The Healing Art of the Written Word from the pen of a crisis counselor, trauma therapist, speaker, writer, wife, mother, and coffee lover. Honoring the weight of the space we hold for others as we walk each other home.
“When the heck are you going to start writing again,” quipped the voice on the other end of the line. You know the one- the friend that not only knows where the proverbial bodies are hidden, but probably helped you bury them as well. “You’ve got a gift, you know. I never understood why you stopped.”
“I know,” I murmured, “I just haven’t figured out what to write about.”
“Who cares! Stop overthinking it, and just say what you want to say! Who are you writing for, anyway?”
I muttered something else about needing to research if I want to write a book, and what should I choose, I should put it off until the kids are older, and some other uselessness, but I know she’s right. Once I put pen to paper (or finger to phone, as it were), I’m rarely at a loss for words. But I worry. What will people think? What will people say? What if nobody reads it? Or worse- what if they do?
That’s it, you know. The vulnerability. The nakedness. As much as I love when someone sees me- truly sees me- there is a certain safety in remaining hidden.
Behind the mask of social politeness I don’t have to show my shortcomings. My faults. But isn’t that like an ostrich sticking his head in the ground and convincing himself he’s hidden? He’s fooling no one but himself. Staying safely behind the mask if someone rejects you, you can convince yourself they were rejecting the mask. They weren’t rejecting you. There’s less vulnerability that way. Less nakedness. Less being known too. Less everything, really.
To be fair, I don’t think I really wear a mask. I’ve always been a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of girl. But there is a river that flows through me that not everyone gets to see. Part of that is wise, as we should not just bare our dude pest parts to the casual passerby, but part of that is the part that can touch another soul. Those vulnerabilities that we all have, but pretend not to, until someone finally gives them voice and our inner selves shout a resounding, “Yes!” Perhaps you feel it too?
Sometimes people will reject us anyway, mask or no. There are naysayers in every crowd. But there are encourages too. Like minds and tribe members just waiting to discover the mystery that is me, that is you.
So here’s to honesty. To transparency. To real. To being a little bit undone. To trusting my gut and letting go. Living life with an open heart, and open hands.
Anxiety is part of the human experience—an emotion that whispers (or sometimes shouts) that something is uncertain or unsafe. It’s a signal, a call to pay attention. But when anxiety becomes chronic, it can feel like a heavy chain holding us back from living wholeheartedly. The good news? We can develop practices that help reduce anxiety and return to a grounded, present state.
Over the years, I’ve learned that anxiety often feeds on fear and the stories we tell ourselves. Let’s dive into some practical ways to reduce its grip.
1. Name It to Tame It
Anxiety thrives in ambiguity. A phrase first coined by psychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel, “Name it to Tame It” is the first step in lowering anxiety levels. By identifying what you’re feeling, you reduce the intensity of the anxiety you’re experiencing. Are you nervous, scared, overwhelmed, or uncertain? Naming the specific emotion creates space between you and the anxiety. It signals to your brain: I see you, but you don’t control me.
Practice: When anxiety arises, pause and ask yourself:
What am I feeling right now?
What is this anxiety trying to tell me?
Writing your thoughts in a journal can also help externalize the emotion, making it feel more manageable.
2. Challenge the Stories in Your Head
Anxiety often spins narratives about worst-case scenarios. These stories are rarely accurate, but they feel real because they tap into our vulnerabilities. When you feel anxiety building, pause and question the story you’re telling yourself.
Ask:
Is this story true?
What’s another possible explanation?
What would I tell a friend in this situation?
Consciously reframing the narrative with a more positive or realistic one helps you regain control of your perspective.
3. Connect with Your Breath
Our breath is a powerful tool for regulating our nervous system. When we’re anxious, our breathing becomes shallow, reinforcing the body’s stress response. Slowing down and deepening your breath can calm the mind and body almost instantly.
