Last night, I completed facilitating another Phase 2 group at The Gatehouse.
I say “I completed,” but that is not really the right way to describe it. The participants completed it. They were the ones who showed up week after week. They were the ones who sat in the room when the conversations became uncomfortable. They were the ones who listened, supported one another, and eventually found the courage to tell their stories. Every one of them told their story.
I have facilitated enough groups now, this was number 13, to know what a significant thing that is, but I do not think it ever becomes routine. It should not. Every story represents somebody deciding, for whatever reason and in whatever moment, that they are ready to put words around something they may have carried silently for years.
There is something incredibly powerful about witnessing that.
Last night was our potluck, which is how we traditionally end our groups. After 15 weeks of talking about trauma, healing, relationships, coping, anger, shame, boundaries and all the other things that somehow find their way into the room, we finish by bringing food.
There is something wonderfully ordinary about that. We sit around. We eat. We laugh. The room that has held some very difficult conversations becomes, for a little while, simply a room full of people sharing a meal.
Yesterday was especially special. Yes, I realize how that sounds.
One of the participants was celebrating one year of sobriety.
So we had cake.
We sang Happy Birthday.
And I found myself sitting there feeling incredibly proud.
Proud of the person celebrating that first year. Proud of every participant who had made it to the end of the program. Proud of the stories that had been told and the courage and vulnerability it took to share them.
Not proud in the sense that I had somehow gotten them there. Facilitators do not do that. We can help create the safety in the room and we protect the space. We can ask questions, listen and sometimes gently encourage someone to keep going. But, mostly listen.
The work belongs to the people doing it. They showed up and stayed.
They told their stories.
Maybe my own history with sobriety made the cake hit a little differently too. I know what one year represents. I know how much life can happen between day one and that first anniversary. I also know nobody gets very far in healing by pretending they can do everything alone.
This applies to sobriety. And, it applies to trauma.
It probably applies to most of life.
At the end of the night, before everyone left, I played the song You’re Going to Be OK, by Bethel Music and Jenn Johnson.
It’s on my “Transformation” playlist, a collection of songs around trauma and healing. I thought it might be a powerful way to close the group, but sitting there after everything that had happened over the previous weeks, it felt even more appropriate than I expected. I’ve heard it many times but last night hit differently.
The last words are, “you are not alone.”
Four simple words.
But after a room full of people had spent weeks discovering that other people understood things they may once have believed nobody could understand, those words carried a little more weight.
I think that may be one of the most important things that happens in these rooms.
The past does not disappear.
The difficult memories do not suddenly become easy.
Nobody walks out with every question answered or every wound healed.
But perhaps they walk down those 5 steps knowing something they did not fully know when they walked up them.
Someone else understands.
Someone else has been there.
Someone else will listen.
You are not alone.
And then we ate cake.