While writing, I went to an online thesaurus to look up alternatives for the word ‘connection.’ It’s not that I didn’t want to use that word; it’s that I had used it twice in the same sentence. What could I say instead?
I expected to find synonyms that would denote how items, moments, or people are more generally associated, but instead, I found all of these personal, relational terms:
ally,
friend,
kin,
kinship,
kindred,
mentor,
messenger,
relative,
sponsor.
These are words I think about a lot, and for some reason, I was surprised that the synonyms for ‘connection’ took on such personal forms. It was a reminder that our connections with each other, even the more general ones, matter quite a bit. We never know how deep they might run, or how we might connect people in ways that lead to their own relationships over time.
Smuggling Grace 