During one of the most recent hurricanes, a flock of birds was seen flying in the eye of the storm. This image has stayed with me as a metaphor of how I can navigate the impending whirlwind of changes about to unfold in the governance of our country.

I wrote America in Therapy with the hope that my message of how we can use the best that psychology has to offer to restore us to love and peace, could be my one small contribution to what I see as a desperately needed national and international agenda for healing the great divides that threaten all life as we know it.

That is still my hope, though like many of us, I am bracing for the storm to intensify.

I hope I’m wrong.

But in the meantime, I’m looking for how I can stay in the eye of the storm and fly with those birds, not as an escape but as a place to operate from, a place of centeredness in my own purpose for being. America in Therapy was and still is one expression of that purpose. I know that I have to keep saying what is in my heart to say, despite what appears to be happening in America and around the world – or even better, because of what appears to be happening here and around the world!

And…if you are anything like me, you might also have those moments when you wonder if anything you do really matters, if it will make any difference in the end, or if it only matters to you… and maybe that is enough… Or perhaps, in the best of all possible worlds, your voice will join with my voice and another and another and another, and we will come together in some dramatic turn of events that will shatter this terrible illusion of separation.

I have great hope that we will. Why? Because as a psychotherapist, I know beyond doubt that we need love and connection as much as we need food and water, and, I also know that as much as we defend against the lack of these essentials, the pain of their missing ultimately draws us to healing.

I believe there is an indisputable code, written into the DNA of Life Itself, that what is living will always seek to sustain itself, to survive and thrive. That code is in every one of us.

The one thing I am sure of is that love and safe belonging have made all the difference in my own life. They saved my life. They have brought me back from loneliness, fear, despair, and my most self destructive impulses.

They can bring us all back.

Whether in my personal life or in my work as a psychotherapist and writer, the challenge to love anyway, love deeper, wiser, more effectively, and more outspokenly– even in the face of my inevitable inability to do that well at times– that is still the challenge. That will always be the challenge. I don’t know any other way to fly in the eye of the storms to come.

Amen.

(The picture above is an actual photo of birds flying in the eye of a hurricane)

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“On the path to peace, we will close the gap between Love and Politics”

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You can find me at www.phyllisleavitt.com 

phyllis@phyllisleavitt.com

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