A Love Letter for When You're Suffering

I wrote a letter after an especially moving session with a client. This work humbles me and fills my heart. Here it is:

I want to let you know how I feel about you. First, I hear you’re struggling. You try to hold it together for everyone, and you’re working so hard to keep it all under wraps. Maybe you’ve convinced other people you’re feeling okay enough, but you don’t need to convince me. You don’t need to prove anything to me. And you don’t have to hold it together for me.

I don’t mind if you are having a hard time in front of me. It means you’re human, like me. You’re human like the rest of us. You know the crushing feeling in your chest and the suspicion there’s something wrong with you.

But what if there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with you?

What if your pangs of panic, surges of anger, and seeds of doubt are what makes you strong, what if they’ve been testing your mettle? What if it gives you the tools to look at your fellow humans with kind eyes?

And now, what if you directed those kind eyes inward toward yourself? What if you could see the human who’s suffering—you—and feel for that person? Just feel how much they’ve been through and overcome. Feel how brave they are for persisting against the odds.

I’m not trying to give this all—you and your you-ness—more or less gravity than is due. I’m just trying to sit next to you and see you, from one human to another. And for you to let my caring in a tiny bit. Hopefully there’s 5% of you that can hear me right now; that’s enough.

Maybe it’s from this vantage point of that we can lovingly wade through the muck. Through the fear and pain and suffering. From here we can stop working so hard, stop hiding, stop seeking. Maybe we can start allowing, receiving, start being.

Maybe you're glorious as-is.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, you brave soul.