love for each other and this led to an amazing year following the transplant.\\nThis whole episode taught Elizabeth to be braver in stopping stories from building.\\nThe \\u201cDUH\\u201d moment that changed your partnerships forever\\nElizabeth used humor to get her sister Maggie to go to therapy prior to her bone marrow transplant operation.\\xa0\\nShe sent a cartoon that showed two women talking to each other and one says to the other:\\xa0 \\u201cI\\u2019ve never forgiven him for that thing I made up in my head.\\u201d\\nSince then, Elizabeth has had so many \\u201cDUH\\u201d moments by interrupting her default of making up stories in her head about what is going on. It\\u2019s risky to interrupt story telling, but the payoff is huge. \\nShe calls this being a first responder. This is the person who is willing to take the emotional risk and going a little deeper for vulnerability and intimacy.\\nProudest moment in partnership \\nElizabeth had her entire family including grandkids at her house for Christmas recently and as she says, is usually a recipe for family joy or family catastrophe or both.\\nBy day 2 she realized she was already going into \\u201ccrazy mother self.\\u201d And she was doing all the cooking and all the cleaning etc.\\xa0 Quickly becoming a stressed out mess.\\nWhat she realized was that she was making up all these stories in her head about what was going to happen with everyone.\\nThen her son invited her to stop being the mother hen and let everyone enjoy each other and she did. This came back to her engaging with them from strength to strength.\\nWhat is the best partnership / relationship advice you have ever received?\\nYou don\\u2019t have to be perfect to be my perfect match.\\xa0 We can be perfect for each other without being perfect.\\xa0\\nThis removes a huge burden off of yourself and your partner.\\nBest Partnership Book\\n<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062367633/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0062367633&linkCode=as2&tag=speakofpartn-20&linkId=1074...'