Spiraling Together

I can admit that I need you & you can allude that you need me and that’s okay. We can do this together. We’ve got this.

This season, for the first time in a long time, I’ve really tried to hone in on what it feels like to identify what I need for support, what makes feel seen and heard and loved during a really difficult time. It’s a skill I started practicing while I was deep into trauma processing this fall, and it’s one that’s needed much support and the ability to hone into more specifics as I prepared for, underwent, and finally now begin recovering from a life changing, medically necessary hysterectomy.

A surgery I did not want.

A surgery I’ve detailed six ways to Sunday via poetry and prose right here in my Substack archives.

A surgery that I knew was going to emotionally derail me long before a date was placed on the calendar, one that I would need an army to stand beside me, to link arms or hold hands and to pull forward into the future without allowing me to bail, to cancel the procedure, or to turn myself inside out swallowing my incredibly deep and complex feelings about this choice-less choice.

In late January, I approached a handful of people and asked, straightforwardly, if they had the willingness and the capacity to provide extra support in the form of texts and or phone calls, for maybe the next 6-8 weeks. I spelled out exactly what I’d identified as “needs,” primarily falling into the following categories:

• The need to talk about the same topic over and over again until there was some way to wrap my brain around in a way that didn’t cause me to sob until I shut down.

• The need to hold space for me and with me alongside something that felt astronomically large and forever changing to my life.

• The need for me to articulate things that might feel or sound taboo, graphic or cringeworthy, but were (and are) of critical importance

• A continual reminder of the physical ramifications (and a reiteration the physical benefits) of this surgery often enough to remind myself that there was indeed a reason I chose to listen to my doctors.

I knew that ultimately, I was simply asking these individuals to not leave me alone with my feelings when I was particularly vulnerable, raw, fresh, extra sad, or lonely. Each person I approached said yes, quickly and without hesitation.

I felt proud.

My new skills, my safety net, it was holding. It was strong. I was spreading out my needs, not stacking them on one persons shoulders. I was responsibly acting as a friend in need, rather than desperately tossing my feelings into the air and invisibly begging the universe for someone I knew and loved to catch some of the pieces and to hold them tight, right alongside me, until I was ready to hold them myself again.

I was, while living through it, trying to teach the people closest to me how to love my broken heart back to life (a nod to my upcoming memoir!)

But the universe, it laughed.

Every single person on that roster had, in the weeks leading up to the necessary timeframe, their own life things appear and require their attention, dedication, and energy. So much so, that there were days or weeks straight that I didn’t hear back from them, even if I reached out just to ask how they were.

I felt sad.

I felt lonely.

I felt like I failed myself.

In retrospect I’ve simply learned that for many people, especially those without much practice, it can feel very difficult, if not impossible, to hold their own heartaches, let alone to even think about sharing their heartaches, and it may feel nearly impossible for them to ask for help. For those sweet individuals, there was absolutely no way to do the aforementioned while at the same time holding space for or even being able to listen to someone else’s something.

Specifically, my something.

So, I put up my walls.

I went into “turtle mode,” something I’m infinitely familiar with. I pulled my shell up around me, around my heart, around my thoughts, around my metaphorical sense of space, and I turned inward. I tried my hardest to give to myself what I had planned to receive from others.

This practice - it’s not new for me. Unfortunately, I’ve done it so many times before - but that was before I had new skills. Before I had a safety net. So this time, it came with disappointment - which honestly surprised me a bit.

I felt disappointed that I had tried, and despite my best intentions somehow still failed at setting up a network around me, spreading bits and pieces of seriousness and devastation in different hands, in different hearts - as none of what I had planned was available to me any longer.

So, I turned back to the person I know I have no choice but to trust, always.

Me.

I found myself leading up to, enduring, managing complications, and now focusing on healing from major life changing surgery feeling mostly… alone.

It’s nobody’s fault.

I’m not upset at anyone.

At the universe - yes.

At the circumstances - yes.

At being left to feel my feelings in real time mostly alone? Yes.

As a result, a rather new type of gift arrived.

I’ve opened my eyes wider. I’ve cast my proverbial net into new spaces. Spaces I likely wouldn’t have considered entering six or eight weeks ago, but places that make complete sense to occupy in this moment. People who reached out when I didn’t expect it. People who checked in because I was on their mind. People who know some of this hurt down to the facets and the divets etched into their sides, and knew that they hadn’t wanted to be alone, so they weren’t going to let me be alone either. I’ll be forever grateful for these surprise white lights.

Some of these people have even been in a season of their own hurt, health, or processing, and they’ve enabled me to watch a beautiful symbiosis - they’ve both held and shared their own things with me, while asking me to share mine too. Those friends, the one’s who’ve willingly agreed that we could for all intents and purposes “spiral together,” they’ve become my oxygen mask.

You’re having a bad day?

I’m so sorry.

I’m here to listen.

And my day has been pretty crummy too.

You go first.

These friendships feel evolved in a way that makes me pause, that makes me feel overcome by gratitude for individuals who not only know they are struggling and there’s no easy answer to help but they’d rather not do it alone, AND who simultaneously understand that I too am struggling, there is nothing anyone can do to help besides listen, or even proverbially sit beside me on the other end of the phone in silence, and that those things still feel gifts. It essentially ensures that no matter where either of us are located in the world on this time space continuum, neither of us are curled up totally alone.

And, then there are also two of the most incredible humans who have for way longer than just this season willingly and openly offered to share my heavy and to reflect with me on my journey to find tiny glimmers of light. They’ve held hope for me, they’ve stayed up late texting with me, they’ve prevented me from feeling truly alone on the worst nights, on the lonely nights, and on the nights that just don’t feel right.

Saying thank you for these friendships will never ever be enough, but I also know they didn’t do it for the thanks. They did it because their hearts are made of gold and all things kind, with the most love and best intentions, and they care in a way that means the most - they care in a way that transforms night into morning, and sometimes even tears into laughter. They care in a way that that makes me believe in better days.

So what do I make of all of this?

The most honest, life affirming friendships I have today, the ones I can say anything in, no matter how fucked up or confusing or inarticulate it feels - I feel received, with open arms, with an open heart.

I also feel like I’m given the rare and beautiful opportunity to both feel held AND to have the opportunity to hold someone else’s something else at the same time. Getting support AND giving it - now that’s the intersection I want to live at for now. Until the day where I can mostly do the giving again, and leave the taking for others - but I recognize writing this that I’m absolutely, unfortunately, still a ways out from that.

So? I keep trying. I keep relying on the people who’ve learned how to sit in it with me, and I ask when I can how I can support them in return. I give grace to the ones that thought they could be here and haven’t been able to, and I let go of the ache that I’ve carried around in their absence. Recognizing it’s not personal has been pivotal to this part of my journey.