Thin Places: The Long Journey Home

There is an old Celtic understanding of thin places—sacred spaces where heaven and earth seem to draw close and something beyond ourselves feels almost within reach.

But what if the thinnest place isn’t found in an ancient forest or along the rugged coast of Ireland? What if it’s found within us?

In this deeply personal episode, Lizzi explores the quiet loneliness that often lives beneath perfectionism, people-pleasing, overgiving, and the longing to belong. Through stories from her own life, reflections on childhood, attachment, the nervous system, and the wisdom of Celtic spirituality, she invites listeners to consider that healing isn’t always about becoming someone new. Sometimes it’s about returning to the child who has been waiting patiently for us to come home.

This is a conversation about belonging—not finding it in someone else, but rediscovering it within yourself.

Because perhaps the longest journey we will ever take is not across the world… but back to our own hearts.

Transcript

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There's an old Celtic understanding that has stayed with me for years. It speaks of a place where heaven and earth seem to lean toward one another. Places where something sacred feels almost close enough to touch. In Celtic Christianity, they're often called the thin places. For a long time, I imagined those places were somewhere really, really far away. Maybe along the western coast of Ireland, where the Atlantic has spent thousands of years shaping stone into something softer than any anyone thought could be possible, right? In valleys where the morning mist lingers just a little longer before the sun gently lifts it away. Maybe in ancient forests where the oaks have stood through storms, through wars, through generations of people searching for God, never realizing perhaps that God had been quietly searching for them too. I imagined thin places were destinations, places you traveled to, places you visited, places that somehow changed you. But lately I've begun to wonder if perhaps the thinnest places are not found on maps at all. Perhaps they're found within us. Maybe every human heart carries places where the veil grows so thin that the soul remembers what the mind has spent years trying to forget. And maybe those places are not our greatest joys, but maybe they're our deepest wounds. Maybe they're the places where the child we once were still waits patiently, hoping that someday, one day, we will finally come back. Hello, my friends, and welcome back to Untamed Voices, and welcome to season two. As I mentioned last episode, you know, the season does feel very different to me. And like I said last episode, it's not because I've figured life out, because I totally have not. If anything, I've become more comfortable admitting how much I still don't know. And strangely, that feels like wisdom, right? I only know that I know nothing, right? Over the past year, we've walked together through conversations about drama, attachment, the nervous system, relationships, spirituality, boundaries, control, trust, receiving, letting go. Looking back now, it feels as though every single one of those conversations has been gently and quietly leading us to here, right? Because I realized something that healing isn't always about learning something new. Sometimes healing is remembering something ancient, something we have always known. Before fear, before survival, before shame, before the world convinced us that we had to become someone else in order to belong. When I imagined season two, I kept coming back to the image of an old oak tree. There's something beautiful about an oak. People admire its branches, its strength, its beauty, its ability to withstand storms, but none of that begins above the ground. Everything begins below it. Long before anyone sees the branches stretching toward the sky, the roots are already reaching into the darkness, quietly, patiently, without applause, without recognition. The roots understand something the branches never could. Before you can grow upward, you must first belong to the earth beneath you. I think we're much the same. For so much of our lives we try to grow taller, become better, become stronger, wiser, more healed. All the while forgetting that perhaps what our souls have been asking for isn't greater height, but deeper roots. Roots into ourselves, into truth, into love, roots into the quiet knowing that we never had to earn the right to exist. That, I guess, is what I hope that this season becomes. Not a season of becoming someone new, but a season of becoming more deeply rooted in who we've always been. Less performing or proving or abandoning ourselves, more remembering belonging, coming home to ourselves. Why Irish blessings have made me cry long before I understood why, right? There's something about them that feels really gentle. They don't rush grief, they don't try to explain suffering, they don't demand certainty, they don't offer quick answers. Instead, they seem to place like this warm blanket around weary shoulders. They sit quietly beside sorrow without trying to make it leave. They bless, they remind, they stay. For years I thought I simply loved beautiful words. Now I