Category Archives: relationship

Milestones: Learned, Liberated, and Empowered

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Happy 600th post on Healing Through Connection!

What do you celebrate today?

I vaguely recall marking the 200th post here; that was a big deal, as I had only set out to maintain this blog for one year. HTC turns nine years old this month! Thank you for indulging me in this reflection. I love most that I have documented a slow and steady personal and professional evolution here. My core values and writing mission remain unchanged, and my attitudes, approaches, and conclusions are both more convicted and somehow also softer now. Maybe it’s that I notice and embrace polarities more, and navigate them more willingly and skillfully? I definitely embrace paradox more openly and joyfully. Both of these practices make me happier, more peaceful, and a better communicator, I’m convinced.
I know some readers have followed since the beginning–what have you noticed these nine years?

Other milestones I celebrate at this writing:
50 years of life
25 years an MD
15 years at Northwestern Medicine
15 years of active, intentional inner work
10 years of intentional physical fitness training
1 year training at Ethos
18 months of romance audio immersion and community engagement
20 years of parenting, one kid flown

Here’s another marker, much darker: April 20, 2024 marks the 25th year since the mass shooting at Columbine High School. My friend’s daughter, who was 18 when she died there, would be 43 now. I have no words for this loss.

What is the point of marking any of these things? Fundamentally it is a reflection, an assessment, a way to make meaning of time, life, relationships–anything that matters to us. Looking back, seeing how far we have come, and then looking foward at how far we have yet to go–it lends perspective. I get to acknowledge some significance of my individual presence, activity, and impact, while also recognizing the utter smallness of it at the same time. And at this age, it all feels both peaceful and activating–more paradox!

Learned. I’ll think more on it, but learning may be the most rewarding thing we can do in life. And it only gets better with age, if we are paying attention, because any new acquisition–of information, knowledge, awareness, insight–is added to a synergistically cumulative body of experience that both expands and deepens exponentially over a lifetime. Marking milestones shows me how I have grown, what I have learned, and how vast the potential of human learning really is.

Liberated. The more I know, the more I know I don’t know. Rather than sparking fear or insecurity, rather than making me feel small and ineffective, this realization frees me. I can accept that everything I know is incomplete, that we’re all here doing the best we can with what we have in real time. I am liberated from thinking I can or should have all the answers–I can walk with anybody on any path, and we can figure it out as we go. My own knowledge, insights, and wisdom, however incomplete, are hard won; at this age I feel solid confidence in the skill set I have honed to acquire them. I also know that the honing will continue lifelong. Milestones mark the evidence of effort. It’s a joyous humility of sorts, anticipating recurrent lessons that may be painful, but maybe a little less so every time, and it will all ultimately make me better. Bring it.

Empowered. Happy to keep learning. Freed to acquire, apply, and share all learning in creative and collaborative ways to make my best contribution. Looking back on these milestones gives me confidence that I indeed have something to offer. The best thing I can do is use my own personal power to elevate others, to help them find and strengthen their own power. Together we can keep learning, keep growing, keep reaching, doing, making, being our best for one another.

Lots of people are having a hard time right now, so much pain and suffering all around us. Markers of joy and pain are all meaningful, all serve a purpose. Everything gained comes at a cost. This blog helps me process it all, gives me a place to reflect, record, and remember later. Nine years blogging and going strong, maybe even getting stronger. And yes, Book. *sigh* Momentum for that project ebbs and flows; the ultimate outcome is still unclear, and I’m okay with it. I have never loved writing more than I do now, so hopefully that portends something concrete for my future. It’s been nine years since the idea of publishing a book occurred to me, nine months since the writing workshop where I renewed my commitment. Let’s see when the next Book milestone occurs, eh? Exciting.

Let us mark and celebrate meaningful things more regularly and reverently, shall we? Not just milestones but inch pebbles and the like. Small wins, any progress, any connection, any epiphany, in any domain. It all matters if we care, if it’s valuable to us. And all the better if we can turn that reverent, celebratory energy into mutual uplift and rocket fuel for humanity’s journey toward ever stronger and more loving relationships.

What can we find this week to mark the next step on this path toward healing connection?


To Comfort Always

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Joseph Carey Merrick; Written by Michael Howell and Peter Ford, Narrated by Steve West

Sometimes a book affects you.

You already know parts of the story
Because it’s legend
And you know it’s sad
You just don’t know how sad
And you usually avoid such things

And then you see
That your favorite voice actor narrates the True History
And it’s also about the doctor
Who did good
By a patient, a lovely man
Whom the world had degraded and abandoned
So you decide to endure
Because you know the voice
And you trust it to shepard the account
With respect and dignity

And through the tragedy
That almost brings you to tears
Because how can people be so cruel
How can one person endure so much
And never harbor bitterness, resentment, or rage

Through all of that
The line that shines most brightly
That calls to your physician, helper, human soul
Is one you have not heard in years
When you should probably recite it yourself daily:

“To cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always.”

