Stand Within the Chaos

Can you bring to mind a time when someone gave you the precious gift of truly listening to you? Deep into your heart? Maybe it was a moment of deep despair, or just a moment of confusion. Beneath everything, all the storms you carry around on the surface, they saw you. They knew you. They touched your humanity.

Recently I came across this video of Carolyn Mabry. Here’s one experience she describes in the video. It’s a cold, snowy night. She’s standing on a bridge. There’s confusion, people are standing around. Her focus has narrowed to nothing more and nothing less than one person, a person threatening to jump.

I imagine myself on that bridge with her. I feel the cold seeping into my body. I’ve worked on a crisis hotline. I know a little of what it takes to talk to people who are actively contemplating suicide. Yet somehow this seems much more real than anything I experienced in a warm room and a telephone distance away.

I wonder, what would it take to engage with that person on the bridge, at that moment to really, fully, be there with that person?

Here’s what she says about what it takes:

“…this is an example of partnership. We worked together here. He told me. I asked him… We exchanged ideas. I want him to realize I’m on his side… I don’t want to get over this moment as quick as possible at your expense. I want it to come from your inner knowing which I know will come out if I make space for it. ..I think anyone in touch with their own heart and intuition can do it but they must have so much confidence in the person and the fact that there is a place in that person that knows, and respect that place…Respect everything that person has been through, that  brought them to this moment, to believe that they can lead to a  solution, because it’s much easier than struggling with the person. It’s nurturing…It’s the attitude and belief system that have to go with it. The words don’t count unless they do…That’s the thing. be able to stand right within all the chaos and see the stillness of that person and know the answer is there, know there is meaning to it.”