Connected Hearts

I read a quote not long ago that went something like this "Making the decision to have a child, is like making the decision to have your heart go walking around outside of your body forever". As the mother of three grown children and the grandmother of four wonderfully adorable grandchildren I can say that this quote is absolutely the truth. My heart is divided between my husband and all of these wonderful people and that we have brought into the world.

Last year my husband and I moved from Oklahoma to Arizona leaving behind our extended families and many beloved friends. Our oldest daughter lived in Kansas City with her husband and children. Our youngest daughter moved to California to attend grad school and our son was in India where he lived for 13 months. For a woman whose greatest desire was to live close enough to her children and grandchildren to have Sunday dinner together each week, that was a lot for me to deal with. I'm happy to report, though, that I did deal with it and I did it with at least a little bit of grace! Why? Because all of our hearts are connected! I discovered a few years ago that distance means very little when your hearts are all connected. I have also known times when we were all in the same room and it felt like we were a million miles apart. Our hearts had lost their connections.

Two years ago Jessica, my youngest daughter, spent a semester in Europe. The day she was to depart from the USA to London is the same day that terrorists had planned an attack on planes flying from London to the USA. Until the moment that I made this discovery I was happy for Jessica. But when I learned of this planned attack my heart went cold. Panic arose in me like I have never experienced before. My heart was truly walking around outside of my body and it was about to get on a plane where terrorists might put it's light out forever. I went into a tailspin. I would have done just about anything to keep her off that plane. I never told her she couldn't go, but I pulled out all the stops and used all the mother-guilt I could muster up. Being the child that I raised to protect her boundaries, she didn't fall for any of it! I'm ashamed to admit to all the manipulations that I tried, but it's true! I did it! I was scared half to death and I felt like I had to save my daughter!

She got on the plane, and when she did my heart broke into a million pieces. I know that sounds neurotic, but that's the way I felt! The connection between us was not completely broken, but it was definitely frayed. Neither she nor I were in good spots for the next few weeks. She was such a good little trooper and called home daily just to reassure me. After a few weeks we both felt the strength start to come back into our relationship. I asked her why she thought we had to rip each others hearts out the way we did in order to separate. She answered with more wisdom than her years would suggest,"You were afraid I would never come back, and I was afraid I would never go". Sounds simple doesn't it? It's anything but simple! The fear that I felt caused me to clutch on to her more tightly which caused her to pull away. The connection frayed under the strain, leaving both of us feeling lost and alone.

She spent the rest of the semester mostly in Switzerland, but traveling around a good deal of Europe as well, and I began to understand that distance meant nothing as long as our hearts were connected.

That experience sparked in me a passion that is hard to articulate. I began to notice all the people that walk around in the world disconnected. Many of us are just downright lonely. I first began to notice that women seemed to have a lot of trouble connecting with other women. It seemed that good girlfriends were just hard to find. I have since discovered that many men feel the same loneliness and lack of connection with other men. I have embarked on a course of study on the subject. I was surprised to find so little written on the subject, so I have been asking a lot of questions of the people I know. It has been interesting and I think it will continue to be interesting. I hope to understand and help people that cross my path learn to develop their relationships. So if you want to have your hearts connected to the ones you love and you desire to have strong connections with friends, then come along for the ride and let's see what we discover!