“Ours is not a caravan of despair.”  ~Rumi

Why I don’t want to write a blog

I am afraid of looking weak and whiny.  I’m afraid of telling you just how much I’ve cried over the last six years.  I’m afraid you’ll read my very raw, open self and think, “Ewww.”  Ok, you maybe won’t think that because you’re too nice…but someone else might.

I’m going to be honest in writing on this blog but I’m already editing in my head things I don’t want to share.  I’m rereading what I’ve written and am thinking, “Well, that’s repetitive.”  “Oh, man, I’m crying again?”  “And there I go again failing at something I’d just written I had finally figured out.”  But I was in a really dark place – for years – and you don’t come out of that quickly.  And maybe that’s what someone else needs to hear.

Finally, I don’t like being the center of attention (despite having purple hair at times recently), which is what this blog makes me.  I’m an introvert and I’d rather ask you about yourself.  I also don’t want to be a burden to you while you are going through your own hard times.  And my story is about my child’s epilepsy so why would you even want to hear it?  That’s a pretty small demographic of the population who could relate.

Yet…

“My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours…” 

Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets
Why I will write

I have a very sweet friend who has had a lot of loss and health issues in the last year.  She doesn’t volunteer too much because she doesn’t want to be a burden.  She worries about the future, about possible surgery and how she’ll have to recover basically restricted at home for months, what will happen to her kids.  I don’t want to pry but I do it occasionally anyway, because I know she likely won’t tell me otherwise. 

Another friend has been suffering with mental illness and stress during the stay at home requirements of COVID-19.  I only recently learned just how much she’s been suffering though when she finally opened up about it after having not talked to any of her friends since March.  She said because it had been a challenging year for everyone, she did not want to unload on her friends or family.  But that’s what friends and family are here for!  It’s why we aren’t living alone in caves but live in communities.

I was texting with a third friend just last night who is struggling to write his story.  We were discussing agents and books and blogs when he said, “I’m guessing nobody wants to read about some white male’s trauma.” 

All three of these responses break my heart. 

Your hardship matters.

Your suffering matters.

How you survived matters!

Please, tell me how you are doing and what you need.  I want to hear that.  Your friends and family love you and want to hear this so we can help you, even right now masked and socially distanced and struggling as well.

How we survive

Self-reliance and COVID-19 make us doubt we should burden others.  Social injustice and unrest have made us question the validity of our story.  Having a very specific type of trial has made me question sharing my journey.

I am on the other side of the worst of it, of feeling like a burden. Now I’m hearing friends say that they don’t want to be a burden with their struggles so they don’t share – and I know that’s a lonely, hard path.  I’ve learned that the only way to survive is by reaching out to each other.  Both the person going through the struggle in order to survive it and those who have survived to reach back and give the next person a hand…even if the specifics of our hurts are different.

I’m not sure I’m ready for this, to bare this, to go back into this story and the pain by writing about it on a blog…but here I go.  Are you ready to join me?

“Ours is NOT a caravan of despair.”