What true repair looks (and feels) like
+ a couple of exciting announcements
At the end of July, I traveled to Oregon to attend a week-long singing camp. These camps are run by an organization called Village Harmony; this was my second year attending one, although last year the camp I attended was on the opposite end of the country in the Berkshire mountains.
After having attended two of these camps now, I can honestly say that there isn’t really anything else like them. Three teachers from different singing traditions teach a small set of their songs to us—some they have written and some written by others. Some of the songs are in English, many are in another language.
We learn and practice these songs 6-7 hours a day, all while cooking, cleaning, resting, playing, and communing with each other. At the end of the week we put on an informal concert of the songs we’ve been learning all week.
Yes, it is intense and intensive. I’m often exhausted and my digestive system is unhappy, and I miss eating meat.
And: it is also a deeply, deeply nourishing experience. It nourishes my soul and heart and nervous system and needs for connection and intimacy and expression.
Not only are our bodies co-regulating through singing with one another, the setup of the week necessitates true interdependence and community care.
After my experience last year—my first year at the camp—I came to the same conclusion, but there was also a part of me that wondered: is this too good to be true?
Sure, we can all come together for a week in this beautiful expression of song and community, nestled in a gorgeous setting, but what happens when shit gets real?
My training and experience as a group therapist and facilitator (and as a human on this earth relating to other humans) has taught me this: the storming phase (as it's called in group therapy literature) will come.
Conflict, storming, and rupture are natural parts of relating to one another, but REPAIR is what allows that conflict to alchemize into the relationship deeping.
True repair is what allows a deeper foundation of trust, deeper intimacy, and deeper connection in the relationship. Yummy.
Sadly, though, it’s been my experience that many people don’t have the capacity or skills to navigate true repair.
This makes me sad because I love connection, but what I love more than that is the ability to move through conflict with someone and to be transformed on the other side—to be personally transformed but also for the relationship to be in a new iteration.
There are few things that are sexier to me. (True relationship nerd here, which is why I do the work I do.)
If ruptures are inevitable but repair takes a certain level of capacity and skill, imagine what happens to the foundation of a relationship when ruptures are repeatedly happening but true repair is not: the foundation of emotional safety erodes or never builds, distance and disconnection happen, and intimacy cannot exist.
I know that you’ve felt this happen in your relationships because it’s happening all of the time.
Think of one relationship in your life where some kind of rupture happened: a miscommunication, hurt feelings, a mismatch in expectations, etc.
If you never addressed the issue with the person (i.e., attempted to repair), what happened to the relationship and/or how you show up in it?
There are also many things out there masquerading as repair but really aren’t. It’s become quite fashionable to talk about how important repair is to us, some of us are so well-versed in therapy speak, or we *cognitively* know that we’re supposed to listen to the other person and then apologize.
I’d also venture to guess that you’ve experienced a “repair” with someone in your life that left you feeling unheard, uneasy, or that something still wasn’t quite right, even though they technically said all of the things a person is supposed to say. Yeah? Me too. Quite a few times actually.
Your body and nervous system will tell you whether the rupture has been mended. That feeling of unease that remains? Trust it. There’s still a rupture that needs tending to. That doesn’t necessarily need to involve the other person(s), but there’s still a rupture that lives on inside of you.
There are two foundational ingredients for repair (the rest are just communication skills one can learn): attunement and presence.
Self-attunement and attunement to the other (often this expresses as empathy).
Presence.
That’s truly it.
At this year’s singing camp I had two ruptures that stood out to me (exciting! I told you I’m a relationship nerd), and both moved through repair. Although the repair looked different in each situation, the foundational ingredients were there.
What was made possible from these repairs? A deepening in a friendship in one instance and in the other: being able to show up fully and confidently in a duet for the first verse of the Appalachian song, “A Few More Years.”
And beyond those things: feeling seen and met in my tenderness, hurt, and vulnerability.
