Have you seen the movie the Biggest Little Farm? If you love stories of triumph, doing good and adorable pigs, chickens and puppies, it is for you. It is a story of John and Molly Chester and their vision to create a bio-diverse organic farm and the many, many challenges they overcame from dead dirt to thriving farm….

In this film, the filmmaker (and farmer) John says this profound statement:

“We’ve learned to live at a comfortable level of disharmony”.

On their farm, there is always things going wrong. Animals sick and dying. Weather creating havoc. Fires and wind to contend with. Predators and pests. And also beautiful things. Synergistic predator/pest relationships. Births of new litters, calves and hatching. Life regenerating in harmony with all the species together. Bountiful harvests.

This got me thinking about relationships.

Lately, I have heard quite a few stories of people breaking up. Nasty divorce stories. People who once loved each other now turning on each other and getting mean. Lawyers, restraining orders, fighting and kids caught in the middle. Things digressed to desperate, messy, conflict. Everyone pays when this happens. Literally.

But what if that couple had gotten help before it got so bad?

I believe every relationship has conflict. You cannot be human and agree with every single thing your partner does or else you become very good at suppressing how you really feel and then claim you “never fight”. But if you learn to communicate how you are feeling in a healthy-er way, you become good at navigating conflict and you learn to live with a “comfortable level of disharmony”.

It is not toxic. Or abusive. Or suppressive. Just disharmony at times and you have the tools to ‘right the ship’ when you go off course. And you use them.

But what happens when you are living at an uncomfortable level of disharmony? When things are really awful. Unresolved. Really hurtful. And resentment and anger just builds and builds to the point where you have no idea what to do. The only thing you know for sure, is that you do not want to keep going this way.

This is often when couples come to me.

When it has been awful for too long. One of the first questions people ask me in their very first coaching session is “s there hope?”. My answer is always yes. If you still care about the relationship, there is always hope. If you are willing to do the work. Any relationship can come back from the brink of divorce but like pretty much else in life, the longer it has unrevalled the harder it is to repair. Not impossible, but harder. So if you are in a season of uncomfortable disharmony in your relationship, reach out. Before it gets worse.

I would love to help.

xo