2025-12-09 - Restoring our FIRST Connection

Our mission at G2G is first and foremost is about restoring broken connections--a chronic issue currently plaguing our society and the root of much suffering. Homelessness is just one of the most severe and obvious manifestations of this global dynamic. We're initially focusing on the homeless problem because it brings healing not only to those that are physically homeless, but also to the larger set of people who are emotionally homeless (myself included) who are equally disconnected just in less obvious ways.

I encourage everyone to make an inventory of all the people in your lives (past and present) and especially those (for whatever reason) you have lost your connection with. Connections are not just nice to have, they are essential to our survival. Today, right now, make a plan to overcome the fears that drove you to suspend these connections. Systematically resolve your conflicts, and at least make a bona-fide attempt to restore your connections. Trust me, if you are in anyway unhappy in your life THIS will help establish the stability and support you desperately need. This is key, you will probably find it difficult, if not impossible to accomplish this--restoring connections to the people we have a long history with is HARD because all the relationship baggage. I will share with you the solution to this that was the catalyst for my journey--connect with strangers. Yes, it can be a little scary, especially if you are not outgoing, but once you get over that you'll find how easy and cathartic it is. Practice on strangers, then circle back to your priority connections. (Hint: Becoming a G2G volunteer can help you in this!).

Moments after birth, we form our first and probably most important connection with our mother as we are held for the first time. If your relationship with your mom is disconnected, make that your first priority.

My mom (Judy) and I have been largely disconnected my entire life. Today I am starting the process of doing something about it. Hawaii is an important element in my personal recovery from a lifelong struggle with anxiety and depression. For about three years, I've used a Oahu relaxation video as part of my meditation practice thus having watched it hundreds of times. A few weeks ago I decided that as part of my healing journey it was time to actually experience, first hand, these places that have helped me so much. I also happen to have an extra companion ticket so I decided to invite my mom to come with me and realized that this is an opportunity of a lifetime to restore my first connection.

And so here we are, it's 5:20am about to take off from SAV, first to ATL and then on to HNL:

Oh, and there's another "small" reason I'm doing this trip. Running has become an essential part of my healing. Over the past 12 months, I have gone from doing little to no exercise to running 6-8 miles/day. It is on those runs that I found myself constantly encountering the homeless. During the self-introspection of my therapy sessions I came to see how I was subconsciously ignoring (even running from) the homeless every single day. It's in that moment that I vowed to stop and actually connect with every homeless person I encountered. I thought I was going to be helping them, but these connections brought an inexplicable joy to me even from providing the simplest forms of assistance (just acknowledging them, listening, buying a meal, or giving them a ride somewhere). For the first time in my life, I could actually "feel" something--previously impossible due to the numbness that anxiety and depression creates. This made me realize that these acts of service were actually the key to my own healing so embraced it and thus was inspired to launch Ground to Growth.

I continued to improve my running distances, pushing past past my bests of 10 miles, then running a couple of half marathons (13 miles) and one morning, on a lark, running from downtown Savannah out to Skidaway Island and back (20 miles). At this point, I was confident I could run a full marathon (26 miles). I did a Google search to see what marathons were coming up and low and behold, what's near the top of the search results?:

So yes, in a few days, I will run my first marathon solidifying the most important connection of all--the connection to myself. Hopefully, I survive--lol.