The Magic of Connection

I recently had the good fortune to connect or should I say reconnect with two amazing women from my past lives, one of whom I hadn’t seen for nearly 20 years. That’s not even the amazing bit of this story, she was actually only in my life for 2 years.

We’d worked together when I was living in the UK and after I left we never really kept in touch except through the odd Hello or like on LinkedIn. So earlier this year she messages and says “Hey Monique! You still living in Barbados? Guess what? I’m coming for a week!”

I was thrilled I was going to be seeing this blast from the past. We’d had fun working together and had some of the same ideals but we were very different and were intrigued by our differences.

I figured I’d do the tourist thing. You know, drive her around to a few choice tourist sites so she could see the other side of the island. Most locals will tell you the East Coast is a must! Anyhow the first time we met up we spent 8 hours just talking non-stop! It was like the years had just melted away. But here’s the thing, we were older, less shiny, more real and our conversation was far deeper than any we’d ever had all those years ago.

And we didn’t spend the time reminiscing about old times. Instead, we traded stories of our lives, the beauty of having children, love and loss, heartache, hopes and fears for the future. When it came time to say goodbye we were both unexpectedly quite emotional. In fact I’m getting all worked up again as I write this…where’s the Kleenex! After spending less than 2 days in each other’s company it felt like we’d become lifelong friends.

The total awesomeness of this exchange was that at no point did either of us stop and say “How come you didn’t stay in touch?” “How come you disappeared?” There was no judgement, just the unspoken understanding that life happens and that was all the glue we needed to cement the new form our friendship had taken.

I messaged to wish her safe travels and commented on what a gift it was to be able to just reconnect so easily, how it felt as though we were simply picking up a conversation after not seeing each other over the weekend instead of a whole 20 years! Her response was “Monique I don’t think the significance of quite how easy it was to reconnect has actually hit yet!”

Here’s the thing, even if life happens again, as it has a tendency to do, it will not and cannot take away from that moment. It was simply the magic of human connection in its purest form. Something I think we all secretly desire more of at our very core.

Just imagine how much easier life would be if we simply stayed present, experienced the moment, didn’t judge ourselves or others or even wonder why the moment is happening.

Here’s to those totally random moments in life that can unexpectedly turn into a treasured memory ❤️