Change Requires Being in Relationship

Change Requires Being in Relationship

Relationships have been on my mind a lot over the past year.

• Relationships with community - local, global and everything in between.
• Relationships with friends.
• Relationships with family.
• Relationships to the Divine.
• Relationships to myself and all the facets of me.

I thought it would be interesting to settle into these thoughts for the month of April and see where they lead us.

On April 20th, I'll be celebrating the end of my several-year journey to be a Certified Focusing Professional and Focusing Trainer.

Focusing is something that found me when I wasn't looking.

I'd never heard of it and I'm guessing you haven't, either.

Eugene Gendlin was the American philosopher and psychologist who developed the mind-body-spirit connection practice that we call Focusing.

Gendlin said:

Change requires being in relationship.

We know that our bodies hold on to unprocessed stress and trauma, whether it's small agitations that happen in everyday situations, or the effects of more impactful experiences.

In Focusing, we bring our awareness, interested curiosity, and presence to what we call felt senses (physical sensations, images, thoughts, memories, and gestures to name a few). As we become aware of these felt senses, we begin to cultivate relationships with them and as our relationships with these parts get stronger, we're able to gain access to our inner wisdom and intuition. 

During a Focusing session of my own, back in the fall, I became aware of something that felt like a low-pressure system hanging like a dark, grey cloud behind me.

It showed me that it was grief and that it had been hanging out in the background of my life.

It's not something that shows itself daily or even weekly, but I discovered that it just kind-of hangs out.

Occasionally, it flares up because of something in my own life.

Sometimes, it flares up when a friend experiences a loss. Other times, it flares up when our community or country experiences heartbreak, like last week when we had, yet another senseless shooting here in the US. Or when our elected officials propose legislation that marginalizes or dehumanizes people . . . worse, when that proposed legislation passes.

My cousin is well-versed in politics and understands the nuances of our government. She has a beautiful gift of being able to craft well-thought-out and well-informed letters and she's been writing letters to her representatives to share her perspective and concerns on several important issues.

She writes.

They reply.

She responds.

And so, it goes.

She's developing a relationship with the people who represent her and her family at all levels.

I want to be able to write in that way.

And yet, I feel ill-informed about current events and lacking in my knowledge of how our government works.

If I'm completely honest, I have to admit I feel immensely unqualified and my words, inadequate.

Late last week, I was sharing all of this with a friend. I woke up the next morning still thinking about her response.

It changed my perspective one-hundred-eighty degrees.

She said, "I'm thinking about this in terms of relationships and I'm wondering about writing a letter that begins something like this:

Dear Representative,

I'm your constituent. I didn't vote for you, but I wanted to introduce myself . . . 

And then, the following week:

Dear Representative,

It's me again and this week, I'm thinking about . . . "

Her idea is to send weekly letters to each of her representatives letting them know what she, as a citizen in their district, is experiencing on a weekly basis.

Her idea is to develop a relationship with officials who were elected to represent her; the people who have been charged with making decisions that impact her life . . . that impact all of our lives.

It's simple.

It's authentic.

And I think it's brilliant.

My wish for you this week is that you begin, or re-ignite, or deepen a relationship with someone (one someone, a group of someones, or a cause that resonates deeply within) in a way that causes change to happen; change that will serve humanity's highest and best good, whether local, or global or somewhere in between.

I took this photo of Silvie Granatelli's ceramic birds sitting in the garden outside of her pottery studio in Meadows of Dan, Virginia. They seemed to be having a conversation and I was mesmerized.