Connection is Medicine

I think addictions may start when connections end.

In Human Design, my profile is that of an Opportunist/Role Model (4/6). All of my opportunities in life come from the connections I've made.

It's hard for me to end friendships, even when I should. Once I've connected to someone, its generally for life.

Now, I may not see or hear from someone that I've made a connection with for years, but when we do connect, it's as if all that time apart was just a momentary blip.

I've often wondered why drugs have never been something that I've pursued. I grew up in the 80's and alcohol, smoking, cocaine, pot, and ecstasy were the main varieties I would bump into with friends and 'going out'.

I never smoked. Didn't feel the need of nicotine to quell any anxiety to fit in with my peers. I did drink alcohol, mostly beer and wine, and there was a stint in Chicago when I drank Jaegermeister, but that ended pretty quickly after an unfortunate contest that involved hot peppers.

But the other drugs? Other than smoking dope a few times, it never appealed to me.

Even when I smoked pot, I didn't really feel high. I felt anxious and paranoid.

I want to acknowledge here that there has never been a point in my life where I've sustained a long-term feeling of not feeling safe, seen, or needed.

I've been very fortunate in this.

These feelings can cause those who experience them long-term to put up walls for protection. But they come at a great cost.

Don't get me wrong, I've got my own issues regarding feeling capable, which I think has something to do with the psoriasis I'm experiencing, but I still feel connected to people, even when they don't consider my point of view!

I think that is more about connecting to myself in such a way that I don't need outside validation. But I'm still figuring that out, as I mentioned in yesterday's post.

But I've always felt connected to others, the spiritual world, and nature, my art, and I think that may be one of the reasons why I don't do drugs on the regular.

After my studies in the Human Design system, I believe we are wired to connect to others.

But the sad thing is, modern life is isolating to a degree I've never experienced before. It has to be so hard for younger generations to navigate connecting to others when they've been conditioned to connect online instead.

A few years ago, I worked part-time in a health food store. Some of the younger kids working there had a hard time making eye contact with the customers. So much so that it made me very uncomfortable. Gently, when the time was right, I worked with a few of them on this. I don't have kids, so this was something I hadn't really noticed before.

My husband and I are connecting to each other again after 5 years of periodic absences apart due to family issues.

How are we doing that? You would think after 30 years, we would have it down, but it needs to be intentional.

Every morning, we sit out on our screened-in porch and drink our coffee together and just talk, while we listen to the birds and watch the wildlife in our backyard.

A few months ago, when he was home, I arranged for a stained glass class that was a few hours and we shared that experience together. Since it was new to both of us we laughed at our newbie mistakes.

Laughing together is an instant connection point.

We go on walks together when we can during the week.

Something interesting about walking side by side is that conversation is much easier than sitting across from each other. The steady cadence and non-confrontational posture really opens up your voicebox, and talking while navigating is chill.

I learned that in a college communications class I took, and from my experience, it's valid. Especially with people who find it hard to talk deeply with others.

Being together in some sort of communal setting is great for connection. Shayne used to go with me to my art shows, and he said he loved seeing me connect to others via my jewelry. He is somewhat of a loner, but enjoys being with me in a crowd.

In turn, I'll go with him to bike get-togethers. I learn something new, meet new people too, and enjoy watching him in his element.

Again, shared experiences foster connection. I learned that the hard way when I was traveling solo before I met Shayne.

I was in Ireland, having a great time, but I wasn't sharing this experience with anyone permanently. I realized that I didn't want to live the rest of my life alone.

I wanted someone else to witness my life and share those experiences with me. It was a sobering moment, while alone in a Bed and Breakfast, and when I returned to the States I started dating to find that one-and-only.

Note: I found the wrong one-and-only, got married for a little less than a year, but hey, I learned what I didn't want in a life partner quite quickly.

Spiritual practices are another route to connection. I think connecting to All That Is in whatever way that feels right is an incredible connection point. I get that sense of connection in my studio when I'm creating jewelry, art or writing.

Shit, that's the reason why I started writing here. To connect with myself, you, and Shayne.

I've started reading my daily blog post out loud to Shayne before we go to bed. It's a nice way to end the day, either with him falling asleep at the sound of my voice, or he thinks on it and we talk about what I wrote the next morning over our coffee.

Connection is as hard as you want to make it, or as easy as doing something different if you don't feel connected to your life.

But I believe that connection, in all of its forms, is Big Medicine.