actually realize that those blessings sound like everything I had wished someone had spoken over me when I was little or even as an adult. And not because I needed someone to rescue me. I mean, I did sometimes, but really because every child longs to hear words like, you are loved, you belong, you are safe. You don't have to earn your place here. You don't have to become someone else before you are worthy of being held. I don't think I was searching for Irish blessings. I think my soul was searching for home. So a few weeks ago, I was driving, nothing, you know, extraordinary happened that day or anything. You know, the road was typical, you know, driving through Illinois. Sky was painted with the soft colors that only seemed to appear just before the evening settles, which is just one of my favorite times of the day. My music was playing, I wasn't paying much attention, my mind was kind of wandering through ordinary thoughts, work, family, life, etc., right? And then one song ended and another one began. First, it was you'll never walk alone. Then, not long after it was Enya's May It Be. Something inside of me just shifted, not in my thoughts or my body, but kind of like before your mind has words for it. And my tears just started flooding, right? They started filling my eyes, started flooding. I wasn't thinking about my childhood. I wasn't trying to remember anything. I just felt something, something old, something that had been waiting very, very patiently beneath the surface of my life. When I got home, I didn't get out of the car right away. I sat in the silence. The music had ended and something else had started. But as though an old door had like quietly opened, and standing on the other side was a little girl. She couldn't have been more than four years old. She wasn't crying, she wasn't angry, she wasn't asking anyone to save her. She simply looked at me with eyes that seemed far older than four years should ever be. And without saying a single word, I knew exactly what she had been carrying. Loneliness. Not the loneliness of being like physically alone. I've actually grown to love solitude. Solitude has become sacred to me. This was something completely different. This was the loneliness of not feeling deeply held. The loneliness of existing without feeling that there was somewhere your little heart could finally rest. Somewhere it could exhal. Somewhere it didn't have to stay so alert, somewhere it didn't have to become someone else just to belong. So as I sat with her, her being me, by the way, me at four years old, not some other little girl that showed up at my door, at my car door. But as I sat with her, I just realized something that took my breath away. And for years I thought I had been healing fear, shame, control, perfectionism, people pleasing. And I had. But beneath every one of those, like the roots beneath the great oak, there was something much older. It was loneliness. It had quietly nourished every belief that came after it. I guess I didn't pay much attention to it because it was such a simple thing, right? Oh, you're lonely. Okay, no big deal, right? But every strategy, every adaptation, every way I had learned to survive was there. And for the first time, instead of asking, how do I make this feeling go away? I found myself just asking something completely different. Where did you learn to carry this by yourself? Right? So developmental psychology tells us that around four years old, children begin making much deeper meaning of themselves and the world around them. They begin asking questions they cannot yet put into words. Am I safe? Will someone come when I cry? Do I matter? If people really knew me, would they really actually still stay? Children don't answer those questions with logic. They answer them with experience, with nervous systems, with thousands of moments that tell them whether the world feels safe enough to rest inside. Looking back now, I don't remember one single day that loneliness arrived. I don't think loneliness usually comes that way. I guess it just kind of settles. I mean, just shows up one day or quietly or sneakily, I don't know. Kind of like the mist rolling across the Irish Hills, right? So gentle before that, before long, it's like everything familiar begins disappearing behind it. That was my childhood. Not one single moment, but a climate, a way of being. A little girl living in a very, very, very big world. And this little girl trying with all of her heart to find somewhere that just felt like home. I think about her often now, not because I want to relive what happened or stay in the past, but because I've learned something about healing. Healing doesn't ask us to relive our stories. It asks us to return to the parts of ourselves that live them. There is a difference. One keeps us trapped, the other one brings us home to ourselves. So I've been reflecting a great deal on children lately, and that's not just because I'm a therapist or a mom, but really because somewhere along the way, I forgot something children know instinctively. Children never ever stop reaching for connection. It's as natural to them as breathing is. Before a child ever learns language, before they know their name, before they understand the world, their nervous