These are the critical ingredients for connection and, more importantly, intimacy (i.e., deepening connection).
In the survey many of you filled out last month for me about the state of your relationships (THANK YOU!), the *most* frequently named things that people wanted more of were connection and intimacy.
Successfully navigating the rupture and repair cycle is an integral part of having more of both.
If you want more connection and intimacy in your relationships, want to learn how to confidently navigate the rupture/repair cycle, or repair ruptures within yourself, I have room for two, 1:1 coaching clients starting in September.
Book a free Connection Call with me at the button below. Let’s connect and see if we’d be a good fit.
For those of you looking for a collective experience, I AM SO EXCITED to announce an upcoming, 7-week live offering titled ENOUGH.
It’s time to finally feel like ENOUGH in your relationships.
That you are enough. That you have enough. That you’re just the perfect amount of too much.
Relating from a place of enoughness will shift your relationships dramatically.
No more working hard to get your needs met. Less anxiety about doing or saying the wrong thing. More resting into the truth that you’re already enough. More trusting that your relationships can hold your imperfections. More feeling a deep sense of nourishment in your relationships.
More connection. More intimacy. More enoughness.
Experience the depth of community, connections, and intimacy that your heart longs for.
Relating from a place of enoughness changed my experience of relating so much that for the first time ever I'm going to be delivering a 7-week training breaking down how to go from feeling like not enough or too much to finally feeling like ENOUGH.
This is the first time I’ve ever done this offering.
Because it's live, the founding members are going to help shape it and get more personalized attention.
This is an offering that I plan on selling at an $800 price point. However, right now I'm looking for just 8 founding members to join for less than half of that.
The first 8 founding members are going to hop on live with me every single week for seven weeks, and I'm going to illuminate the pathway to finally feeling like enough in your relationships.
Over the course of 7 weeks together, I’ll teach you:
-How to identify the roots of your not enough story
-The somatics of not enough and how this shows up in your day-to-day
-How your wounded parts carry the story of not enough and how this is showing up in your relationships right now
-How to unburden your wounded parts from this story
-How to ground the feeling of enoughness in your body
-How to apply all you learned to your present-day relationships
We’ll meet weekly for 90 minutes on Sundays from 11am-12:30pm CDT via Zoom.
We start on Sunday, September 15.
I plan on selling this offering for $800 but for this time only, 8 founding members can join for just $300.
Learn more and sign up at the button below.
Two other brief programmatic updates for this fall:
There will be some changes coming to this Substack at some point, including a name change and a low-cost offering for paid subscribers. The shifts feel in alignment with my own growth and the larger vision that holds my work. I’m excited about them. Stay tuned.
Heartbroken Open Mic is currently on hold; I canceled the two remaining events I had scheduled in Minneapolis for this calendar year. The open mic I held in May didn’t feel right in a few ways, which means that something about the container needs to shift. I know what needs to shift but am not quite sure what that looks like in the material world yet. Heartbroken Open Mic will absolutely still be an offering of mine—it feels like such an important space to hold—but something wasn’t working anymore, so I’m sitting with that. I’m curious to see what it reveals to me and will keep you all posted.
May you weather the ruptures in your relationships with grace and ease.
(Or with mess and self-compassion.)
May you have the courage to reach for repair.
May you have the self-trust to say: this isn’t quite repaired for me yet.
May you be open to the wholeness that lies on the other side.
Cheering you on always,
Grey
P.S. I’d love to have you join me as a founding member of ENOUGH. If you’re ready to finally feel like enough in your relationships + have the depth of community, connections, and intimacy that your heart longs for, learn more and sign up here.
In case you missed these recent conversations:
A practice for when you feel like not enough; It’s simple, and it works.
Why awareness isn’t enough (to keep you from repeating the same relational patterns); Stop wondering how it happened AGAIN.
How to Know if Someone’s Worthy of Your Vulnerability: This should be your major indicator.