Feeling connected

Even if we’re loved, we might not feel connected to the person who says they love us. Love is not a noun, it’s a verb. It’s not enough to say you love someone, you have to show it. There is a difference in being loved and feeling loved.

I really loved this blog post by Leonard Jacobson a few years ago. He talks about the importance of being present. When we’re present, we’re connected, we're paying attention to ourselves and whoever is before us. It’s not always pleasant, but it’s real. Paying attention, or being present, makes us and others feel heard, seen, acknowledged, validated and connected.

This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attention ~ Mary Oliver

I think a lot of us are literally starving for the nourishment that connection can give. Try tapping on the word 'connection' and 'feeling connected or disconnected' and anything and everything that this brings up for you.

Closure

The word closure drives me nuts. Or more to the point, it’s what it means when others say it that annoys me. When I hear the word closure, what I really think I’m hearing is “Are you not over that yet?” or “I don’t really want to listen to your problems” or “Can’t you keep your real feelings to yourself and pretend like the rest of us?”. When we don’t have closure it seems to make others a lot more uncomfortable than it makes us.

I think what we really want around something or someone that has been painful is peace. Some things in life can only be carried, not forgotten about, as this article says so well.

We want to be able to get on with our lives, without whatever it is incapacitating us. This is called integration, not closure. I don’t think things finish as neatly in life as the term closure suggests. When things are incomplete, unfinished and undigested, they can really disturb us, which is why Ivor Browne calls trauma “unexperienced experience”. When we get to digest whatever it is, we get to have peace around it. We might not get closure, but we’re more than ok with that. Because whatever it is/was doesn’t have the same power over our peace of mind anymore. We can live peacefully alongside its remnants, if there are any.