Try this “Box Breathing” exercise:
Inhale deeply for four counts.
Hold your breath for four counts.
Exhale slowly for six counts.
Repeat for a few minutes.
This practice shifts your body from the sympathetic nervous system, or fight/flight/freeze response, to the rest-and-digest response of the parasympathetic nervous system.
4. Build a Resilience Toolkit
Resilience isn’t about avoiding anxiety—it’s about learning to navigate it. Cultivating small daily habits can create a foundation of calm.
Ideas for your toolkit:
Movement: A walk, yoga, or dance can release pent-up energy.
Gratitude: Write down three things you’re thankful for daily.
Connection: Share your worries with a trusted friend or loved one.
Nature: Spend time outside to reconnect with the bigger picture.
Journaling: Write down your thoughts and feelings. If you notice a pattern of negative stories, actively reframe them into more positive narratives.
Prayer or meditation: The practice of prayer can lead to comfort and peace. Studies show it reduces muscle tension, slows your heart rate, and can actually change your brain chemistry.
Know when to ask for help: If you continue to struggle with anxiety or it feels overwhelming, consider therapy to gain tools for managing your inner narrative
These practices remind us that we are capable, grounded, and supported.
5. Be Compassionate with Yourself
Anxiety can make us feel weak or flawed, but it’s just part of being human. Instead of judging yourself, practice self-compassion. Speak to yourself with the same kindness you’d offer a struggling friend.
Positive Affirmations to try: “I’m doing the best I can, and that’s enough.”
“I am not my anxiety.”
“I am present, calm, and focused.”
“I am safe and protected.”
6. Seek Help When Needed
Sometimes, anxiety feels too big to handle alone. There’s no shame in reaching out to a therapist or counselor. In fact, it’s one of the bravest steps you can take toward healing.
Anxiety doesn’t have to dictate your life. By acknowledging it, challenging it, and building habits that foster resilience, you can reduce its impact and create space for joy and connection. Remember, you are not alone in this journey—and you are stronger than you think.
The unrelenting heat marked out in a long line of stifling, unchanging triple digit segments trudges across my screen. Day and night have stopped making sense. There’s just hot, more hot, and I think I’m dying hot. It’s disrespectful.
I live like a vampire, moving from shadow to shadow, dodging sunlight. Waking before dawn to dress and pray, only to step into the heavy, already heated morning air. Thankful to work inside, I make the dash from car to office. Lights turned down low, blinds drawn tight to the piercing sun, I tie up my hair, turn down the air, and set to work. That one girl in a cardigan knocks on my door to complain of the cold. I crunch my Sonic ice and ignore her.
Heading out for my daily rounds, I’m met at the door by a blast of hot air, burning my face and taking my breath. The heat comes up from the pavement in waves, blazing sun without mercy beating down from above. Even through my darkened car windows, the sun reaches down and pulls me into a scorching embrace. I feel myself bake under its unwelcome attention, as my mascara coated lashes stick to my cheeks.
I hear they’ve cancelled the lawn mower parade out in West Texas again. It seems the tires are melting into the asphalt. The only piece of this news that I find surprising is that there’s a lawn mower parade at all. Of course the roads are melting from the heat. Wait- what?
Sapped of energy, I stumble home in the late afternoon and strip down for a fever dream under the fan. The teasing melody of a beachy, salt box August floats over me, elusive as the breezy summer picture it paints. I awake at dusk, eat late, and spend time with my family in the dark. Don’t touch me.
Heading out before bed to water the plants, 11pm and it’s still suffocatingly hot. I think of the winter, vowing to never curse the cold again as I silently pray for a summer storm to bring the rain.
Friday night lights bring no relief as the Boys of Fall play ball on long dead grass in the 110 degree heat. Patrons pass out on the sidelines and we shuffle out of the stadium in sweaty rows.