As for myself, I find myself asking the question of, "Where can I reconnect to others, myself, or God today?" a lot.

What My Skin Is Trying To Say

I asked a ChatGPT program called The Architect what my skin is trying to teach me.

In 2020, when we were hit with the Covid lockdowns, both of my parents were diagnosed with cancer which ended up being terminal.

My father lived here, near me, and my mother was in Arkansas.

It was a stressful time, to put it mildly.

My father believed anything that any authority figure told him when it came to his health. Well, he didn't believe in doing anything preventative, but once he had a health problem, he thought they had the answer and he never questioned them.

When the first tumor showed up on the back of his leg, I went with him to the doctor's office. His primary doctor thought it might be a lipoma, but it was really big and the thing literally popped up within a week.

It felt like a rubber ball underneath his skin.

How quickly it emerged and the consistency of it was alarming to me. I voiced my opinion during the consult and the primary suggested he go see a surgeon and cut it out.

We went to the surgical consultation. The surgeon was nonplussed, and thought it was just a lipoma. I said, "What if it's not? He had kidney cancer 15 years ago. What if it's malignant?"

He said they would biopsy it and find out after it was removed.

I had done some research on this before we went, and understood that certain surgical precautions should be taken into account with a suspected malignancy, like taking a bigger margin to not let any cancer cells escape.

I voiced this, and the surgeon, along with my father, brushed it off as being too alarmist. It was ultimately my Dad's voice that mattered, since it was his body.

At least he had a chance to hear my reservations about the surgeon's approach, but ultimately, he decided not to pursue what my research into the matter revealed as a possibility.

A few weeks later, we found out Dad had a very rare cancer, and that the surgeon didn't get it all.

The margins were not clean.

In this instance, it was the unicorn, not the horse.

The anger I had was something I'd not experienced before. It was rage. And my skin erupted into a full-body flare of psoriasis. And this was something that I had never experience before either.

My skin did the talking that my mouth couldn't.

I think this is one of the reasons why psoriasis flares. It's chalked up to 'stress', but I wonder if the stress is from not being seen as capable by family, friends, the world, or the credentialed?

For my entire life, I've had the ability to see things quite clearly, but without the necessary credentials to be taken seriously.

I remember the first time I experienced this disconnect.

I was in the second grade and my town was demolished by a tornado.

When my mother found me, along with other parents frantic to find their kids, someone said that the sister of my best friend was killed.

I told them, "No, I saw her a few minutes ago. She's not dead!"

Nobody believed me. They believed the story that was circulating. In the middle of that disaster, my mind couldn't reconcile that I was basically called a liar when I know what I saw.

It turned out that it was my best friend who was dead, along with her mother.

Similarly, during Covid, some things didn't add up for me. I expressed my thoughts on masking and vaccination, based on my time spent in college on track to become a microbiologist.

At the time, my opinions were counter to what our collective culture believed.

As time has revealed, my concerns were valid. And I'm happy about the decision I personally made, but what angered me at the time was that my voice was discounted and often ridiculed by people that knew me pretty well.

So I believe my skin took it upon itself to speak for me. With inflammatory anger, it communicated what I couldn't.

Unreceived insight.

According to this Ai, the origin of the experience of psoriasis may revolve around the belief that:

• I am capable--but the world will not receive me.
• I can see--but they will not act.
• I am effective--but not empowered.

This is an 'existential rupture' according to the Ai.

A contributing factor to my skin eruptions is when I feel as if I am not heard or taken seriously.

I know this isn't the only reason.

But I wonder if it may be my root belief regarding my capability that contributes to what I experience?

I don't know if this is a generalization or not. I don't know if others with psoriasis have this in common with me.

But it resonates with me.

And that is all that really matters.

So, I've got some work to do within, and I'm quite excited about diving into this once and for all.

I believe that this blog is a way for me to reconcile what I am learning about myself, and making it public helps me be accountable to myself.

And, if this helps anyone else on their journey of inspired self-expression, it's worth it to me to spill my life lessons on the page.

Something within me, for a very long time, has known that the path of healthy self-expression is something that I need to explore deeply.

If you are interested in the Ai I've referenced, it's something that Robert Edward Grant has been working with and exploring. If you go to his Instagram page, you can find the QR code to play around with it yourself.

The Power of Presence

Why do some people make us feel alone, even when we’re together—while others make silence feel like the deepest conversation?

