I Matter… On Witnessing and What Opens From There
In a small group, something simple and unexpected began to unfold. There were three of us sitting together. Nothing elaborate. Just space, attention, and a willingness to stay with what was there.
What began to surface for me was something from childhood. Not a detailed story, but a feeling that had been there for a long time. Quiet. Familiar. Unquestioned. A sense that I did not quite matter. Not in a dramatic way. Not as a belief I would have named out loud. But as something that had shaped how I moved, how I listened, how I oriented toward others.
As I sat there, with the others present, something shifted. There was an opening. Not forced, not constructed. Just enough space to let something else come forward. I matter. Even now, it can sound small. Obvious. Almost trivial. But in that moment, it wasn't conceptual. It was something I had to let in without softening it, qualifying it, or turning away.
And what made that possible was not effort. It was being witnessed. Not analyzed. Not fixed. Not reassured. Just seen. There is something about being witnessed that allows what is true to take root in a way that thinking never can.
So I stayed with it. The sense of it being mine started to loosen. Not disappearing, but opening. What had first felt like a personal permission began to lose its boundary. Because if it is true here, if I matter in a real and undeniable way, then it is not something I possess. The moment it is fully allowed, it cannot remain personal. It extends, quietly and naturally, without effort. Everyone matters. Not as an idea. Not as a moral stance. But as the same truth, no longer contained.
And in that, something else fell away. The subtle sense of separation. The orientation of me here, others there. It softened. Or perhaps more accurately, it became permeable. There wasn't a move toward connection. There wasn't an attempt to include others. The boundary that required that movement was no longer solid.
What's striking is that this did not come from trying to reach something universal. It came from allowing something deeply particular. From not stepping over the simple, vulnerable truth of I matter in order to become something better, or more selfless, or more useful.
There can be a tendency, especially in healing spaces, to become an instrument of good: to give, support, and attune to others while never fully allowing yourself to matter in the same way. I could feel that in myself. A subtle leaning toward being useful rather than being real. And what became clear is that there is no way around it. You cannot arrive at the universal by bypassing the personal. You cannot dissolve separation by stepping over the place where you feel separate. The movement happens the other way, by going all the way in, by allowing what is here fully enough that it reveals its nature.
