Understanding the Past is Often The path To The Future

​Partnering with two dear friends and colleagues, I led a three-day experience this week designed to help people understand the implications of childhood experiences on long-term health.

Physical health. Mental health. Spiritual health. Relational health.

One of the main goals of this experience was to help people see that these four areas—often thought of as separate aspects of health—are far more interconnected than we sometimes realize.

Healthy relationships often contribute to better physical health.

Poor mental health often leads to declining physical health.

Stronger spiritual health is often a salve for all areas of health.

In this training, we came to understand that health is health. And that so much of our well-being can be predicted by—or traced back to—the kind of experiences we had in the earliest days of our lives.

For some, this realization can feel overwhelming. Some have lived through deeply challenging early childhood experiences.

Others find great hope in it. Because the brain, which adapts to unhealthy experiences in ways that can leave us living with anxiety, depression, or an overactive stress response system, can actually be rewired. No matter how old we are, it can be rewired to see the world as less threatening and anxiety-inducing.

At the end of our experience, one of the attendees told us it had been life-changing. They said they had always known there were hard things in their life—difficult histories, complicated family dynamics—but they had always believed they could keep barreling ahead, strong enough to overcome them.

“But now,” they said, “I know I need to seek professional help. And I am going to seek it when I leave here.”

One of the primary goals of these experiences is to grow compassion and empathy for others. When we understand the implications of what people have been through—especially in childhood—we are far less likely to judge their choices or behaviors.

Further, I often say that we are far more equipped to understand others when we fully come to understand ourselves.

And that is where hope comes from.

Connecting the dots to a more hopeful future often begins by connecting the dots of our past—not as a way of “going back” or “fixing” the past, but as a way of recognizing that we may have failed to take a step forward because we were unknowingly handcuffed to the hopelessness of our past.

And quite often, we don’t even realize the past has been holding us back.

That, I suppose, is the power of these shared experiences. When one person reflects with openness and vulnerability about their past, it implicitly gives others permission to do the same.

Dots begin to connect. And as one starts to see the connections in their past, they can also begin to imagine—with new hope—the connected dots of their future.

That is my life these days: new hope.

And when I hear someone say they, too, have taken their first steps toward new hope, I feel deeply fulfilled.

I am also reminded that entering into another’s struggles is the pathway to hope. Not hiding from struggles. Not retreating from them. Not rushing in with our own answers.

Simply entering in—with a heart for hearing and healing.

Hearing and healing—the pathway to restoration.

Often, in ways greater than we have ever seen before.