Searching for Connection

Some of my earliest memories as a child weren't about toys or cartoons. They were about longing.

I remember desperately wanting to speak with Jesus. I wanted to see beyond what everyone else could see. I wanted to communicate with the unseen world, to experience something sacred, something deeper than everyday life.

Looking back now, I realize I wasn't just searching for God.

I was searching for connection.

Not casual conversation. Not friendships. Not belonging to a group.

I was searching for a kind of soul recognition that I couldn't explain as a child but carried with me for decades.

I Thought Other People Could Give Me What I Was Missing

For a long time, I believed someone else would finally make me feel connected.

I searched for it in romantic relationships. I gave pieces of myself away far too freely, believing that if someone truly loved me, I would finally feel whole. I convinced myself that if I could just find "the one," the emptiness would disappear.

But every relationship eventually revealed the same truth.

No one could give me what I was asking them to provide.

I wasn't asking for love.

I was asking someone else to introduce me to myself.

Addiction Felt Like Connection

I also found moments of what felt like profound connection while I was using substances.

Under certain circumstances, walls disappeared. Conversations felt vulnerable. I felt understood. I felt seen.

For a while, I mistook altered states for authentic intimacy.

But those moments always disappeared.

What remained was the same loneliness I had been trying to escape.

Like so many things we chase outside ourselves, it was a mirage.

Recovery Led Me Back to Spirit

Both times I entered recovery, my first instinct was to seek Spirit.

I wanted God.

I wanted to be saved.

I believed that if I prayed hard enough, surrendered deeply enough, or became spiritual enough, God would finally rescue me from the pain I carried.

And there were moments that felt absolutely breathtaking.

Moments where I experienced love, peace, presence, and something much larger than myself.

Those experiences were real.

They changed me.

But eventually another realization began to emerge.

Healing Yourself Is the Connection You've Been Looking For

The connection I had spent my entire life chasing wasn't waiting for me in another person.

It wasn't hidden inside a relationship.

It wasn't locked inside spirituality.

It wasn't waiting in sobriety.

It wasn't somewhere outside of me at all.

The person I had been trying to find...

...was me.

I realized that nothing could save me from myself.

No relationship could make me feel fully seen if I refused to see myself.

No amount of external validation could replace self-acceptance.

No spiritual experience could do the healing that I was unwilling to do.

The work was mine.

That is where healing began.

Everything Happens Within

Something interesting happened as I healed.

My circle became small.

My life became much simpler.

The need to constantly chase people, excitement, validation, or experiences slowly disappeared.

Not because I stopped loving people.

But because I stopped needing them to complete me.

For the first time in my life, I became content sitting with myself.

I no longer searched every room hoping someone would finally understand me.

I became the person who understood me.

That inner connection changed everything.

It transformed the way I love.

The way I parent.

The way I recover.

The way I work.

The way I experience spirituality.

The search that consumed decades of my life ended not because I found someone else…

…but because I finally came home to myself.