In a burst of Saturday morning optimism, I brave the attic to gather decor for the season ahead and (hopefully) cooler weather. Putting the last Autumn leaf in place, I can almost believe Fall is coming, (that ever elusive friend), until I step outside and my Pumpkin Spice candle melts unlit in my hand.
Dear Texas in August, I hate you.
But I will survive you, and because you are Texas, I’ll take you.
There are calls that crack you wide open. The ones that you remember forever where you were standing, what you were wearing, and the feel of the coffee mug growing cold in your hand. When too many of those calls once came in a month—the last filling my stomach with dread, I answered in dismay. “How did you know? Have you heard?” came the voice. “No,” I murmured. “But in the early light of Sunday morning,why else would you be calling?” “I think you should sit down,” came the reply.
Years and phone calls since that day, and now I’m the one with bad news dialing. Unsurprisingly, it hasn’t gotten any easier on the other end of the line. Slipping into my second decade of crisis counseling, but now at the helm—of a department, of a company—I look back on the path that led me here, the heartache and carnage I’ve witnessed, the things I’ve learned, the lessons I now know in my bones.
When my phone rings at 9am on a Sunday morning, my heart stops. This is my witching hour and those calls are never good. Just late enough to be polite, but too early for idle chatter, the day still new, coffee still warm in the cup. Or a message sliding into my texts as I stand on the church patio on a perfect Fall day. The mistake of looking down is a gut punch, and I know it before I see it.
Today, my phone rings once more. I nod my reply as my mind begins to work out the details. There once was a time that these calls set my mind spinning, reaching frantically for that emergency folder in the back of my drawer. There is no frantic reaching now, I know these systems all too well, wrote the innards of the folder even, and need only pull them up in my memory. Whom to call, what to say, special circumstances to consider. There are always special circumstances.
In every tragedy there are details, little poignant pieces of humanity, that no one wants to know. But I know them.
The sound of grief.
A note on a coroner’s report.
The nature of the celebration interrupted by tragedy.
The insidious threads that weave their way through the tight knit of community.
Those hidden layers of connection, of circumstance, that allow the knife to twist more cruelly, slicing right through the bone and marrow of a place.
I know that sometimes it’s my job to know and see too much, and that when people ask how my day was, they don’t really want to know. To ugly cry at the funeral of a child I never met, to sit vigil with their family and friends on their very worst of days, to hold leaders as they weep. They say in the midst of tragedy to look for the helpers, and I’ve learned to look for them too. Which ones are tuned in, which ones are holding up, and which ones are cracking.
Bringing coffee and understanding to the first responders whose task was worse than mine, and whose load is heavier with the memories they can’t escape, I listen. To hear in hushed tones those confessions of the things they wish they’d never seen and I wish I’d never heard. “I’m sorry that you had to hear and I’m sorry that you know,” one whispered. I gulp. I’m sorry too.
I know which coffee mugs work best—the ones I can set down on my desk at 8 a.m. and will still be warmish at 4. I know to keep a comfortable pair of shoes in my car. Which waterproof mascara works best, and when not to bother. And that carrying the collective grief of a community in the wake of awful tragedy is not the same as the quiet work of therapy in the privacy of my counseling office.
Oh no. It is a different beast entirely.
There is a rhythm to tragedy, to crisis and response, that I’ve come to know too well. But it’s the quiet of the aftermath, when I finally have time to reflect, that can be my undoing. I’ve learned not to be surprised by the shrieking silence of the mundane when I at last return to the office. Meetings, emails, agendas await, the taskmasters I resent for intruding on my grief, yet welcome as distraction. I’ve learned that most people forget to check on those of us leading the charge, assuming that we’re okay, and not to take it personally.
It’s a compliment of sorts. Like they think that I’m unbreakable.
But I’m breakable.