system is already asking one question. Is there someone out there? Or is there someone there? Not really will they fix everything, but will someone stay? Right? I think that's what every child is searching for: a place where they can finally let their shoulders soften, a place where they don't have to watch every face, a place where they don't have to wonder what version of themselves will be accepted today. A place where love isn't earned, where it's just simply given. I spent the first years of my life in a cult. That sentence has become easier to say over the last years, you know, but it still doesn't fully describe what it felt like to be a child inside of that world. When people hear the word cult, they often imagine beliefs, rules, leaders, control. My mind doesn't go there first. My mind goes to a little girl. A little girl whose nervous system was trying to make sense of a world that didn't feel safe. A little girl who learned very early that the grown-ups around her carried fears far bigger than she could understand. Children don't analyze environments, they absorb them. They're like we've heard before, little sponges. Like trees taking in whatever is present in the soil around them. And if the soil is filled with fear, the roots don't know any different. They simply grow around it. One of the most beautiful and heartbreaking things I've learned through my own work is this children would rather believe something is wrong with themselves than believe the people they depend on cannot keep them safe. Think about that for a moment. If a child concludes, mom and dad can't protect me, their entire world becomes terrifying. But if they conclude something must be wrong with me, then there's hope. Hope that maybe if they become better, quieter, more helpful, more lovable, they can fix it. It's a really painful kind of hope, but it is hope nonetheless, right? So children adapt, not because they're weak, because they're extraordinarily wise. Their nervous systems are doing exactly what they were designed to do. They protect attachment, protect connection, protect survival, even if it costs them themselves. As I sat with my little four-year-old recently, my little four-year-old, you know, me as four years old, not my child, but you know what I mean. I realized that she had made a decision, not consciously, but children don't make decisions like this with words. They make them with their bodies, with their hearts, with their nervous systems. She quietly decided that if I keep giving my heart away, maybe someone will finally hold it. And it's not about romance or attention. She wanted relief. Relief from the unbearable ache of feeling so alone. I wondered lately about how many of us have made similar bargains. Maybe yours sounded different. Maybe it was if I'm perfect, or if I'm successful, or if I if I never make anyone angry, if I never need anything, if I always take care of everyone else. Every child writes their own survival story. Mine was give them your heart. And for many years I did. Looking back now, I don't judge her. How could I? How could I judge her? She was trying to survive. She believed love was something she had to create through self-sacrifice. She believed that belonging was something she had to earn. She believed that connection required pieces of herself, and because of that, I became really, really good at loving other people. I became so good at understanding them, feeling them, supporting them, seeing them, making them feel special. Sometimes before I ever learned to truly see myself. Not because they weren't born without needs, obviously, but somewhere along the way, their own needs became quieter than everyone else's. That realization really softened me towards myself. For years I wondered, why do I give so much? Now I do understand. Giving wasn't simply generosity. Sometimes it was actually survival. There's nothing shameful about that. There's only compassion. When I became a therapist, I thought I was choosing a profession. Now I think something much deeper was happening. I think the little girl who had always been searching for someone to sit beside lonely hearts grew up to be that person. Isn't that beautiful? And isn't it also a little heartbreaking? Because somewhere inside the therapist, the healer, the helper, was still a child quietly wondering, will someone sit beside mine? As the years passed, that bargain followed me into relationships. I fell in love easily. Or maybe that's not quite true. I fell into hope easily. I wanted to believe. I wanted to trust. I wanted to see the goodness in people. And I still do. I hope I always do. But there's a difference between opening your heart and abandoning it. I didn't know the difference. No one had ever taught me. So I would hand people pieces of myself, hoping they would give me back what I had never received. Safety, belonging, rest. No wonder I often found emotionally unavailable people. They weren't creating loneliness. They were touching the loneliness that had already been there for decades. That realization changed everything for me. Because it meant the answer wasn't becoming better at choosing people. The answer was returning to the little girl who believed she had to hand her heart away in the first place. So