The sparkling light in someone’s eyes and a relaxed smile is one of the most beautiful sights in all humankind…to see someone relaxed and enjoying the world being in their own skin is captivating and enlivening for others to watch.
Susan Boyle, the youngest of a large family, survived a brain injury at birth and had learning difficulties. She was mocked and teased with the children calling her, “Susie Simple”. How painful that must have been. How those comments ring through a person’s mind, and threaten to shape who they are.
And then the world finds out she can sing. And we find her incredible soul:
And so here am I, open arms and ready to stand
I’ve got the world in my hands and it feels like my turn to fly
And though I may not know the answers, I can finally say I’m free
And if the question led me here then I am who I was born to be.
I love watching this happen in therapy…after works through some serious gunk in his/her life. There is wrestling, finding new ways to see something, discovering a new perspective, and–sometimes its slow dawning, othertimes its lightening quick–and a person suddenly smiles, and I get the sense that they are more who they are now than they were before. Something “clicks” into place, and it fits…and they know immediately that they are more “them” than they were before, maybe not even realizing before that something wasn’t totally “them” in that area before. It is described as
- an internal sense of freedom,
- or a feeling of lightness, or
- feeling better able to breathe deeply, or
- a sense of “rightness” that runs throughout their being.
Great fun to watch–a therapy moment like that is, well, in one word, is– “WOW”. How much of a privilege is it at those moments to be a therapist!
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