it started with connection

My journey to healing began just a little over 5 1/2 years ago today, and it all started with connection!

It’s hard to believe that almost 6 years has gone by since the moment I walked into therapy; a place I wasn’t sure of, a place that felt scary but yet a place I needed to be in order to find myself behind the very big walls that en-caved me everyday.

I never knew my life would change in such ways it has changed. I never knew I would meet someone I would come to trust and there be no conditions except endless support.

I never knew I could trust anyone outside of my husband and kids and the walls that surrounded me into my own shell.

Just 2 months into the start of the new journey of healing and my therapist reached out his finger and asked me to reach mine out and touch finger to finger –  a connection was made, and it’s where connection started for me 5 1/2 years ago to the day today.

It was just the beginning of a world that was about the change to where connection was going to drive me through life and through my healing – not the numbness of walls around me to live.

Moving from finger to finger into hand to hand, then hug to hug, sitting shoulder to shoulder, trust to trust, and a relationship was formed – a process that allowed me to see that there is safe connection outside of the life I only knew – where I hid behind the many walls I built since I was a child. There was connection for me outside my own walls and I could learn to trust it.

Connection is a huge part of my life today – especially in therapy. I have a close bond and relationship with my therapist that only God can understand.

He has taught me so much about trusting the outside world, sharing his wisdom, letting me be me, helping me find my own wisdom, sharing his faith with me, telling me stories about connection and God, bringing prayer into sessions, showing me that it was okay to laugh and to cry –  but it didn’t come without work in trusting that – but it all started with connection, finger to finger that started the bond of trust, that would allow me to see the world so differently.

Yesterday in session we were talking about something hard from my childhood. He had asked me a question about my past and it was very sad actually, and my therapist actually had tears! He put his hand over his heart and said it made him have tears.

At first it made me feel very shy and uncomfortable that my therapist had tears for me and the story (emotions sometimes still scare me), but then I was the one who put out my finger to touch his to connect!

Who would have known – I am the one now connecting with others. I am the one now reaching out my finger, and it was then yesterday I realized I am capable of not only accepting connection, but giving it.

My therapist made me look at him in the eyes when he had tears because he wanted me to see what it was like for someone else to be sad for me, for my past, and to care about me. He wanted me to see that emotions were okay and safe no matter who they were coming from.

I realize that my story is sad, my life I lived was really sad, and what I go through everyday to move through that is sad and that is OKAY, I can allow myself to connect to that.

Today connection is so much a part of my life. I carry the connection with me everywhere! I bring it to church and the people I care about at church.

I am more connected to the life around me instead of hiding inside the walls. I connect with people I don’t even know; something that was foreign to me just years ago.

I write, I open myself up to the possibilities that I would have never opened myself up to before. I embrace people now and I smile at them and open my heart to their life.

I not only connect to the good, I allow myself to connect to the hard and sad too, just like my therapist and his tears yesterday.

I am learning Its called connecting to life and I never knew how to do that before and feel safe at the same time.

That one moment of finger to finger 5 1/2 years ago has created a life full of connection that I never knew I had inside of me. It changed my life and that is where my healing began. That is where God began the path for me.

So I am sitting here today reflecting back on how connected I feel, to God, to myself, to my therapist who I work so hard with, to my family, my friends, and also connecting to the hard things around me, and it’s okay and I don’t have to run from it.

I look forward to conneting with others and sharing this story with you today. I also look forward to bringing this blog writing into my session Monday and reading it out-loud in the very room it all began.

It all started with connection, and I can’t wait to see where it takes me next.