It’s true. I’ve always believed it. Everything we are and will become is linked to the relationships and experiences we share with others. Bishop Desmond Tutu once said: No one is a “self-made” anything. I love that statement, and how true it is! Remove any one relationship or experience from our lives and not only will our lives change, but the lives of those with whom we come in contact will also change.
When I was in the seemingly impossible situation of deciding to remove my daughter from life support, it never occurred to me that someday someone else might benefit from my nightmare. Even as I was writing my story, I often asked myself, “Who cares about any of this? This is a bunch of stuff that’s only important to me.” But I was wrong. Last week I received a call about a woman whose 33-year-old daughter was battling breast cancer and was on life support. The mother was in the terrible position of deciding if and when she should remove her daughter from the ventilator. And in the middle of this dilemma, one of the family members was reading my story… the story I’d questioned the value of even writing.
This family’s ability to find peace from my experience in some way has brought even more healing to me. Is this cycle an accident, coincidence, or synchronicity? Our connection to each other is no mistake. Whether we shed tears of joy or sorrow, our tears are fashioned into a gift for someone else with the overflow returning to us in ways we can’t even imagine.