Connections

One lesson a great improv teacher taught me when people couldn't make a show was, "That's one less connection I will make."

I've been meeting so many people lately as I've made new connections in a new city. And one of them is overwhelmingly that they tell me I look like their mother... and that their mother is dead. Most of them deal with it well but a few of them just can't handle the resemblance.

I realize that I probably DON'T really look like their mother so much as I ACT like a mother, a nurturer. I seek connection. And, possibly, I'm finding wounded people right now because of my own woundedness. We tend to parallel or pull in what we need to see.

Meanwhile - last night yet another person said to me that he didn't even want to KNOW ME because of the striking resemblance to his mother.

And it hurt my feelings immensely. I realize that it is HIS STUFF not mine. And also - I realize that it is one less connection I will make. We can't make things personal. We have to understand that people are on their own journeys.

Meanwhile - it is interesting to me how often I hear this. It is hard not to feel matronly when I am told how strongly I resemble a mother. Or I am compared to a mother. But I also realize how much I WANT to be a mother. And perhaps there is an energy there that moves beyond me.

There are universals that speak.. and perhaps right now I am healing a wounded nurturer and they are healing their wounded child. Who knows.

All I know is that it has come up again and again and I am not seeking it. My pain over dead children must equal their pain of their dead mother. And sometimes rather than reach out and comfort or connect, perhaps it is easier to run away.

One less connection. We are only human. I'm not here to solve issues. I'm only here to look inside my own heart and heal it. And in healing it I know I will from other people's stories and experiences. And there will be joy and connection along the way.

It is hard though sometimes - to trust that any of this is worth it. It is hard to believe that there will be anything worth going forward to in the end. It is hard every day to push forward. Especially when I am being compared to what brings people pain instead of what brings them joy.

It has been a remarkably hard week for me. I know that no one will rescue me. I must rescue myself. And so I am. But it would be nice it once in a while, instead of seeing strength someone would look inside and see how fragile and delicate and real and vulnerable I am and not just how many times I can be compared to what brings them pain.

I hurt too in my own unique ways and I never cast them away or made them wrong. One less connection. Their choice, not mine.