Tough Love and why we need it.

Me and Darren had the most horrible experience last night with one of our children. We had a decision to make and it was not an easy or comfortable one. I do not believe that love hurts I believe that loss hurts, deceit hurts but not love. But when your actions are making someone cry it feels horrible, you question if it is love. The way we navigated this was to look at 2 things, what are the boundaries and values of this house and what purpose do they serve, what happens if they are not upheld? We believe in growth, in independence not dependence in facilitating the individual to have power to grow through adversity or difficulties to enable us all to have the skills to get through anything with strength, joy and resilience. One of our children is struggling and is also unable to help themselves and all our efforts are turned down so we had to make a tough choice. We set a condition, we stated the outcome of not following through with this very reasonable and normal condition. Our child made the decision to not do what was expected despite knowing the consequence, she did not think there would be a follow through (as it was not set by me and I am the consistent one lol) when it was they went mad! This love was tough because it made someone we love unhappy but yet it feels necessary to help her put her first step on a monumental mountain she has to climb to her happiness. She couldn't take the step on her own, so the ones that love her had to make her take the first step and then stay with them thorough what comes next. Tough love teaches you the reality too that there is no reward or punishment going on here, it is cause and effect. You have free will, you can choose what you want as long as you are willing to ride the effect of this. I would love to know your thoughts on this one, it is for me the hardest version of love vibration to use and yet one that society needs. Love is truth, it is not doing and telling you what you want to hear it is telling you and showing you what you need to hear despite how much you may find that uncomfortable that is the reality of it.