Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
Chief Seattle
We must connect with others if we are to heal. We must.
It is mind-bending, particularly to the uninitiated, to comprehend that all members of the human community, in fact all life forms, are connected in a most sacred way, just as surely as all the threads in a tapestry are woven into a unique and beautiful design. When we fully absorb this fact it's also spiritually satisfying, because it assures us that we are not dangling all alone in this universe, hanging by a thin thread that can break at any moment. Indeed, we are not dangling at all. We are connected.
I didn't feel any sense of connection, of being joined to any other person or to anything in the natural world, prior to taking my seat in the twelve-step rooms. And my awareness of connection didn't happen right away. As a matter of fact, even though I generally felt it while sitting in a meeting, it was gone once I got home to my empty apartment. Alone, I was haunted by the feeling of “dangling alone in the universe” once again.
My family of origin didn't comfort me with the connection all humans crave, but not because they made a conscious choice to be disconnected from me. They simply didn't know how to do something they had not experienced themselves. Nor did I get that craving genuinely satisfied through alcohol, drugs, and the many people I claimed as my hostages prior to turning my life over to the God of my new understanding. My search for connection had taken insidious forms. The perpetual unease I felt was debilitating. And my drive to relieve it, from age thirteen on, nearly destroyed me. I heard the same story from so many other people.
My drugs of choice gave me only intermittent relief from the isolation I felt. I don't think I understood at the time what was happening. I surely didn't know I was becoming dependent on alcohol or men for my wavering sense of well-being, but both were temporarily providing it, nonetheless. Gravitating to the opposite sex for attention felt so natural. Unfortunately men didn't really protect me from the haunting isolation I felt. In my misguided search for connection, I was traveling at a high rate of speed down a dead end street.
Sitting here today, telling this story, convinces me of the ever-present constant of God in my life. This constant is in your life, too. There is no other explanation for the fact that I survived to tell my story and to gather the stories of others to share with you. And that you have survived to read them. The connection we crave, you and I, has always been “a fact of our existence.” Our fearful ego just prevented us from feeling it.
It's key to remember that we are, in reality, always connected. We simply don't recognize it.
I now know that I was never disconnected from God's loving attention, nor was it possible for me to be separate from all other life forms either. Our ego has unyielding power to keep us from being aware that we are forever safe and always just where we need to be, in contact with those we need to know, experiencing all that we agreed to experience. Now that I understand the divine nature of our journey, my soul is quieted.
I prefer to think of e-g-o as an acronym for edging-God-out. That way I always understand just what is really going on when I am in a state of mild depression. When I feel that sense of ennui, even today, I know that my ego has risen to assert control over my thoughts and feelings. I do wish I could say this doesn't happen to me anymore, but alas, I have to be vigilant or my ego will “act out” and I'll feel separate, alone, and very vulnerable—a place I do not relish.
I have just come through a period like this. I can't be certain what brought it on. Perhaps returning to our northern home after a winter in Florida triggered it. Or maybe the loss of another dear friend. In a period of fourteen months, five very good friends have passed away. Even though I fully believe in an afterlife, and all five of these friends made a transition that wasn't entirely unexpected, just knowing that I can never sit down and have a cup of coffee with any of them again makes me very sad. Three of the five were women I had known for more than twenty-five years, and we had shared thousands of hours of good times. I feel a hole in my heart just talking about this. But at the same time, talking about it is what will heal me and you, when there is that need. I also believe that my connection to them has continued, just in a different form. I consider them the “hovering angels” who watch over my every move. A wonderful image, and a special kind of joining.
The recognition of our connection to others is our path to healing, and yet, how easily overlooked this is. Without this recognition we live very much in our unease and isolation, and this is deadly. That deadening of the soul is what draws so many of us to the poor choices that often bring us close to death. That I escaped the many dark alleys and dangerous liaisons owes solely to the God of my understanding who had never relinquished His hold on me, a hold of which I wasn't even conscious.
One of the biggest tragedies of dysfunctional families is that most family members actually live unaware of their isolation from one another. It's not that they don't feel the separation, but they just don't have words for it. Most tragic of all, they don't understand that it could be different. They don't know that there is a solution to the loneliness they feel, or that the solution is to reach out to one another, to truly see each other. But when no one has offered that hand to you, or revealed his or her own vulnerability, the door to the openness that heals remains closed.
Our isolation from others contributed to our dysfunction, both in the family and separate from the family.
Letting others know exactly how we feel, even in our brokenness, is the invitation that leads to wholeness—theirs as well as ours. And when any two people consciously make a connection, or recognize one that has always been there, a shift in the universe occurs. We are waking up, recognizing what always has been—the web of life.
How grateful I am that for the last nearly forty years I have been privy to the knowledge of God's presence in my life and the connection to the universe that is the gift we all share. When I forget His presence and the connection it assures us, the old fears that governed my life before regain control.
How fortunate, especially in these moments of forgetting, to be journeying with men and women who understand the truth, even if they don't always remember it. It's not an accident that this is so. As I've already mentioned, our journey is divine, our path is predetermined, and we selected our own encounters a long time ago. We share the assignment to serve as teachers as well as students within our many connections.
