On Not Knowing

I believe that how we struggle with uncertainty — and how we respond to it — tells us a great deal about who we are.

In my own story of becoming a therapist, this is the territory that challenges me most, and teaches me most: not always knowing what helps, for whom, or why; wandering the edges of what “healing” even means; and still — amid the urge to do something useful — finding a way to simply be. Present, genuine, and open. That moment is hard to arrive at.

And here is where the work turns on itself:

Because the mind wants to know. It wants to orient, to make meaning, to produce results. But sometimes the greatest discoveries come from consenting to not knowing.

The more a therapist can stay in contact with the discomfort of uncertainty, the more the person across from them finds the courage to meet it too. Therapy is, at its core, a relational process — without a clear beginning or end. There are two people in that room.

Two worlds.

Two hearts, trying to find their way through threads that are wound around each other.

The sessions may appear to end. But when someone has entered your life in some way, that trace never fully disappears. Everyone leaves a mark — and therapy, and the relationship formed within it, takes its place in that symphony of traces.

With the hope of leaving beautiful ones.