A theme of my life lately has been connection.  I’ve never done particularly well with women and how they behave but lately I’ve been getting opportunities to have conversations with some amazing women in my life.  I feel like the timing of this is key considering how things are going with the men in my life.  I need to find a connection to myself, to my femininity and my drive and find a way to balance it.  I’ve had two amazing conversations that I want to highlight in regards to forming this connection.  I’ve begun spending more time with the mother of one of my son’s friends—I’ve shared recently that this is someone I had initially written off due to a person she associated with and some ill informed information given to me.  The kids were together the other day so I went over. Nothing ever got super deep in our conversation but she shared some personal stories and she talked a lot about morality from the perspective of some people she had been friends with and a person she worked with.  She was talking clearly about trust and needing trust in a relationship and it hit home.  I didn’t share much in the way of my experiences with my husband but recent events played heavily on my mind.  It was very clear that she and I have similar values even if the stories/situations of how we got there differ.  We ended that night saying we both felt so comfortable with each other and we hugged.

A few days later I had a meeting scheduled for some training at work.  Over the last few months in particular I’ve come to a really good understanding with one of the people I’m in contact with often and this is someone I thought absolutely hated me in the beginning.  I understood that more of that came from misunderstanding and not having tolerance for a learning curve and my misinterpretation of who/what this person wanted to accomplish.  This person always has a strength about them and always looks so composed and put together and I’ve seen them in the heat of the fire and they are ALWAYS cool and calm.  Regardless, we had this meeting and it ended up being over a 4 hour discussion of everything that has been going on in our lives and our struggles.  When I say our stories were nearly identical, it was creepy to a level I’ve never experienced before.  Creepy because our history was even nearly the same in facets of self-harm and how we felt all the way through to insecurity about our current jobs and frustration with our relationships.  Like our lives are on nearly the same trajectory.  We had both been feeling so isolated and alone that all of our tension came from thinking we needed to handle everything on our own, that we had no one else and that we were always responsible for being the tough one.  This person talked about how their daughters are being raised to maintain friendships and I got the firm sense that they had given up exactly what I had and felt a loss of identity.  Everything from ADD to not finishing things to starting things well but no follow through, to irrational fights with our partners—everything matched.  And the surprise was uncanny.  Like there was a different bond there.  I told them that we can’t look at each other in meetings because we are going to crack up or cry all the time now.    

When I say I didn’t anticipate either of these relationships, I mean that these were people I either wouldn’t have considered hanging out with or I at least would never have thought we had similarities.  Both seem so confident in their lives and decision making and I feel wishy-washy all the time and insecure and uncertain about what to do.  I fear making choices that will upset others or not turn out how I think they should.  But there is a real connection with these women because we know each other’s stories—not just because we shared them but because we lived them.  There is a bond that comes from shared experience that can be difficult to describe.  The connection is about finding a match and understanding we aren’t alone.  The whole point is to find some sanity in shared experience.  I’ve always been a do-it-on-my-own girl and it has been hard for me to find trust in other people, especially in my closest relationship and in women.  But in these discussions I realized how much shit women carry.  I mean, this wasn’t exactly news to me because I’ve been doing the brunt of the work in my life pretty much forever.  But to hear other women, especially women that I worked with so closely and had such an impression of strength and aloofness about her, were experiencing the same exact thing made me feel like we are so not alone.  There is power in connection that goes beyond moving or changing things—the power is when that desire to move and change is ignited and we realize that together those changes are not only possible but probably.  We just need the follow through and the genuine connection, the trust in connection.