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Everything Belongs
HOME has 5 therapeutic cornerstones which invite family members into deeper intimacy with themselves and their loved ones. Each of these cornerstones is layered in its wisdom and invitational in its approach. They are not life-hacks or soundbites. They are designed to hold the tension, underscore the paradox, and invite questions.
Everything Belongs signifies that we learn to integrate the hard-ugly stuff life throws our way with the beautiful-tender stuff. To do this, we move out of black-and-white thinking into the textured layers of inquiry and equanimity. We learn life is more messy than certain, more nuanced than clear. We come to see that there are lessons to orient toward in each chapter. We, begrudgingly at first and then with acceptance, learn to wait well.
Everything Belongs introduces us to the wisdom found amid uncertainty and life being life. It invites us to weave the emotional, relational, spiritual, and cognitive experiences of our lives into a mosaic. It is meaning-making. It is born out of our ability to sit with the complex WTF moments, the sacred mysteries, the unanswered questions, the deep grief, AND the awe-inspiring, joyful, simple pleasure times.
Everything Belongs is NOT at all about denial. It detours around the cringy, over-the-top optimism that contributes to spiritual bypassing or out-of-touch mantras about looking on the bright side. Everything Belongs is not for the fainthearted but for warriors who want to live this one precious life most completely.
Welcoming everything does not mean staying stuck in sorrow or emotional disarray; actually it means our emotions become our messengers, not our masters. It means we can only heal what we allow ourselves to feel.
Just this morning, over coffee, my son, a friend of ours, and I were talking about our friend’s volunteer work reading to young children in Harlem. Hearing her speak about what joy this brought her, alongside the deep sorrow of the child whose parents were incarcerated, touched a well of grief (and gratitude) inside of me. I had to leave the room to have a good cry. I felt the little child’s loneliness and joy at having someone read to her—and I immediately knew my sadness was mixed with the confusion that comes from having so much among others having so little. How do we reconcile all of this? It is heavy, and it emphasizes gratitude. It reminded me in many ways of my ancestral struggles with scarcity and my learning to live in abundance: a paradox I hold, gently and tenderly, although hard.
Everything Belongs is an important reminder to those of us learning to make sense out of the things that don’t make sense. It helps families dealing with conflict, grief, addiction, betrayal, or countless other challenges to become curious about how the pieces of their relationships fit together. It offers a way to hold the tension as we learn to live in the “and”:
- We suffer AND rise up
- We lament AND dance
- We hide and don’t look away
- We say no AND accept
- We are accountable AND compassionate
- We love others and hurt others
Just this past week, I had a patriarch of a client-family ask me if I could help his grandchildren so “we can stop this pattern before it takes down anyone else I love.” I asked him what he meant by “take down”. He said he now knows that ignored feelings slither in. He continued by saying that unfelt feelings have a way of wreaking havoc until they are witnessed and held; he had learned this through the work we had been doing. The patriarch is right. I responded to his request by encouraging him to continue role-modeling what it means to wrestle with and integrate all of his layered nuances, emotionally and relationally.
We see this over and over: what the previous generation ignored and did not know how to heal, the next generation carries. What we don’t transform, we transmit. So the question is: do you want your beloved people to be burdened by things that are not theirs to carry? Or are you ready to learn to live with Everything Belongs as one of your guides?
Life is hard here in human school, and it is jaw-droppingly beautiful. Family life can tear us apart, and it has the potential of putting us back together in a variety of different ways, over time, as we integrate the struggles that have occupied our emotional real estate throughout generations.
Everything Belongs invites us into the grace that comes from seeing ourselves fully: the parts we have banished, the life-giving parts, and the parts that harm ourselves and others.
It is hard to talk about Everything Belongs without acknowledging the role spirituality plays. Spirituality expands and connects us; it deepens our experience and powerfully humbles us. It requires letting go of the masks designed to keep us supposedly safe, yet keep us disconnected and adrift. It invites us to find a mast we can tie ourselves to when the sirens beckon, when what we thought we needed slips away, and when our hearts shatter and break wide open.
Everything Belongs is not for the fainthearted. It does not mean that we have the answer or the explanation. It means we do not look away from the wreckage or even just the slightly rumpled. We proceed through life, eyes and heart wide open, crying over coffee and bagels when a powerful story reminds us of our internal landscape. Instead of waiting for a burning bush, it encourages us to pay attention to the revelations that flow through our daily, relational rhythms disguised as life:
- our harsh words and what they are inviting us to learn about ourselves
- the way the light falls across the kitchen table and how beauty always finds its way in
- our child’s suffering and our sleepless nights that hold our fears and prayers
- a friend’s poignant heart-opening story and our own untouched grief released
- our partner’s relapse and one more reminder of how everything is impermanent
- our parents’ apology for their hurtful mistakes and how such repair plants hopeful healing
Everything Belongs means being aware of how our stumbles—when held not squandered—are also openings. Like the Japanese art form known as Kintsugi, our lives are like pieces of pottery whose cracks, filled in with precious metals, highlight the beauty of our imperfections.
As an ode to Everything Belongs, Leonard Cohen nailed it…
“This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled. But there are moments when we can transcend … embrace the whole mess … and that’s what I mean by Hallelujah.”
This irreconcilable messiness, this “broken Hallelujah,” helps us to see that it is through the cracks that light gets in.