In 2010, I went with a group of women to a retreat in Nor Cal. Every year at this retreat, there’s a silence and solitude time on Saturday morning, and every year I go out to the beach for that time (see ch 27 “Dancing” from Found Art for additional footage).

I remember being in a place of total exhaustion that year. My kids had just turned one, and I was overwhelmed and overcommitted and I remember writing in my journal, there on the beach: “I just wish everyone would leave me alone.” Perhaps I was an eentsy-weentsy bit depressed.

After the hour-of-despair on the beach with my journal, we came back into the main meeting hall and were invited to debrief with our groups. When it was my turn, I decided to tell them what I had written in my journal. When I was done, all the girls were looking at me so compassionately and with such a sense of presence and love. But they were all just looking at me.

Finally, one of my friends spoke up. She said, “what if we all say to Leeana, ‘We see you. We hear you. We love you.’”

And so they did. They looked right at me as if they were shooting love beams into me, and they said, “Leeana, we see you. We hear you. And, we love you.”

You are not invisible. You are seen.

You are not voiceless. You are heard.

You are not alone. You are loved.

Later, that same friend sent me an email with her feelings about that moment. She said: “I was moved by your tears, and I just wanted you to know that you were seen and heard and loved. I didn’t want to fix anything, or have a witty, response, or talk about a time when I felt that same way. I just wanted to be a witness, and I wanted you to know that you weren’t alone in the midst of it.”

This mantra was so powerful that we decided to incorporate it into our weekly Growth Group meetings. Ritually, after each woman shares, she gets the “See, hear, love” treatment. And I’m telling you . . . that kind of being-witnessed is transformational. So simple. And yet, so profound.

We can really get this all wrong by going into advice-giving mode, which is just so so so easy to do. It’s SO hard to restrain ourselves because we are all far too clever and insightful and intuitive. But nothing shuts down authenticity and vulnerability faster than that need to jump in and begin doling out helpful suggestions.

I love this admonition from Elaine Hamilton’s Church on the Couch:

“It’s important to remember that advising without being invited is about taking care of oneself instead of the other person. Shifting to fix-it mode means you don’t have to sit with someone in their struggle. Instead of feeling sad or powerless or upset about what they are going through, you can focus on possible solutions. This keeps you safely in your own head and also gives you the false sense that you are doing something useful for the other person” (63).

Yowza. So good.

Seeing, hearing, loving each other. Being a witness. Game-changing.