Leslie Laughlin LCSW

Process and let it go

"A few years ago, on the day my first book was released, I received an email from a friend whom I hadn’t spoken with in quite some time. We had gone our separat...e ways because we were both dealing with issues that made our relationship toxic. My friend’s words really touched me, particularly the following: 'I just got home from an incredibly emotional experience. I stopped into the bookstore tonight to buy your book. Johnny Cash was playing, and I nearly lost it when I found you in the stacks between A Course in Miracles and Ram Dass. I thought to myself, I used to look through the obituaries for your name, and now I’m looking through the stacks in a major bookstore for you. My God, I don’t have the words . . . I’m just so glad that you’re well.' The sad thing is that she was totally justified in looking for my name in the obituaries because on any given day there was a very real chance she could have found it there. Reading my friend’s words made me think back to the countless times I’d cried while holding a bottle of alcohol, or looking at a line of coke on a table, not wanting to drink or snort it but still doing soa slave to an illness that was destroying me. You may not be able to relate to any of this, but I would guess that even if my specific experiences aren’t yours, you still have your own emotional scars, your own painful memories. If so, I want you to know that you’re not alone. There are many of us here with you, right now and in this very moment. We may not be physically present, but at the level of the heart, and in the place of Everything Mindthe place where we feel both the most excruciating pain and the most overwhelming lovewe’re right here, side by side. I hope anyone who’s struggling with addiction, depression, self-loathing, or feelings of hopelessness finds some semblance of hope in these words and saves some time and pain in their own healing process . . . because we’re all human, we’re all recovering from something, and we’ve all hurt enough already, haven’t we?" EXCERPT from EVERYTHING MIND (Sounds True Publishing)

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/96002/767867