as I've been sitting with all of this, I've come to believe something that feels incredibly freeing. The opposite of loneliness isn't being surrounded by people. It's belonging to yourself. It's knowing that no matter who comes or who goes, there's one person who's going to stay, one person who will stay, one person who will keep choosing you. You it doesn't mean that we stop needing one another. We absolutely need one another. We were created for connection. But connection feels entirely different when it grows from wholeness instead of hunger. One says, please completely. The other says, I'm so grateful we get to walk together. Those are very different relationships. So there's something absolutely beautiful about old wounds, and I never thought I would say those words. At one point, it probably would have made me really angry to hear those words. But for so many years, I saw them as interruptions, as obstacles, as evidence that I still had work to do. Now I see them as invitations, not invitations to suffer, invitations to return. Because old wounds have a way of speaking to us through ordinary moments. They don't usually announce themselves. They whisper. A song comes on the radio, a child reaches for your hand. Someone says something unexpectedly kind. A stranger smiles with warmth that feels almost unfamiliar. A professor speaks words of encouragement that seem almost too simple to matter. And yet something inside you begins to ache. Not because of the moment, because the moment has wandered into an old room that has quietly remained locked for years. I've stopped asking myself, why am I so emotional? Instead, I ask, who inside me just remembered? That one question has changed the way I understand healing. I remember sitting in grad school, and it was just a whatever, a regular day. Nothing really significant. One of my professors looked around the classroom with so much warmth in her eyes, and she smiled and said, You're all like little birds. We're nurturing you, and one day you'll leave the nest and fly away. Everyone smiled. I smiled too, but inside my heart broke open. I remember feeling embarrassed. Why would something so gentle affect me so deeply? Why did tears immediately rush to my eyes? It didn't make sense. At least then it didn't. Now it makes perfect sense to me. It wasn't about my professor. She wasn't becoming the mother I never had. She wasn't filling some empty space. She simply shined a lantern into a room I had never entered before. A room where a little girl had quietly spent her life wondering, what does it feel like to simply be nurtured? Not because she earned it or performed well or because she was useful, just because she existed. That little comment wasn't the wound. It illuminated it. And for that, I am deeply grateful. Sometimes people don't come into our lives to become what we've always needed. Sometimes they simply help. Us discover what we've been missing. As I've reflected on this over the past few weeks, I've noticed something else. There have been many moments throughout my life where someone showed me just the smallest glimpse of genuine care. A thoughtful conversation, a kind word, someone remembering something important to me, someone seeing me, really seeing me. And almost every time I found myself feeling overwhelmed. Not because they had done too much, but because that little girl had received so little. When you've spent years wandering through a desert, even one drop of water feels overwhelming. And there's no shame in that. There's only grief. Grief for what was has all or what was always meant to be there, really. I think that's also why becoming a police officer affected me the way that it did. People asked me how I managed to respond to calls involving children. You know, neglect, abandonment, fear. The truth is, sometimes I managed, sometimes I did not. There were calls I carried home with me. Children whose eyes stayed with me long after my shift had ended and haunted me. At the time I thought it was simply because I cared deeply, and I did. But now I know something else was happening. My nervous system recognized theirs, not because of our not because our stories were identical or anything, but because loneliness recognizes loneliness. Children know when another child has been caring too much, even when they're grown. Years later, after my youngest son was born, another moment found me. He was four years old, same age. I remember taking him to preschool like so many little ones. He was uncertain. He reached for me. Part of him wanted to be brave, and part of him wanted me to stay. I remember walking away and feeling something inside my chest that was far bigger than the moment itself. It felt like my whole body wanted to turn around and go back. Not because I believed he wasn't safe, he was. Not because I thought he couldn't do it, he could. But something else was happening. The little four-year-old inside me had stepped forward. She wasn't afraid for him. She remembered herself. She remembered what it had felt like to believe that when someone walked away, they might never come back. Two little children stood at that classroom door that morning. One held my hand, the other held my heart. Healing has taught me that we often mistake these