And as much as I’ve worked, as hard as I’ve tried, knowing I’m built for this, have trained for this, I don’t always have an answer for what’s wrong. Sometimes it’s just hard. Sometimes this all feels too heavy, and I feel too soft, and it’s not just the stories I hear and can’t forget. It’s the numbers on the screen shining blue light in the dark that are the unexpected gut punch. The statistics that remind us of this fight that we’re not winning. Suicide, violence, mental health numbers soar, the youth of our country bleeding out before our eyes. And me with my mop bucket and partners in crisis, outstretched hands try to hold back the tide. Of hurt. Of heartache. Of overwhelming loss.
It’s my job to show up for you mentally prepared, and I know if I don’t put my oxygen mask on first, I’ll crash and burn. I know what it feels like to crash and burn.
But I’ve also learned how to pick myself up, to lean in, take a breath, and keep going. That just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean I’m not called. To practice what I preach and perhaps heed my own tenured advice.
Deep breath. Steady now. There’s work to be done. Plans to make, tears to dry, hands to hold. But at the moment, clanking dishes on the other side of the door pull me from my reverie. Looking at the clock, I’m surprised at the time that’s passed. Wiping my eyes I move through the motions of getting our family ready for church and out the door. Hair fixed, teeth brushed, shoes dug out from under a not-so-little one’s bed. The childish arguing in the car is a lifeline of sorts, tossed from the backseat unwittingly, but I grasp it nonetheless.
My pastor, having heard the news, meets me at the door. I collide into him with no words at all, hot tears I’ve held back spilling fast. This suffering—what is the point of all this senseless pain? Walking amidst the broken leaves me limping. Can they see it, do they know that I bleed too?
Composing myself, I sneak in the back while the lights are down, people all around me singing. I open my mouth croaking out the tune, and my broken song becomes a prayer, a supplication as I close my eyes and am transported to another place and pace. It drives me to my knees, and I realize: the veil is thin here at the foot of the cross. Where splintered suffering meets cold ground. In bowing low, I find Him. And I remember my purpose.
There’s a reason why you’re doing this, why you made this commitment- again- why you refuse to be bucked off, circling around your old rival, why you just won’t quit.
I want to be the best version of me. I want to have energy and the health to go with it. Live a long and healthy life doing the things I love, comfortable in my own skin. Hiking, kayaking, paddle boarding, traveling with ease, easing the ache in my joints, doing the things in reality that I envision for myself in my mind.
I want to like what I see when I look in the mirror, I don’t want to cringe when I see pictures of myself, or hide behind my kids that are too quickly growing taller than me.
I want my clothes to fit, and then be too big, then my smaller ones to fit, then get too big as well. I want to wear my pre-kid clothes myself instead of passing them on to my tween, and I want her to see me do it.
I don’t want to be the fat mom. I want to be healthy and limber and lean. As I struggle to find my people in this town where I still feel alone, I don’t want to wonder in the back of my mind if my size is the reason I don’t fit. Whether it be the friend group, the promotion, or the invitation to be included. I don’t identify as fat in my brain- pictures usually come as a shock, shockingly. The me in my head is sexy and strong and carries herself with confidence. She doesn’t align with what’s in the mirror. That’s not the me inside.
I want my outside to match my inside. In counseling we talk a lot about congruence. About all the pieces aligning in the whole. I’m growing, I’m building, I’m becoming. I want my pieces to match.
Good things are coming, it’s true, but good things are also already here. Business aspirations unfolding before my eyes, walking into bigger rooms with bigger stages, the fragmented pieces of my dreams coming together in congruence, the bigger picture starting to make sense and actually look possible, even while I’m still figuring out the details.
And there are details- details that I haven’t figured out as I take step after step of blind faith, daring to dream and speak and pray the big things into existence.
But in every dream, in every detail. I am healthy, full of life, and vigor, and energy. Comfortable in my own skin and these clothes that I wear, in the pictures they take and the hands that I shake, and the example I set for my daughter as well as for those in my sphere of influence.