It intrigues me and has for years that many of us have had to experience the overwhelming ennui of imagined disconnection in order to finally seek, and to really feel, what was always true: connection! It's a mind bender to become aware, however that happens, of the reality of who we are and have always been in the living universe, in spite of our denial of this awareness. Among the many I interviewed for this book, no one claimed more certainty in early life that he traveled alone, needing no one in his life, than Charlie, the pilot. He had been a very proud loner, he said. As mentioned in an earlier chapter, he had many siblings, all girls, and he had never planned to marry. He didn't want to need someone or be needed either. His vocation made it easy to “fly solo” through life. He was sure it had made him an attractive catch too, which made his conquests of women all the more exciting and successful.
The unexpected did happen, however. He found his way into twelve-step rooms and discovered, as so many do, that life has much more to offer than heretofore expected. Forging connections to similarly minded travelers began to interest him. In his family of origin, the warmth of connection didn't exist because there were too many people going in too many directions, and alcohol masked whatever desire for connection might have existed. It became natural to seek isolation rather than dare to be vulnerable, which could be taken advantage of. That expectation is what we commonly imagine will happen with strangers too, so when Charlie first came into “the rooms,” he maintained his distance for safety reasons, he said.
Connection can begin in the simplest of ways.
What Charlie felt the first time he held hands in the closing prayer was the warmth of connection, however, and it took him by surprise. He said he felt “a presence,” and didn't know what it meant, only that he wanted to feel it again. Because of our unease we fear the very antidote until it happens, even against our will at first. And then we seek it again and again, much like we sought the effects of our alcohol or drug consumption. Both elevate us. Both change our perspective. Both give us hope. But just one of them offers hope that heals.
Charlie did heal. And he nurtured his connections to many others. He began with his family, some of whom chose the same path he had selected. He sought the connection with newfound friends. Eventually he even considered sharing his life, full-time, with a woman he met in the rooms. She understood the importance of connection, he said. She was a walking example of it, in fact. He said the risk of letting her know him fully, which is truly necessary if disconnection and isolation are to be healed, lessened, and he took the plunge.
Now, many years later, Charlie and this woman continue to walk the walk and share the path of connection, serving as an example to many others that vulnerability is worth the risk for the payoff it promises.
There were a number of interviewees whose lives now reflected a very different worldview than the one they had nurtured for decades. My role with each of them was so intimate, really. Having others reveal who they were, what happened, and who they are now was like experiencing a speaker's meeting over and over again. And in every instance, what had been a downward spiraling life became an example of miraculous survival and an example to others that nothing has to defeat us. There is no dysfunction too great to be lessened and then healed if we are willing to close the separation that has existed for so long between us.
Unless we vulnerably connect with others we cannot heal our ailing souls.
William is a superb example of this. You remember William—he had a cold, neurotic mother, an unavailable, older sister, and a father who strictly maintained his distance from the family whenever possible. Thus the family consisted of four individuals who rarely spoke to one another; when conversation did occur, it was curt, oftentimes demeaning, and never loving or joyful. William, as you will recall, excelled in sports so that he'd have something he could point to with pride, but his parents never acknowledged his pursuits. They never attended his games. They never followed his activities at all.
William did make friends relatively easily, owing to his excellence as an athlete and student. But, like Charlie, he didn't allow himself to connect with anyone at an emotional level. It was safer that way. He was also very lonely, but that was a feeling he was comfortable with. He let down his guard when he married the first time, but as you might recall, his wife died a long, slow death from cancer. William's vulnerability was bruised, for sure. And by the time of his second marriage, he had steeled himself to remain relatively aloof. Even when his wife's alcoholism became apparent to some, he tried to ignore it; that is, until it interfered with her role as mother.
William's wife had been sober on and off so he could ignore her disease. It was an illness he didn't even believe in initially, until it spilled over into their family life all too often. Then it became time for action and he turned to Al-Anon, took his seat, and soaked up the good news about connection and how it heals us. No dysfunction is sacrosanct. All of them give way to connection, eventually, a connection that quietly mends the ailing heart.
Healing is the reason for being among one another. Our tasks are to witness and listen and nurture.
What is it about connection that is so special, that changes us so completely? All of my years in the twelve-step rooms of recovery, which have included literally thousands of meetings, thus tens of thousands of individual encounters with people, have convinced me that looking into the eyes of someone else, offering them rapt attention, and being a witness to their story is what expands one's heart. By doing all these things, we in turn invite the healing to happen. We don't heal alone. We heal in concert with others. William began to heal, he said, from the very first meeting he attended. He had never heard others talk so openly or vulnerably about their struggles, struggles he too had experienced in his life, particularly in his family of origin. He knew he had gone to the right place for help.
