Reflections on Love, Healing & the Human Journey

The Freedom to Love Without Losing Ourselves

There is a kind of freedom I have been discovering slowly.

Not the freedom of needing no one.

Not the freedom of detachment or independence.

And certainly not the freedom that comes from building walls around the heart so that no one can hurt us.

It is the freedom to be deeply connected to another human being without abandoning ourselves—or asking them to abandon themselves—in order to remain connected.

For much of my life, love and responsibility became intertwined.

If I loved you, I wanted to help you.

If you were hurting, I wanted to make it better.

If I could see something that might protect you from pain, I wanted to tell you.

If I believed I knew something that might help you heal, there was an urgency to somehow get you there.

I understand that part of myself with much more tenderness today.

She wasn’t trying to control anyone. She loved deeply. She felt deeply. She wanted the people she loved to be okay.

But love, I have learned, does not always require action.

Sometimes love asks us to help.

Sometimes it asks us to speak.

Sometimes it asks us to challenge.

And sometimes the most loving thing we can do is remain beside another person without interfering with the sacred unfolding of their own life.

There is an enormous difference between protecting someone and accompanying them.

Protecting can say:

I see what is happening. I need to do something.

Accompanying says:

I see you. I trust your capacity. I will walk beside you while you discover what belongs to you.

That distinction has changed something fundamental in me.

We Each Carry a Lamp

I have spent many years sitting with people—in therapy, spiritual counseling, groups, retreats, yoga, meditation, spiritual study and community.

Again and again, I have been reminded that every human being carries a lamp.

My lamp illuminates the path from where I am standing.

Yours illuminates the path from where you are standing.

We may be looking at the same experience and see completely different things.

Neither one of us necessarily needs to extinguish our light so the other’s can shine.

Neither of us needs to convince the other that our view is the correct one.

Perhaps wisdom isn’t finally arriving at the place where we all see the same thing.

Perhaps wisdom is becoming capable of saying:

This is what I can see from here. What can you see from where you are?

And then staying long enough to hear the answer.

That is something I increasingly understand as sacred.

Love Does Not Require Sameness

There was a time when disagreement could feel threatening to connection.

Many of us learn this somewhere along the way.

We learn that belonging requires adaptation.

We become who the family needs us to be.

Who the partner needs us to be.

Who the community approves of.

Who we think we must become so that we aren’t abandoned.

Sometimes we become so skilled at maintaining connection that we don’t notice the person we’ve abandoned is ourselves.

But what if belonging means something entirely different?

What if true belonging is the experience of being able to remain fully ourselves in another person’s presence while allowing them to remain fully themselves in ours?

I don’t need you to see what I see.

I don’t need you to choose what I would choose.

I don’t need you to heal according to my timeline.

I don’t need your path to resemble mine.

And I don’t have to leave myself in order to walk beside you.

That is freedom inside relationship.

From Rescuing to Bearing Witness

One of the hardest lessons for those of us who naturally care for others is accepting that we cannot save people from being human.

We cannot prevent every heartbreak.

We cannot make another person ready.

We cannot force insight.

We cannot love someone into making the choice we believe is best for them.

And we cannot do another person’s healing.

We can offer a hand.

We can tell the truth.

We can share what we have learned.

We can create safety.

We can challenge when challenge is needed.

We can sit quietly when words would only interfere.

We can shine our lamp toward possibilities another person might not yet see.

But eventually, we must honor the sovereignty of the person standing before us.

Their life belongs to them.

Their healing belongs to them.

Their relationship with God, Spirit, truth, meaning—whatever language speaks to them—belongs to them.

Perhaps one of the deepest expressions of love is saying:

I trust that something within you knows the way.

Being Nourished Without Making Someone Responsible for Feeding Us

There is another distinction that has become increasingly important to me.

I am profoundly nourished by relationship.

I am nourished by the people I work with.

By my friends.

By my children.

By spiritual companions.

By communities.

By conversations that change something inside me.

But there is a difference between being nourished by another person’s presence and making that person responsible for nourishing us.

I can be changed by knowing you without requiring you to change for me.

I can receive something beautiful from our relationship without needing you to continue providing it.

I can love you without owning your journey.

I can lead without needing you to follow.

I can teach without needing you to agree.

I can offer without needing you to accept.

I can belong without asking the community to tell me who I am.

And I can allow a relationship to be exactly what it is without requiring its depth to turn it into something more.

There is tremendous freedom there.

The Gifts We Carry Have Shadows

I have also learned not to reject the qualities within myself simply because I have sometimes expressed them imperfectly.

Warmth can become overinvolvement.

Generosity can become overgiving.

Intuition can become assuming we know what someone else needs.

Protection can become rescuing.

Transparency can become oversharing.

Community-building can become believing we are responsible for everyone’s belonging.

But perhaps maturity does not require eliminating the gift because we have discovered its shadow.

Perhaps it means learning to recognize both.

I do not need to become less loving because I once loved without enough boundaries.

I do not need to become less generous because I once gave too much.

I do not need to distrust intuition because I have sometimes confused intuition with fear or urgency.

I can simply become more conscious.

The question becomes less:

How do I stop being who I am?

And more:

How do I become increasingly free in the expression of who I am?

Coming Home to Ourselves

For many years, spiritual growth can feel like acquiring something.

We study.

We read.

We find teachers.

We learn practices.

We attend workshops.

We go to therapy.

We seek wisdom from people who appear to be farther along the path.

There is tremendous value in all of that.

I have had many teachers in my life, and I am deeply grateful for them.

But perhaps there comes a point when some of what we have spent years learning must become embodied.

The teacher’s voice becomes quieter.

And something inside us becomes easier to hear.

We begin walking with our own lamp.

That doesn’t mean we no longer need one another.

Perhaps it means we need one another differently.

Not as people who possess the answers to each other’s lives, but as fellow travelers who occasionally walk alongside one another, each carrying our own light.

Sometimes my lamp will illuminate something you cannot yet see.

Sometimes yours will illuminate something for me.

And sometimes we will simply sit together in the dark.

No fixing.

No rescuing.

No convincing.

Just presence.

Human to human.

Bearing witness.

BE • HEAL • BELONG

These three words have become the heart of what I hope to offer through Insights Wellness.

And lately I have been hearing something deeper within them.

BE.

Come as you are.

You don’t have to perform your way into worthiness.

You don’t have to become someone else before you deserve love, presence or acceptance.

HEAL.

From that place of honesty, we can turn toward what hurts.

We can examine the patterns that once protected us but now confine us.

We can take responsibility without condemning ourselves.

We can grow.

BELONG.

And then perhaps we discover that belonging was never supposed to require disappearing.

We can bring the person we actually are into relationship.

We can love without possessing.

We can disagree without abandoning.

We can remain connected without surrendering ourselves.

And underneath all three words, I increasingly hear another:

FREE.

Not free from relationship.

Free within relationship.

Free to love and allow another person to remain other.

Free to receive without becoming indebted.

Free to give without becoming responsible for the outcome.

Free to follow a teacher without abandoning ourselves.

Free to walk away when a path has completed itself without needing to make anyone wrong.

Free to return when returning feels true.

Free to say:

This is what my lamp allows me to see from here.

What do you see from where you’re standing?

And then perhaps the sacred practice is simply this:

To remain.

To listen.

To love.

And to allow each other to be free.

BE • HEAL • BELONG.

Insights Wellness Center
insightswellnesscenter.com