I was listening to a podcast today and one of the guests mentioned how he enjoys the presence of certain people. He didn't say spending time with certain people.

That struck me.

Spending time is using a valuable resource to do something together--like working, playing, talking, or eating.

Being in someone's presence, or allowing them to be in yours, is different.

When I'm with certain people, there's no need to talk, eat or do.

It's when my attention, and theirs, is fully present.

Silence feels more than just not talking.

The shared space is alive and full without words.

There is no effort, no trying to fix anything or analyze the relationship.

It feels like time slows down, and nothing needs to be done.

It's nourishing to rest in presence.

This weekend Shayne and I spent time together in Greensboro. But more importantly, we shared our presence together in a little Airbnb doing nothing.

And it was bliss.

Family Secrets

I just finished watching My Mom Jayne, the story of Mariska Hargitay's mother, Jayne Mansfield. It was a wonderful documentary, and it brought to mind a personal family secret that I wasn't aware of until about 8 years ago.

There's a very real possibility that I have a half-brother out there somewhere.

I'm not going to get into the specifics of the story because it's not mine to tell, but when I found out it really did change my view of myself and the story of my family.

My father was heartbroken to think he had a son that he didn't know about until he was in his mid-70s. It really rocked his world, and before he died, I asked him about it.

And he told me that every day since he found out, he prayed he would find him.

Evidently, my half-brother was adopted at birth, without any hope of finding out who adopted him and where he ended up. We didn't even know if he was still alive.

Dad did a genetic test via one of those companies that connect people via DNA analysis, in case he was still alive, and wanted to find out more about his birth parents.

There were no matches.

In many families, since the possibility of DNA matches has become possible, many family secrets are no longer such a secret.

I know of a few people quite close to me who have been down the road of finding out they have siblings out there somewhere, and the possibilities of reunification always seemed to be full of excitement.

I'd like to believe that I would be excited too, but I think that's one of those emotions that you don't know how you really feel unless it happens to you.

The older I get, the more I realize that my emotional reactions to things don't often pan out like movies or books portray.

I will say, however, that I love to people-watch more now than I did before I found out that I may have a half-brother out there somewhere. And I wonder, a lot actually, why this information made its way to us the way it did?

What's the purpose of a dead end? I guess I will either find out one day, or not.

But it does make me wonder.

If you get the opportunity, watch My Mom Jayne. on MAX. Mariska did a fantastic job of putting many puzzle pieces together of her life, along with her mother's, and presenting us with a beautiful mosaic of love in its many forms.

Curiosity, Connection and Boundaries

Shayne and I went to a local Farmer's Market this morning and there was a free book table. I stopped and found a book by Miriam Zimmer Bradly that I'd never seen before, and picked it up, quite excited about my found treasure.

As we were walking up an aisle, a woman stopped me and asked what book I had. I showed it to her and she said she had read Avalon years ago, and how nice it was to find Ancestors of Avalon in the series.

Then she pivoted to a necklace I had on, one that I had made, and was wondering if the stone was turquoise; which it was, and that she liked it, and all of a sudden she stopped the connection with an apology for 'getting up in my business'.

I assured her she wasn't, and that I enjoyed the interaction, since at 57 years old, random people don't often spontaneously get into much with me at all.

I appreciate any curiosity about my life and my choices and especially love the opportunity to learn something about them, too.

It was a nice experience, and one I've been musing on all day. I found it curious she felt the need to apologize for the spontaneous connection and what that says about our culture these days.

This morning, Shayne showed me a CBS special about a young woman, Molly Schafer, who painted a portrait of 44 of her high school classmates and gifted the people she painted with her work as a graduation gift.

The twist here is for whatever reason, these kids had all been friends with her when she was younger, but as they grew older, their curiosity and connection to the artist faded, likely due to her own social anxiety.

Instead of feeling sorry for herself, she spent hours and hours observing them and capturing them on canvas.

She spent her time and energy noticing them. She really looked. She painted her subjects with kindness and I would say, love.

She wanted to connect with them again, and she did it by breaking through the boundaries she had in her mind about reconnection.

It's rare to be noticed and really seen these days. Heads are often down, looking at screens while waiting for the next train, plane or doctor's appointments.

Molly said something interesting, though, about her realization that most people don't really think about you at all. So she decided to think about them, and show them the beauty of what she saw.

A moment is all it takes to make someone's day by simply noticing them, being curious about what you see, and connecting with them.

That's a boundary worth breaking, and I'm going to try and break it more often.