On a girls’ trip this summer, I stood next to my sisters in a tasting room on a too hot July day. The youngest (and hardest to impress) was making fast friends with the bar man. She introduced our crew in turn. “The stylist, massage therapist, the spiritual healer, the stay at home mom, and business owner,” she finished as she turned to me with a look of respect I won’t forget. “She and her husband are counselors and she speaks and leads and owns her own practice.” My heart heard that.
Last week my daughter drew a portrait of me. At first I was hurt because she drew me at a desk, working. I asked her if she felt like I was always working and is that how she saw me. “No!” She exclaimed. “This is you writing the books you’re going to write and running your own business. You’re a boss lady.” She remembers the dreams she hears me speak, and speaks them back to me when I forget.
She’s watching. My sisters are watching. So are my clients, and so many more. It’s easy to forget that others see me, and that more than I realize are paying attention. People are always watching, for better or for worse, and the influence and mark I leave matters. I want to set the best example I know how to set. In all things. And I want to be healthy enough to keep up, to thrive, to shine.
I want the outside to match the inside. My outer self to be in congruence with my inner self. I want to prove to myself that I can do it. That I am not my own rival at all- she is me, and I love her. I want to lead and blaze a trail- for my daughter and all who follow. And I want to do it healthy, proud of the path that I carve, and of the figure I cut while I do it.
Heading down to my Alma Mater to celebrate a new generation, and I can hardly believe the passing of time. Texas A&M University- it’s been too long, and I may or may not have teared up as that skyline came into view. Former Student is right- you never stop being an Aggie. So much has changed, yet as the saying goes, so much remains the same, and I am thankful once again that tradition here runs deep.
Senior boots are a big, big deal, and I’m so proud of my nephew tonight. As I stand on Simpson Drill field looking out at A&M’s finest lined up in rows, dreams written across their young faces, I wonder where the time has gone. Twenty- five years ago they were my peers, and now they are our children, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren. In no time at all, we’re the middle aged visitors to these hallowed halls that used to be ours, and they are our hope for tomorrow. It hits different when they’re yours and the world that we’re handing them is on fire with peace upended.
But today- they are invincible. Youthful eyes bright with hopes not yet realized and courage for life’s battles they’ve yet to fight. Newly minted young men and women, the last remnants of childhood melted away in the Texas sun.
And those seniors on the sidelines- so full of life and vigor, cigar smoke swirling around their heads as they sing and sway to that War Hymn I know so well. Reassuring us all that the Spirit of Aggieland does indeed live on. They are the kings of the day, and every one of us knows it.
Congratulations, my fellow Aggies- the best of your lives lie before you, and we are so proud of you all. Now go and do great things. Return with honor, and Gig’em👍🏻
On this day…. after months of research and testing and anguishing over decisions to be made, I held my hands wide in the biggest surrender of my life, standing by weak-kneed as a lauded young surgeon cut into my husband’s brain. Mercy flowed like a river on that day, down this mountain we’d only begun to climb.
The road that followed left it’s scars- some on heads and some on hearts, but today he is driving, seizure-free, and the proud owner of his own private practice.
When I hold my hands high on Sunday morning- in prayer, or surrender, or praise- my fingers sometimes find their way to the curve of the back of his head. And like braille, I read the reminder that miracles still happen and hope blooms even here.
A fiery bus crash. A young life lost. The hollowed stares and still-bandaged limbs of survivors. Siblings speaking of her in the present tense. A parent too lost in grief to receive the comfort of the comforters just outside her door. One officer lying in a hospital bed wracked with guilt that he couldn’t save them all, and another recounting in a daze the trauma of a wreck he worked and a door he knocked on in the middle of the night twenty years ago.
A call on a Sunday morning. The second of its kind in seven days. A troubled teen made a foolish choice at the wrong end of a gun, but he was ours.
Another did nothing wrong at all, but excessive use of force ended his beautiful, promising life, and a whole community bled out.
A stray bullet at a party.
