“I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.”
Brené Brown
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately—maybe it’s my age, a time when friendships truly feel like jewels in the hand—maybe because so many friends have been meeting trouble—health, accidents, bad luck, deaths of spouses—and our linkages bring comfort in the face of what cannot be changed.
I’ve been pretty passionate about connection for as long as I can remember. As a child, friends provided a much-needed escape and comfort from the turmoil of my home, where disconnection was the dominant theme.
For five summers, I went to a girl’s camp in the Adirondacks where Brown’s definition of connection defined our everyday experience. We lived in age-related cabins, where cooperation with each other was essential for harmonious living. The camp was divided into two teams, which competed ardently every weekend in swim meets, baseball, games like Pioneers and Indians and Capture the Flag. Our days were filled with activities like tennis, archery, riflery, hiking and canoeing, but to me the absolute best part was campfire, where we all sat nestled into each other, singing beloved camp songs, then out into the crisp night to hold hands around goodnight circle as we sang taps.
Though I attended an all-girls high school and a women’s college, both formative experiences in community and connection, I believe that my camp experience was intrinsic in forming both my entire professional and personal lives. The joy, the energy, the ease of working together for common goals, the healthy competitiveness and deep sharing, life lived mostly in the out-of-doors, but perhaps most of all, the absence of the opposite sex, made for a truly halcyon experience, which I sorely missed as an adult.
So, both out of need and knowledge of their importance, I’ve tried to replicate something of what those early experiences of connection were for me, for others. Working as a therapist in the early eighties, when gender was bursting onto the scene as a long-ignored critical dynamic in family and marital relationships, I introduced groups for women, to nourish connection as both balm and empowerment. Exploring the damage done by years of patriarchy and roles in life and marriage that made women feel “less-than,” often suffering from depression and the overwhelm of juggling childcare, housework and jobs, the groups supported women in a way individual therapy could not.
After Geoff died and I went to New Mexico to study writing practice with Natalie Goldberg, I realized that writing in groups as we did there was astonishing in its capacity to offer connection that was both healing as well as instrumental in developing conscious living, what E.M. Forster meant in Howard’s End when he used the phrase “only connect.” Very progressive for his times, Forster felt that the most important quality in a person was the ability to connect the inner life with the outer life, and that if we do not learn how to do this, our disconnectedness will come around to haunt us.
As both a therapist and a writer, I completely agree. So, I set out to create my women’s writing groups, led now for thirty-four years. I wanted to separate women from their busy lives for a time to join with other women in the most nourishing environment I could create, to foster connection with their inner selves as well as with each other, using writing practice as a tool. For many years we met for weekends on Block Island, as well as weeknights in my office and home, and all-day Sundays. One of the hundreds of participants through the years captures the essence of the group in these words:
Sharon creates an amazingly safe and nurturing environment that enables us all to move toward our true voices. As we write and speak our words, we hear and are heard in a deep way. The process reminds me how to be present as a listener. These retreats are a sanctuary where there is no judgment, just loving witness.
Of course, the larger goal is that of carrying this experience out into the wider world, to both enhance our own lives as well as those around us. I am indebted to all the women whose lives have touched mine and each other’s in this profound way.
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I wrote this post in response to a call by the Story Circle Network, a women’s writing organization, to write on the Brown quotation, I couldn’t resist, as I say in the post, as so much of my life has been devoted to what I’ve perceived as this deep need both in myself and in others. Since I was limited to 750 words, I was unable to go into more detail, but as most of you, my readers, know, I carried this circle much further into my years at Touchstone, a residential facility for delinquent girls, where writing in a group like this gave so many young women the same opportunity as groups for women have, and produced some pretty fantastic poetry and prose. https://www.storycircle.org/book_review/i-am-not-a-juvenile-delinquent-how-poetry-changed-a-group-of-at-risk-young-women/
For the new year, I wish you strength and courage to deal with whatever challenges appear in your lives, and hope that you will grasp all the happiness you can find along the way.
Love, Sharon