On the nature of relationship, repair, and the completeness of an encounter
I've been listening more closely to something emerging in my work. Something that has been quietly reshaping my understanding of what it means to accompany another human being through repair, healing, and connection.
Some of this listening has been deepened by a wonderful book, The Hour of the Heart, by Irvin D. Yalom and Benjamin Yalom.
In this deeply moving reflection, Yalom shares a transformation in his own life and work. As he grew older, he began offering intimate, heart-to-heart, one-session consultations. His life was changing, and with it came the recognition that the way he accompanied others needed to change as well. He could no longer hold the therapeutic container in quite the same way he once had.
Listening to his reflections, I felt something being mirrored back to me.
Something I had already been sensing deep within my own work.
My work has been changing, too.
For me, this shift has emerged through a deepening relationship with my own heart, and through what I experience as the guidance of the collective, universal heart.
I am coming to understand that meeting another person in the heart and listening deeply does not always require an ongoing commitment to a particular structure for something meaningful to occur.
For more than two decades, I have sat with people who have invited me into the most intimate places of their lives. They have allowed me to accompany them, to witness them, and to learn alongside them.
People who have shared their grief, their longing, their fear, their desire to understand themselves and life more deeply. People whose experiences have touched my own heart awake.
My early training as a psychotherapist was rooted in the understanding that healing happens in relationship. And that the consistency of that relationship, the time dedicated to listening, the gradual unfolding of trust, and the structure of ongoing engagement are themselves part of what heals.
I continue to believe deeply in the healing power of sustained relationship. It has been profoundly important in my own life, both personally and professionally.
And I am inviting another understanding to live alongside it.
Another way of seeing what heals us, what animates us, what transforms us.
As my work has evolved, I have been moving toward a way of accompanying others that is slow, intentional, and purposefully centered in the heart.
And what I have come to recognize is that sometimes one encounter with another person's heart, as I offer mine, can be enough.
Two people can meet within an intentional agreement of presence, safety, and willingness, and something profound can become possible.
Something tender that has been held is finally met, deeply.
Something that has been guarded finds enough safety to soften.
An emotion that has lived beneath the surface for years is given permission to move.
A person experiences themselves differently, perhaps for the first time, through being heard, felt, and met in a new way.
And within that encounter, something may already be moving toward repair at a depth we cannot yet fully understand.
The Healing Container
As my work has evolved to include deeper somatic and spiritual listening, I have become increasingly interested in the conditions that allow healing to emerge.
What happens when we bring our full attention to another person?
When we listen beyond the story, into the breath, the body, and the subtle movements of the heart?
When we create an agreement to meet what is tender with care, curiosity, and presence, and invite the healing energy that I believe exists always alongside us?
The container becomes something greater than the two people sitting together.
We are inviting into our meeting all of the loving energies available to us. We are entering a relational field that can hold the experience through its own beginning, middle, and completion.
A healing encounter might last a minute, an hour, ninety minutes, or unfold across many years.
Time does not necessarily determine the depth of what becomes available.
There are encounters I have experienced, both as a practitioner and simply through my own lived experience as a human being, that have profoundly changed me in a single moment of being able to meet myself and be met at the same time.
These are encounters I have carried in my bones for years.
They have become part of my embodied evolution.
And while the encounter itself may have ended, my relationship with what I experienced continues to live within me.
Its influence continues to unfold long after the moment of meeting has passed.
The encounter can be complete, even as what it awakened continues to live and evolve within us.
The Desire to Be Needed
There is another layer to this understanding, especially for those of us in the healing professions.
It asks me to turn my listening inward, toward my own relationship with myself and the work I offer.
As practitioners, we can become invested in continuity.
We want to know that what we offer is helpful.
We want to be part of what is now unfolding.
We want to remain connected to the process of healing.
And sometimes, beneath that sincere desire to support another person, there is also the very human longing to be affirmed.
To know that our presence mattered.
To know that we were helpful.
To know that we are still needed.
I have been listening to this within myself for many years now, as I continue to deepen my relationship with my own heart.
And I am discovering a different kind of devotion.
One that asks me to be fully present to the encounter before me, without needing to determine what it must become or what it must prove to me/us.
To offer everything I can within the time we have agreed to share, while honoring the sovereignty of the person sitting across from me.
Their journey and their healing belongs to them.
Their readiness to continue along their path belongs to them.
Their decision to return to me, to this work, or to move into the next chapter of their journey has always belonged to them.
And in recognizing this, I am discovering a different understanding of completion.
A Different Understanding of Completion
There is something deeply freeing in recognizing that a relationship can be meaningful and complete, even when it has been brief.
We often associate completion with endings that are clearly spoken, mutually acknowledged, and understood.
But sometimes completion is quieter.
A person comes seeking support. We meet. Something opens. Something moves. They return to their life carrying whatever the experience has offered.
And we may never know how that encounter continues to live within them.
This understanding extends far beyond those of us working professionally in the healing arts.
It belongs to all of our human relationships.
The brief encounter with a stranger on the street. The deep and enduring relationship with someone we love. The unexpected arrival of a person who enters our life carrying a particular message, a particular teaching, or an experience that changes something within us.
Each encounter has the potential to touch us, shape us, and become part of who we are becoming.
Sometimes we recognize its significance immediately. Other times, its meaning reveals itself slowly, long after the encounter has ended.
And this is something that asks all of us to listen more deeply.
For those of us in the healing professions, it asks us to trust the integrity of who we are and what we offer, without requiring evidence of its impact.
It asks us to recognize that healing is not something we produce or possess.
Healing is something we participate in through relationship, presence, and the willingness to meet another person where they are.
And to trust that the encounter itself can be complete.
To honor that the work may continue beyond the room, beyond the relationship, beyond anything we will ever witness.
The Heart of the Encounter
This is part of my own embodied evolution.
A deepening understanding that the heart of my work is the encounter itself.
The sacred agreement to be present.
To listen.
To accompany.
To allow what is ready to emerge.
There will be people who return again and again, and together we will build a relationship that becomes its own living vessel of transformation.
And there will be others who may come only once.
Both encounters deserve the fullness of my attention, my care, and my devotion.
Because a single moment of being deeply met can become something we carry for a lifetime.
And one encounter can be enough.
I wonder how this reflection resonates with you.
For those of you who accompany others through healing, what has your own relationship with presence, continuity, and completion taught you?
And for those of you longing to be met more fully, I invite you to reflect upon your own life.
Have you ever experienced an encounter in which you felt deeply seen, heard, or met?
Perhaps it lasted only a moment. Perhaps it was a relationship that unfolded over many years.
What did that encounter awaken within you? And how does it continue to live in you today?
From my heart to yours,
Jess Garet
The Heart Doula
If this reflection speaks to something within you, I invite you to explore the ways we might meet, listen, and work together.