When I met William, I could sense he was accessible, a soul seeking healing. I could immediately connect because of his openness to and sharing the wisdom he had already gathered. And because I sometimes sat in the same meetings, I could observe how eager he was to include others in the good news he had discovered. He set such a good example and could draw others along so easily because he spoke with such clarity and conviction. He had suffered. For years he had suffered, alone and lonely, but now he was healing and he wanted others to see that they could heal too. He was one of the first people in the circle at the end of every meeting to offer a hug and a kind word to newcomers and old timers alike. He had become the embodiment of connection before my very eyes.
Connection requires vulnerability. It also blesses those who share.
It doesn't happen that way or that quickly for everyone who longs to feel the connection that William felt. Valerie, for one, remains rather guarded. Although her story makes it apparent that she has come a long way, she has had a long way to come. Her family of origin, if you'll remember, was extremely damaging to her psyche. Her father died with nothing resolved, and her mother, though finally sober and in contact with Valerie, remains guarded herself. Valerie is slow to trust, and when trust is lacking, genuine connection is too. The obvious happens next: no trust, no connection, no sustained healing. Even though Valerie has worked hard to heal her wounds, they persist. Lucky for her she has a special someone in her life, and providing she reaches out and allows that person in, she gets a daily reprieve.
When I think about my own healing as a result of the connections I have made and continue to make daily, I am convinced that no one has to live a wounded life unless they choose to. The tiniest of connections is a beginning. What are some of these? Smiling at a stranger. Asking the clerk at the grocery if she or he has had a good day. Calling a friend or relative just to let them know you are thinking of them. Taking a few minutes to meditate in order to secure your own connection with the God of your understanding. Making a point of ending the day with a prayer of thanksgiving. We have to do our part in the connecting process if we want to change how we experience the events of the day.
Smiles, soft expressions, quiet questions, kind responses, prayers, and meditation are just a very few of the techniques for connecting.
One of the people I spoke with who connected in an almost mystical way with others was Harry. What made this so surprising from my perspective was that of all the people I interviewed, his family of origin might well have been the most dysfunctional. His brother was certifiably mentally ill, both parents were unavailable in their own way, and out of desperation, he turned to heavy drugs in his junior high years. Heroin was his drug of choice, and until the day he got clean he never gave any thought to really changing the way he navigated through life. He expected to be dead by age thirty.
I met Harry early on in my own recovery and was stunned by how easily he shared his emotions, how quickly he identified them and, in the process, made it acceptable for those listening to him to be vulnerable too. I believe the first time I talked to him, he cried. And he cried often as he listened to others share too. I have actually been more than occasionally in contact with Harry for many years and have been able to observe his healing both from afar and through the many conversations we have had. I am inclined to say that he actually embodies connection at a deeper level than ordinary human beings. When you converse with Harry, his attention to your words is intense. His questions are piercing and intimate, not out of nosiness but because he genuinely cares, unlike so many who engage us in conversation.
In my observation, one way that Harry affects change in others is through the unmistakable way he zeroes in on your struggle, whatever it is. He can mind-read, it seems. Lives change because of Harry.
Without conscious connection, no healing will occur.
We make tiny changes in how we take notice of those we travel among, creating threads of connection that forge deeper bonds. We are alive in this moment in time to experience the healing that results from these bonds. What a thrill it has been for me to talk to so many and learn how connection manifests itself, bringing about a changed human being, a changed family, a changed community, and finally a changed universe. It reminds me of what Mother Teresa said so many years ago: “Be kind to every one. And start with the person standing next to you.” What we do for one, we do for all. What we take from one, we take from all. The question we have to confront is, “Am I adding to the goodness, the connection of the human community, or am I detracting from it?” Whatever the answer, we can address it accordingly.
The gifts we gather from surviving our dysfunctional families are adding up, as you can see. We can claim resilience, perseverance, a sense of humor, the ability to embrace forgiveness as well as surrender, and now the ability to truly connect to the journeys of others in an intimate way. Our growth has been phenomenal. We need to be proud of our hard work. Survival is, in and of itself, a feather in one's cap. To get to claim all of these gifts stands for so much more beyond mere survival.
Before we turn our attention to the next big gift, let's review what we learned about connection from these few stories:
Our isolation from others contributed to our dysfunction, both in the family and separate from the family.
Unless we vulnerably connect with others we cannot heal our ailing souls.
Connection can begin in the simplest of ways.
Smiles, soft expressions, quiet questions, kind responses, prayers, and meditation are just a very few of the techniques for connecting.
It's key to remember that we are, in reality, actually already connected. We simply don't recognize it.
To now recognize it makes the conscious act of connecting easier.
Connection is always happening with more than two. Any single connection is really making a connection with everyone.
Connection is akin to the waves in the ocean. They never stop in the forward momentum that brings them to the shore.
Connection requires vulnerability. It also blesses those who share.
Without conscious connection, no healing will occur.
Healing is the reason for being among one another. Our tasks are to witness and listen and nurture.
Before closing this chapter, let's consider some examples of recent connections we have made with loved ones or strangers. Share them here or elsewhere.
What healing has yet to be initiated in your life? Can you conceive of a plan for beginning the process?
What connections have you made that have impacted you the most? Why these?