Holding Space for Tender Hearts

A prelude to a memoir with a message...

We all have our past. We all have our pain. We will all know ghosts from time to time. But if our life is like a building, then we should open our doors to let some people see inside. Into our darkest places, into those rooms that hold our fears and dreams, we will begin to go together. Friends with hope like candles, telling ghosts to go. - Jamie Tworkowski, If You Feel Too Much

I picked up my most heavily marked copy of “If You Feel Too Much: Thoughts on things Found and Lost and Hoped For” and opened to what felt like a random page. But someone wise reminded me last night that there are no coincidences.

When I reread the words above, I felt like they were written just for me, just for tonight. I’ve realized that part of the ache to write again, to write in ways that I haven’t written in ages, is to open the doors & let some people see inside. It’s not just been an unfathomable few years now. There’ve been several chapters of life that have been differently, uncomfortably, mistakenly unfathomable. And I used to believe that I had to face all of that alone. That the ghosts only knew my name. And if I dared to utter theirs in public, I’d push everyone away.

Ghosts can be terrifying, and a lot of people don’t know how to watch terrifying. They don’t know how to help the terrified, when there are no words to say, when there is no band-aid to fix them, when there is no easy answer. A lot of people are scared of others ghosts because they look or feel somewhat like their own. And others are scared because they don’t want to look into the dark. It’s too hard. I feel like they wonder what the point is if they can’t offer the terrified a solution.

My ghosts haven’t all been terrifying. Most have been heart-wrenching. They’ve been extremely painful to witness. They’ve been my biggest, previously unknown fears. They’ve made me watch them take the things most valuable to me - my safety, my voice, my independence, my babies, my friends - they’ve taken and taken and taken until I felt like barely a shell of a person - and a person whom nobody knew how see inside.

I truly believed that the building was going to stay locked up, the doors to each room shut, the ghosts roaming the hallways endlessly in the dark, always lurking around every corner.

It wasn’t until I tried to speak directly to them, softly and gently telling them that I knew they had to stay, only then did I believe that maybe I could share bits and pieces of the darkest rooms, of the fears and dreams, of the loss and the love around their secrets.

By the time I started really talking about the closed doors and the rooms I could not enter, I was barely breathing. There wasn’t much of me left in tact. The ghosts had dissected my heart, they’d stolen my limbs, and they’d left me a trail of lies in those now empty places.

The lie that nobody I knew should be burdened with the heartbreaking, tragic, traumatic events and experienced I’d survived. That by sharing any parts of those moments with anyone else, I’d spread the burden out. I’d become the one they’d want to shy away from. The one they’d want to avoid conversation with. That I’d be too much to hold.

Here’s the secret about the the broken hearted.

Sometimes, we just want you to sit beside us in the silence.

We recognize that it’s impossible to find the right thing to say, that there usually is no right thing to say, and that anything you say means that you’re trying to break through, trying to show up for us, and that means so much.

We understand that it’s uncomfortable to sit beside someone hurting so much, and to not be able to fix them. To not be able to make things better for them.

We know we’re broken.

We know we’re grieving.

We know we’re lost.

We just don’t want to be broken and grieving and lost alone.

So if you’ve ever wondered what to do when a friend reveals a ghost from their story, or lets you see into a room full of darkness, the kindest thing you can do is sit down beside them. Put your hand on their back. Or even better, grab their hand with yours.

And say something like this:

You’re not alone. I’m here. I’ll be here. I’m not leaving until you ask me to. I don’t know what to say or do but the minute you know what you need, I want to know. I want to get it or be it or say it for you. And if that minute doesn’t come, that’s not your fault. I’m going to sit here anyway. Because I’m not going to let you be alone.

That’s all any of us want, right?

Friends with hope like candles, telling ghosts to go.