moments for weakness. We say, why am I reacting so strongly? Why can't I just move on? Why does this still affect me? Maybe we're just asking the wrong questions. Maybe the better question is: who inside me has been carrying this alone? That question has transformed the way that I work as a therapist. It's transformed the way I parent, the way I love, because suddenly there's no enemy inside of me anymore. Only parts that learn to survive. Parts that became brilliant protectors. Parts that deserve gratitude before they deserve change. So one afternoon I sat quietly in meditation. I imagined myself walking toward that little girl. She looked exactly as I remembered, curious, sensitive, watching everything. She looked up at me. I expected her to ask me why life had been so unfair. I expected her to ask me why no one protected her. Instead, she asked one question. Are you leaving too? I don't think I've ever heard a question that reached so deeply into my heart. Because underneath every relationship, every fear, every moment of overgiving, every time I abandoned my own needs was that same question, will you leave me too? And a lot of times I left first, before they even did. Did not give people the chance to leave me. And for the first time in my life, I understood something. I had spent years searching for someone who would promise never to leave me, all the while I was the one who kept leaving her. Every time I ignored my intuition, every time I dismissed my own feelings, every time I stayed quiet to keep someone else comfortable. Every time I handed someone my worth and waited for them to hand it back, I left. Not because I wanted to, because I didn't know there was another way. So I knelt down beside her, not as a therapist, not as someone trying to fix anything. Simply as a woman that she would one day become. I placed my hand over her tiny little heart, then over my own, and I realized they were beating together, separated by decades, joined by love. I looked into her eyes and said the words she had been waiting a lifetime to hear. You don't have to keep giving your heart away anymore. You can keep it. You don't have to earn love. You don't have to become someone else to belong. I'm here. And this time I am staying. She didn't say anything, she didn't need to. She simply leaned into me, as children do when they finally believe they're safe. I think that's the moment everything began to change for me. And it's not that my past disappeared or that loneliness vanished forever. Loneliness was no longer alone. She had someone sitting beside her, and perhaps that is all healing ever has been. The quiet decision made over and over again to return, to stay, to become the faithful companion your heart has been waiting for all along. There's a saying in many Celtic traditions that every home should keep a fire burning. And this isn't just for warmth or for cooking. The hearth was the heart of the home. It was where stories were told, where tears were welcomed, where travelers were invited to rest, where children fell asleep against the shoulders of those who loved them. When the fire was tended, people knew they belonged. So as I've been reflecting on that image, I've realized something. For much of my life, I was searching for someone else's fire, someone else's home, someone else's certainty, someone else's arms, someone else's voice to finally say, you belong here. I don't think I was wrong for searching. I think I was searching in the only direction a four-year-old knows how. Outward. Children are supposed to look outward. They're supposed to reach for loving eyes, comforting arms, gentle voices, steady hearts. That isn't weakness. It's how we're be we were beautifully designed. The tragedy isn't that I looked outward. The tragedy is that I kept looking outward long after the little girl inside me had grown into a woman who could finally turn around and meet her. I don't wish she had less, trusted less. I don't wish she had loved less. In fact, I think she loved with extraordinary courage, which I admire so much. She believed people were worth loving. She believed hearts were meant to stay open. She believed goodness existed. Those were never the problem. The only thing she didn't know was that her own heart deserved to remain in her own hands. No one ever taught her that. So now I am teaching her that in a nice, gentle way. Sometimes people ask me, does healing ever end? I don't know. I don't think healing is really a destination, right? I think healing becomes a some sort of relationship. It's a relationship with yourself. So some mornings I still wake up and notice that old loneliness quietly sitting beside me, right? But now when I notice it, I don't panic. I don't try to make it disappear. I don't assume I've failed. I simply notice her. I place my hand over my heart, I take a slow breath, and I say, Good morning. I know you're here. Come sit with me. It may sound kind of strange, but loneliness has become one of my greatest teachers. Because every time she appears, she reminds me to come home to myself again. Not to fix myself or analyze myself, but to just come back, to settle with myself, within myself. So there's another thing that I've realized. For years I believed loving myself meant