The Swing

I walk my dog around the same path every day.

We pass houses, a cul-de-sac, and a little park. And I guess the sound was there often before I really tuned into it. Because I saw her first.

A young woman. I couldn't really tell her age -- she was young, probably in her teens -- just swinging back and forth. Not like the happy-go-lucky, this-is-so-much-fun kind of swinging. Just steady. And solemn. She wasn't laughing, talking, or looking at her phone. Just swinging.

The first time I saw her I smiled to myself. I thought -- there's someone who is growing up but maybe wants to stay connected to her childhood. Swinging was the way to do that.

But honestly. Something changes when you hear the same swing, at the same pace, in the same park, day after day after day.

She was always there. Nearly every day. Sometimes in the morning. Sometimes in the afternoon. But often during dusk. And into the dark. People drove by that park every single day. And I knew they didn't see her.

It felt like that motion -- that swing -- was the one thing holding her together.

I know something about the nervous system. Rocking soothes the brain. It is one of the most ancient ways a human body knows to comfort itself -- long before therapy, long before anyone has the language for what they're feeling. There was always the movement. The rhythm of the movement.

And that rhythm says: you're safe enough. Right now. You're safe enough to stay.

She had found her place of safety. And it was that swing.

And as she continued to swing -- I continued to walk past.

But I know why that swing made me stop and think deeply.

Because I wasn't just a witness to her. I've been there before. Not in that particular park. Not that specific swing. But I absolutely knew what it meant to need one.

My nervous system remembers what my mind spent decades trying to rationalize away. And never could.

I found my park. I found my swing. I found the one place where the only motion was one that I chose. Where nobody could hold me down. Where the rhythm just held me.

Safe enough to stay.

Not long ago, I turned the corner toward that park and saw the lights. My heart sank.

Six or seven police cars. An ambulance. And that young woman -- on a stretcher. Her body folded over itself. Head dropped toward her shoulder.

I could feel the tears welling up.

And at that moment, I understood something I had not let myself understand before.

I wasn't watching a stranger.

I was watching myself over the past fifty years.

My body knew her before my mind caught up. Because that's what the body does. It recognizes the frequency of its own survival in others. It knows the sound of a child who found the one safe rhythm in a world that felt very unsafe.

When we look at a young woman alone on a swing -- when we see someone who appears broken -- our first instinct is to wonder what is wrong with her. Why can't she make friends? Why is she always alone? Why is she so fragile?

But what if the more important question is not what is wrong with her -- but what broke around her, before she ever felt the need to sit down in that swing day after day?

Nobody looked past me as a child standing in the snow without shoes. No one asked what was broken in that house.

We see the person. We rarely see the architecture that built them.

Not far from that park, there was a man who laughed all the time. Everyone thought he loved life. He was genuine, funny -- the kind of laugh that made strangers smile without knowing why. He died recently. And those that loved him -- some saw glimpses of his darkness, and some did not. His laughter carried a deep secret - the weight he carried inside.

Two people. Two completely different silences.

One wore stillness. One wore light.

Isolation doesn't have a uniform. And neither does survival.

We live in a world where isolation has become quite sophisticated. It doesn't always look like a woman on a swing. Sometimes it looks like a masterful Instagram feed. Sometimes it laughs the loudest in the room. Sometimes it stands in the cold waiting for someone to decide to open the door.

Maybe it's time to put that phone down. Look up. Make a call -- not a text, a call. Go to lunch with the friend you've been meaning to reach over the last six months. Check on the person who lives alone. And always check on the one who laughs the loudest -- because they may just be suffering the most.

And when you see someone who looks broken -- see them. Really, truly see them. Not with a verdict. Not with judgment. But with compassion. With the part of you that knows what it's like to need a swing.

Because the most ancient technology we have is still a human being turning toward another human being and saying:

I see you.

That young woman on the swing.

That girl standing in the snow.

That child who once found the park because it was the only place that was safe.

She continues her story.

What will you do with yours?