Barry and Joyce Vissell
(Barry Vissell, MD and Joyce Vissell, RN, MS)
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Relationship experts Expert
Barry and Joyce Vissell Quick Facts
- Main Areas
- Relationships, Personal Growth
- Best Sellers
- The Shared Heart, Models of Love, Light in the Mirror, and Meant To Be
- Affiliation
- The Shared Heart Foundation (SharedHeart.org)
Articles by this expert
SelfGrowth articles and saved writing connected to this expert.
Article
The Shiny Pen: Taking Responsibility in Relationship
For a relationship to be healthy, both partners need to be willing to take responsibility for their own part in an argument. This is sometimes very difficult to do. It is always easier to see your partner’s fault than your own. If you’re angry or defensive in a situation, look deeper and you will find your part. Joyce and I sometimes tell the following very humbling story in our workshops to illustrate mutual responsibility:
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"Angels on the Road"
Barry: If we only knew how many times we are rescued by divine intervention, we would completely trust this higher power. There would then be nothing to worry about – ever! Joyce and I had yet another powerful reminder of this truth – and divine miracle – last week.
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"The Golden Key to Happiness"
Several days ago we attended the Cultural Awareness Program at Mt. Madonna School where our grandson is in first grade. His grade of ten adorable students reenacted a Buddhist story from Cambodia. In this story a single mother has three grown sons. She is very conce ed that her sons do not help her or anyone else, and care only about money. She confides this conce to her beloved sister and together they come up with a plan. The mother draws her three sons together, shows them a treasure chest, and says, “When I die, you can open this chest.
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"Can Our Light be Totally Eclipsed?"
A few weeks ago, Joyce and I got to experience the total eclipse high in the mountains of Idaho, in the exact center of the “zone of totality.” It was, for us, the experience of a lifetime. In our seventy-one years of living, there have been other major eclipses, but we have never been in their direct paths. And not since the year 1257 has there been a total eclipse that has passed across the whole of what is now the United States.
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"Unsuspected Heroes among Us
In 1960, I was fourteen years old and my mother was the first civil rights activist that I knew. She did not march the streets. She lived her beliefs. She had Blacks, Muslims, Gays and other minorities over to our house for dinner almost every Sunday. She treated them all with the greatest respect and honor like they were part of her family. She also spoke up loudly if anyone said anything against one of these minorities. She often coached me, “Joyce, remember every person is a child of God. It does not matter what color their skin or their religion.
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"To Really Trust a Woman"
rn(Excerpt from the Vissell’s not-yet published book, To Really Love a Woman)
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"Be a Miracle"
Miracles happen all the time. You probably know someone who has had a miracle happen to them, or maybe a miracle has happened to you. I know a woman whose cancer tumor disappeared ove ight after she and several others stayed up all night praying. The doctors said there was no medical explanation for this. I feel it is a miracle how I met Barry at the very young age of 18, and that we have been able to be deeply in love with each other for 53 years now.
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A Mother's Final Gift
[We are excerpting one last time from our new book, A Mother’s Final Gift: How One Woman’s Courageous Dying Transformed Her Family]
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***To Really Trust a Woman
To really love a woman is to give her your complete trust. I love the line in Bryan Adams’ song, “… and when you find yourself lying helpless in her arms, you know you really love a woman.” To lay helpless in her arms, you need to give up control and be vulnerable. You need to trust that she will not intentionally hurt you, that she is looking out for your well-being, fully on your side, and watching your back. Even more importantly, you can trust in a higher power expressing through your beloved, an abundance of love and caring that can come through her.
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"REALationship: The 7 Primary Ingredients"
Okay, it’s a cute word. But what does it mean to have a real relationship, a relationship with substance? What does it take to have a relationship that not only lasts, but also thrives with loving connection? From growing with my beloved of 52 years, Joyce, and from our work with couples for 42 years, here are our 7 primary ingredients for REALationship. Every one of our couple’s retreats includes these elements. Of course there are many more ingredients but, if you sincerely understand these basic 7, the others will come along quite naturally.
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"The Joy of Service"
“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” --Rabindranath Tagore
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"The Joy of a Long Love"
December 21, 2018 is our 50th wedding anniversary. We got married during a snow storm in Buffalo, New York at 7pm in the evening. The church was filled with candlelight and poinsettias. My uncle played the organ, my sister-in-law sang and the minister learned Hebrew prayers for our combined Jewish and Christian ceremony. We spoke our own vows, which at that time was unprecedented. It was the happiest day for me, after four years of loving Barry and having people tell us that a Jewish/Christian marriage just cannot work, we were actually doing it.
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