One of my favorite pastimes is walking, especially when I get to walk with people and hear their story or talk through something that has been on my mind. Walking helps to clear my head and gets me outdoors, but it is also this grand, and perhaps overused, metaphor for life—the journey. We walk with one another through life, through the ups and downs, through the times when the sky is clear and promising and through the times when it is gray and unknown. We walk, and we keep walking. We walk and sometimes the road is easy. Sometimes, however, the road is confusing and twisted; we are jumping over rocks that we never imagined would be in our way. Yet we keep walking.

 

Madeleine L'Engle writes, "Our story is never written in isolation. We do not act in a one-man play. We can do nothing that does not affect other people, no matter how loudly we say, ‘It's my own business.'” The fact is, we live in community. We impact others and others impact us, both positively and negatively. Our life stories are formed through our interactions with others and how those interactions are perceived. Change is possible and in counseling, we can together sift through those interactions, both past and present, to better understand your own story with the hope of moving forward—one step at a time.