becoming more confident, more positive, more accepting. Now I think loving myself is much quieter than that. It looks like listening when my body whispers instead of waiting until it screams. It looks like resting before exhaustion convinces me I have no choice. It looks like honoring my intuition even when it disappoints someone else. It looks like telling the truth with kindness. It looks like allowing joy without waiting for permission. It looks like grieving without rushing myself toward gratitude. It really looks like staying again and again and again, right? Until staying becomes my first instinct instead of leaving. Coming home to yourself does not mean you stop needing people. We do need one another. Healing happens in relationships. Children need caregivers. Friends need friends. Partners need one another. Communities matter. None of this is about becoming completely self-sufficient. It's about something much gentler. It's about no longer asking another human to become the home you were always meant to help build within yourself. Relationships become so much freer when they're no longer carrying the impossible weight of completiness. Then love becomes exactly what it was meant to be: not a rescue, but a companionship, not a possession, but presence, not desperation, a shared journey. Two people walking beside one another, not because one is carrying the other, but because both have learned how to carry themselves with tenderness. So as I close this story, I find myself thinking again of those old Celtic blessings. Maybe they were never meant to predict the future. Maybe they were always meant to remind us of what has been true all along. That beneath all of our striving, beneath all of our fears, beneath every protective part, there is something within us that has never stopped belonging. A place where spirit has quietly waited. A place where love has never withdrawn. A place where the little child inside us has kept a chair by the fire, hoping, believing that one day we would come back. I think I've finally come to understand something. The songs that moved me so deeply, the Irish blessings that brought tears before I even knew why, the dreams, the moments of stillness, the people who briefly reflected love back to me. They weren't trying to become home, they were pointing toward it, like little lanterns along a winding path, each one gently whispering, keep walking, you're getting close. Home is just ahead. And then one day, without even realizing it, I stopped searching outside myself. I turned around, and there she was, the little girl, still waiting, not angry at all that it had taken so long, not disappointed, only hopeful, as children so often are. I knelt beside her, I took her little hands into mine, and I whispered, You never had to give your heart away to deserve love. You never had to earn your place. You never had to disappear so that someone else could see you. You have always belonged. You have always mattered. And from this day forward, I'll carry our heart with great tenderness together. So before we say goodbye today, I'd like to leave you with a blessing. Not an ancient blessing, a blessing born from this journey, a blessing for every lonely child, for every grown heart still finding its way home. It's called a blessing for the journey home. May the roads that once carried you away from yourself become gentle paths leading you home. May the winds that once felt cold upon your face become reminders that even the fiercest storms eventually become quiet skies. May you never again mistake self-abandonment for love or exhaustion for devotion. May your own hands become the safest place your heart has ever known. May the child within you never again wonder whether she must earn her place. May she know before another sunrise, before another accomplishment, before another relationship, that she was worthy. The very moment she first drew breath, may every tear water the roots of the life that you are now growing. May every scar become a doorway through which compassion quietly enters. May every lonely road remind you that you are never truly walking alone. For love has walked beside you, even when you could not feel it. Spirit has whispered your name, even when fear drowned out the sound, and your own heart, faithful and patient, has kept the fire burning, waiting, not for someone else, for you. So when the old loneliness comes again, as old companions sometimes do, may you greet it gently. May you thank it for protecting the child until you were old enough to return. Then, take that little hand, walk together, sit beside the fire, and rest. Because the longest journey was never the journey toward becoming someone else. It was always the journey back to yourself. Thank you for beginning this new season with me. My hope isn't that you leave today with more information. My hope is that you leave remembering, remembering the child you once were, remembering the love that has always been yours, remembering that healing is not the absence of wounds. Healing is what happens when we stop leaving the one who carries them. Until next time, may your roots grow deeply, may your heart remain open, may your spirit find rest, and may you always know you belong. Welcome home. See you next time.