A five dollar dice game turned deadly.
An accidental overdose.
A pact between friends that ended with the loss of life.
A game of Russian Roulette that isn’t a game at all, but instead, exactly that. A game of chance and a losing bet with the highest stakes and no take backs.
A permanent solution to a temporary problem that is every parent’s worst nightmare.
And again.
And again.
And again.
The details are horrendous and have seeped into my soul. Broken into the dark places we don’t talk about in the light. The ones that wake you up in the middle of the night, that send you to check that your children are safe in their beds just one more time before you drift off to sleep and again at 4 am.
Counselors standing amidst the sea of survivors, applying band-aids where heart surgery is needed. Emotional CPR, breathing life into life after life, only to find ourselves breathless and those around us gasping for air. Comforting the grieving only to become the grieving ourselves, we look to each other in a loss. A long line of needless, heedless loss, and too many close calls to count. In the span of a year an active shooter, and six lost to gun violence in as many months a heartbeat before that. Now yet another precious life cut short by his own hands.
How did we end up here? Where does it stop? I fear that it doesn’t stop at all, but around and around we go.
I’ve seen my share of trauma and had the rare honor to meet others in their dark and broken places. There is a brutal honesty here. No pretending. Grappling in the dark, pushing back at the edges that threaten to swallow whole, I bear witness to the bravery that dares to trust the outstretched hand reaching across the divide of age, or race, or everything. There is vulnerability in both the giving and the taking, as well as in the knowing that neither walks away unchanged.
Caught together in an awful moment we never wanted and can never be undone. We lock eyes, grasp tight, and stumble through the torrential downpour of raging grief that only the cruelest of heartaches serve. Soaked to the skin, souls bruised and bloodied for our efforts, we emerge. With shaking fingers I point the way through the crackling light to the long road of healing stretching over the horizon and wonder if I was enough.
Stepping into the light after laboring in the dark startles the senses and often smacks of sacrilege. Frivolous coffee runs. Rushes to meet deadlines that no longer seem to matter. Laughter trickling down the hall from those that neither know nor want to know the sharp cut from the shards of their neighbor’s brokenness. I can almost hear the elevator music humming along to my screaming thoughts as I sit alone, take a breath, and silently unfold.
We slip quietly back into our places, return to our desks, and lay down our capes for another day. Grateful that this mantle is ours to wear, and that giving the gift of our presence is often our most important work. But make no mistake: there is a price that is paid for the honor of holding space, and the vicarious trauma of the weight of it all takes its toll. As the world marches on and the demands of job and family continue to call, there are those of us still bleeding out while we try to juggle all the pieces.
I’ve gotten pretty good at not carrying these things home, but sometimes, sometimes in the quiet aftermath of chaos and tragedy, they follow me unbidden. A silent, lurking companion by day, and in the night an unwelcome bedfellow that steals the covers and my sleep. I close my eyes and see the latest victim’s young eager gaze transform into my own child’s face, instantly recoiling from the thought as a mother’s raw pain sears my heart. Those nights- and the days that follow are the hardest—moving through the hours like molasses, heaviness in the simplest of tasks.
Why do I do it? There’s no doubt that I am called to this—that walking this road with the wounded is my way through the pain. It’s what I do. It’s how I’m built. But every once in a while, it seems that something comes along that reminds me that I’m not bulletproof.
I’ve learned that sometimes the beauty is in the breaking, and it’s okay—healthy even—if I break a little too. To us seeming stalwart sentinels who save our crumbling for the quiet of the after- I’ve found that it’s true that the light shines best through our broken places, better equipping us to light the way. Cracked conduits to the Healer, each a chalice for the sorrow poured out. We illuminate this footpath the grieving trod, carefully attending to the hearts that are rending. What an honor to hold this lantern high, but oh, God, what a price.
