Keep Looking Ahead

Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to receive beautiful wisdom in the form of books, poetry, music, art, and the like, from mentors, friends, colleagues, and clients.  Just as the human experience is captured and understood through more than one medium, so is therapy more effective when it incorporates more than one tool.  Equipping my tool belt with a wide array of perspectives and approaches to universal themes is one of the most fun and interesting aspects of my job. It’s especially rewarding when a client references something I shared with them that continues to inform their path today.  This was the case recently when a longtime client made mention of David Whyte’s poem, “The Journey”:

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again

painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
enscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

first, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes
of your life.

You are not leaving
you are arriving.

I’d given her the poem many years ago and she was telling me why it was fresh on her mind these years later.  In bringing it up, she gifted me twofold: 1. It was an affirmation that support and guidance through written art is meaningful and 2. I was brought back to when I learned of David Whyte and first read “The Journey”.  Upon rereading it, it’s still relevant to where I find myself today…different reasons, different life chapter.  

With Spring poking its head, it feels hopeful to me to be reminded that whether we can see it or not, the horizon is always ahead.  No one and nothing is without a possibility.  I hope on this Easter Day you’re believing in yours.