These days people expect
Cure often if not always
Relief, when incomplete, disappoints

And Comfort, well, what does that even mean
In an age when physician-patient
Relationship is defined more and more
By transaction than by
True and deep human connection

And yet
Stories like this inspire, reassure and
Comfort us
Who do it for the connection
Because in the end
It’s worth every effort

————-

The True History of the Elephant Man: The Definitive Account of the Tragic and Extraordinary Life of Joseph Carey Merrick
Written by Michael Howell and Peter Ford
Narrated by Steve West

Due to horrible physical deformities, he spent much of his life as a fairground freak. He was hounded, persecuted, and starving, until his fortune changed and he was rescued, housed, and fed by the distinguished surgeon, Frederick Treves. The subject of several books, a Broadway hit, and a film, Joseph Merrick has become part of popular mythology. Here, in this fully revised edition containing much fresh information, are the true and un-romanticized facts of his life.

©2010 Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

*I have no interests in any entities mentioned in this post


Sensing and Feeling

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“Where do you feel it in your body?”

What a revelation, the first time Coach Christine asked me this during a session. It had never occurred to me to tune in to body signs of anything other than hunger, thirst, fatigue, and pain. In this conversation, c.2005, Christine asked me to locate peace, connection, and knowing. Almost 20 years later, the answer now is still the same: deep and central, between my diaphragm and navel but toward the back–where rhythmically mobile and unsung, stable body parts meet and coexist in dynamic balance–huh, I have never thought to describe it this way before.

“What are your body signs of stress?”
“What do you actually feel, physically?”
“How would your loved ones answer this question for you?”

I make these queries during clinical interviews to help patients recognize how their anxiety, fear, and agitation manifest. Often the physical signs arise before conscious awareness of their origins. It occurs to me now that localizing joy, love, connection, and confidence would also be useful. My inner peace and knowing reside at my center of gravity, now that I think about it. I feel it as a weight, though not a heaviness. It feels solid, centered, grounded, and stable–a substantive, resilient nucleus. I have used ‘unassailable’ multiple times to describe its quality–when that perception occurs, I know I’ve tapped into something important and profound, and good things often result soon after.

Our culture does not often facilitate or value this organic, instinctual attunement to body signals.  We look to devices to tell us—how we slept, how much we moved—before we query and trust our own natural knowing.  How ironic, that we seek intrinsic information and knowledge from extrinsic sources, without questioning the devices’ precision, accuracy, and ultimate relevance. More importantly, the frenetic chaos of modern life, coupled with the siloed and and non-integrated nature of ‘data’ from any given source, can pull us unknowingly into a vortex of statistics without synthesis. I see it as an epidemic of dis-integration. How much more self-aware and -regulated might we be, how much simpler and better our quality of life, if we just slowed down, got still and quiet, and asked/answered the questions above more regularly and frequently? That investment of time, energy, and connection could yield high returns, no?

What do I feel?
Where do I feel it?
What does this correlate with?
What’s going on with me/us/my world right now?
What does this all tell me?
How do I best respond?

How do you relate physical sensations to emotions? This is the intersection of ‘sensing’ and ‘feeling’, in all senses (ha!) of both words. Fear causes an agitated vibration in my chest, a shrill buzzing, and makes me want to discharge it with mindless, moderately intense activity, like on the treadmill or ellipitical. Anger also vibrates, but at a much lower frequency (more of a thunder rumble) and lower in the body, in my abdomen. Relief comes from slower, heavier, stronger movement–lower body lifting and lumberjack/throwing motions. Love and connection feel light–both in photons and mass–my visual perceptions are brighter; my chest lifts forward and up; I feel lighter on my feet. In these moments, often after an Ethos workout or quality time with friends, I hear music in my mind, songs like River and and Granted by Josh Groban, Hallelujah and Amazing Grace by The Tenors, and Say It to Me by AHI. Listening to my Agape playlist while in this state sustains both the physical sensations and the psychological feeling of connection and love, giving me mental space and time to revel and reflect. Blog post ideas often emerge in this setting, the words flowing forth in torents of values synthesis and integration.

So this is what I wish for us all, my friends: That we see the value in attuning to our innate sensations, that we practice connecting them effectively with emotions and relationship, that we may trust our intuitive assessments and use this important information to regulate how we show up–to ourselves and one another. I wish for a confidence, an inner peace that emanates from that deep, quiet, grounded, unassailable place that makes us present, open, loving, resilient, and connected.

When/where/how does this already happen for you?
How could you get more of it?
What would that be like?