When my feet find their way unbidden to your front door, it thrills me to my tired toes to see the welcome mat already out and the porch light on. Cheery blooms wave their hello and you always have time for a chat. I just love that. Part of me often wonders if you were expecting me, for you rarely seem surprised. Even driving home from college on impulse, you knew when I was coming.
The cool oasis of fern and flower you’ve created under the oak tree that somehow survived being mowed over repeatedly as a sapling, is now a haven on a hot summer day. Fresh iced tea in the glasses- yours always tastes the best. The smell of earth and foliage as you water and evening comes, bread crumbs tossed out for the birds, and grandchildren hanging from every limb of yet another stubborn tree.
Neighborhood children still knock on your door in the hopes that someone can come out to play. “Who’s that one?” I asked pointing up in the tree one afternoon. “I don’t know,” you smiled, content in the knowledge that your long empty nest is still a safe place to land. “I’m sure he’s a friend of somebody’s.”
For as long as I can remember there has always been room for one more at your table: whether for a friend we drug home without warning in our teens, or bonus sisters from across an ocean and our ever expanding family, or even now, for world weary grownup children who stop by unannounced when these in-the-middle-years get the best of us and we need a moment’s respite.
You in your chairs, pets stretched across laps, your warm greeting blending with the smell of supper on the stove are among the most comforting things in my memory. In winter a cheerful fire in the fireplace warming my back until it’s hot to the touch. In summer, lazy swims and long talks under the moon, watermelon by the pool.
Washing my hands I catch my reflection in the mirror- the same one that’s seen my image since I was four. I’m older now, but the plush carpet beneath my bare feet and the pictures on the walls whisper the same comfort they always have. After dinner conversations roll easy off the tongue- the day’s worries and job and kids, dreams and heartbreaks and old neighborhood news.
Hugs goodbye- the most familiar ones I know- as I head for the door. “Goodnight. Thank you for dinner. Have a great week. Drive safe. I love you.” Each word heartfelt and steeped in belonging. This sense of home goes deep into my bones and warms me as I step into the cool night air and make the drive to the home I’ve built for my own children- may they always feel it’s call.
An unplanned evening made extraordinary by the ordinariness of it all. This place you’ve made a home- the love, the time, the daily welcoming in- is a gift I’m still unwrapping. It is a blessing to my life and to my children and their children and to too many others to count.
At a recent conference I honed my craft and spent precious time with friends both old and new. Some I hadn’t seen in twenty years, but in the breath of “Hello,” time collapsed. It is one of life’s great blessings to have friends like that. You know the ones? The ones where it doesn’t matter that twenty years have come and gone, and picking up right where we left off is as natural as the laugh lines that now crease our faces.
We spoke of everything and nothing. Children born, life lived, friends we missed, victories won, and lessons learned.
We laughed til we cried, talking into the wee hours of the morning as we rushed to fill the gap of years in the span of days, yet lingered over conversations poured out like wine that time might move more slowly.
There is a sacredness here. In the celebrated and mundane. In sharing a meal and breaking bread- whether at the trendy hotel bistro between sessions or around a campfire in the Canadian Wilds when all we had was time. It shows up when we commit ourselves to community, to living up close and in the real. Somewhere in the sweating and the swearing and the striving and the praying and working towards a common goal, a gift emerges.
Come as you are, let down your hair, pull up a chair, and stay awhile, only friendship is being served. Through reminiscence, new adventures, clinical and philosophical discussions, loud card games, and late night talks, we unfold our lives in turn. There is no hiding here. And no need for it either. They earned the right to speak truth into my life long ago, and that doesn’t fade with time.
“We collect people,” one of them said, speaking of her own life, and where it’s taken her. This humble statement whispered, both simple and profound, catches me off guard. Collecting people, I can’t help but think, what’s more beautiful than that? As we go through this life don’t we all, if we’re wise, find a few souls to pull close and pour into? And in so emptying ourselves, are filled in return, a blessing pressed down, running over.
The Space We Hold 