Sunday, July 24, 2011
I think everyone can pretty much agree that the "I am from," exercise was extremely powerful. As I was trying to figure out how to filter all of my life of experiences into words I realized that there is so much going on inside me right now in life. I was having a hard time wrestling with all of my family of origin issues and how to express them with words. I was fighting back tears and that pain that settles in my throat when I fear I am about to start crying. As I was fighting with myself and all the thoughts that were filling my head I began to realize that everyone else was doing the same thing. We all have different experiences with how we were raised or specific experiences we have had, but all of us have felt pain, loss, love, and laughter. I am not alone in my struggle to make sense of where I am from and where I am going. I appreciated the experience of listening to people share because it shed light on things I should be grateful for. It also helped me realize how similar the human experience is even though our lives can be so different. Seeing the pain and joy in peoples eyes as they shared made me realize that we are more alike and connected than we think we are. Joy is joy and pain is pain and we all have a little of both in our lives.
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I agree with you. Sometimes when I enter new situations, I worry that no one will understand where I am coming from with my experiences and the struggles I have found, but it's true that we are all more connected than we think. I think we were all feeling so many emotions (I know exactly that throat pain you speak of...) through the writing exercise and for me, it's really hard to show that and show my vulnerability.
ReplyDeleteSarah, seriously great post. You possibly have boiled my entire post down into a few sentences: Joy is joy, and pain is pain and we all have a little of both in our lives. Simply awesome. When people say "you don't possibly know how I feel" to a friend when they are going through a hard time, they are right in the sense that that one isolated incident was theirs alone; however they are wrong because of what you said. Everyone can relate to pain, the harder part is opening that layer of yourself to share with others.
ReplyDeleteSarah,
ReplyDeleteThanks for this super clarity.
It really was like that, that feeling of being connected through our human experience. Maybe I can keep that nugget of feeling in mind to help me move past the fear of messing up with my students (because maybe I won't know where they're coming from as much as I would want).