Connections and Re-connections

            “Connective tissue forms a mechanical continuum, extending throughout the animal body even into the innermost parts of each cell.” ~Paul Gilley Yin Yoga, a Quiet Practice

            I bought this little book late last spring because my yoga teacher was pursuing other options, like a degree in art.  As I leafed through it, the quote above caught my eye.  “Isn’t that what my life is doing this year?” I thought.   And it is what my life has been up to this whole year!  Not just new connections, but reconnections with my past as well. 

            When, late last spring, I first began thinking of writing a blog about connections and reconnections, I wondered what else could happen this year since I had already made many new connections in the Storytelling World through conferences at LANES and Northlands; a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico with Jim May; and Facebook; reconnected with my storytelling mentor, Norma Livo; and with a tour through the state reconnected with some of the people from my life at Illinois College and in Rochelle, Illinois.

            What else indeed?  With more conferences and storytelling events (NSN, RMS, STNM), I made more connections and reconnections in the Storytelling World.  Connections that reaffirmed for me the importance of Story in my life.  I wrote about that in July.

Fischer Family Reunion

            Family is always and forever important, but when we disperse to the far corners of this large country of ours, it isn’t always easy to remain as connected as we were when young.  By year’s end I visited both my sisters and four of my special cousins, all from the same family. 

 

Friends from the past keep reappearing as if by magic.  My high school class has discovered the power of reconnecting through social media and with the diligence of one woman, with help from a few others, 115 out of 247 people have been “found.”   We’ve changed and grown over the many years that have stretched between high school graduation and social security.  It seems for the better. 

 

Writing and publishing a book (Old China through the Eyes of a Storyteller) has made connections too.  Connections to others who have a desire to know about China, to pass on a legacy to their adoptive children or have made a journey similar to mine. 

Reading Women Who Run with the Wolves by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes has reconnected me to my intuitive self.  I found my way back to my real self, the person I was when I was 19 and realized I had walked down some paths where I should not have gone.

What I find fascinating is how doors that I never knew or even suspected were there, are opening, showing the way to growth.  I feel a part of a community as I never have before.  A community connected by life.  So that “mechanical continuum formed by connective tissue that extends into the innermost parts of each cell,” isn’t that what connections/reconnections do for each individual?  I think so…

© Julie Herrera 2012