Tag: support groups

Broken People

My son and I watched The Guilty with Jake Gyllenhaal the other day. It was a really good movie, underrated in my opinion. I won’t give any spoilers other than one line that really stuck out to me from the movie: “Broken people fix broken people.”

Don’t ever think that you don’t have something to give, because you have problems. Everyone has problems. Showing that you have overcome your problems (or at least, earnestly and honestly working on overcoming your problems) is more helpful to anybody, than pretending that you never had any problems to begin with. (You are only fooling yourself in that regard – people see through “fake” and “social media filtering” quite easily. People aren’t dumb.)

Some of the best friends whom I have ever made in my life, I met in a support group. We spent a lot of time crying together in a circle, passing around the Kleenex, before we made it to the part where we go out to eat and laugh our heads off together, on a frequent basis. These people help me like no others, because they “get it.” All masks are off. We have helped each other on a path of growing and healing and expanding, because the level of empathy and authenticity and our ability to sit with the truth is unmatched. These relationships have made me somewhat intolerant to “superficial.” I don’t have the patience anymore for “pretend.” Real is where it’s at, and the only way I want to be for the rest of my life.

Notice that when people go through the unimaginable, such as what Gabby Petito’s family is going through with the murder of their daughter, they do things such as immediately set up a foundation to help other families to find their missing loved ones. Helping others through what you have been through is cathartic for all parties involved. No one wants to think that the pain that they endure, is in vain. Pain can always be alchemized for some good.

Instead of avoiding your pain and pretending that it doesn’t exist, work through it. Even when you do this, don’t pretend that you have all of the answers. You don’t. Every time when I smugly think that I am now in the phase of my life in which I fully “get it”, as if I am some kind of saint or yogi or something, I’m whammied and humbled. Hard. But with the help of others who have walked a similar path before me, I get back up on my feet, and I try again, and I hope that it is this “getting back up on my feet”, which is what truly helps people, not just myself. I hope that others who are experiencing some of the upsets which I experience, can be inspired and feel hopeful by my path of trying. I hope that however shaky and raw my hands are at times, they are always available to help lift someone else up on this path which we call Life. We are all in this together. You and I are never alone. Broken can be healed.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Broken Toes Hurt!

The wonderful thing about having years of experience under your belt, is all of the influences and people who have made strong impressions on your life.  One piece of advice that I got back in my twenties has stuck with me my entire life and I have passed it on to many people myself since then.  At the time I got the advice, I belonged to a Mommies group of very wise women who, though we have scattered in many directions throughout the years,  I will never forget their influence and kindness in the beginning years of my parenting adventures and mishaps.

The day I got the sacred advice, I was sitting in my friend’s kitchen as our children were all interacting with each other and toy cars and legos and cartoons.  I was lamenting dramatically about a problem that must have been relatively minor, since to this day, I honestly can’t even remember what that problem was about.   Mid-sentence into my dramatics, it occurred to me that my problem was almost irrelevant compared to what my friend had been going through.  After having her first child, trying for a second child had ended in endless miscarriages and several failed, expensive IVF treatments.  The situation was taking a huge toll on her body, her marriage and her very outlook on life.  She and her husband had recently decided to stop trying again for another baby.   “I’m so sorry!” I said to my friend, full of guilt and shame.  “What I’m going through is nothing compared to what you are experiencing.”  She grabbed my hand and said, “Just because someone is having a heart attack next to you, doesn’t mean that your broken toe doesn’t hurt.”

Now my third son recently broke his actual toe to the the point that he needed to have it operated on, so I can attest that yes, broken toes are indeed very painful.  While it is often necessary to look at horribly sad situations that people are going through, to keep your own problems in perspective, it is not good to diminish or dismiss your own very real feelings about your own very real experiences.  It is not possible to have compassion and true empathy for others’ blights, if you haven’t allowed yourself to feel and experience the kinds of sadness, loneliness and fears that people go through when they are having a tough time of it.  When people go through the tragedies in life, who besides God, do they often turn to for hope and direction?  Usually, the most helpful people are people who can relate.  Support groups of people who have experienced the same similar adversity and have shown that it is possible to come through to the other side of the pain, are usually the greatest inspiration to people trying to put the pieces of their own lives back together.

We’re not meant to go through this thing called Life alone.  If we were, this blog wouldn’t even exist.  When I read others’ blogs and books and listen to others’ stories, it fills me with the sense of, “Oh yes, I can relate to that.”  or “Oh good, someone else sees this the same way I do.” or “Oh wow, I never looked at it that way.  That’s helpful.”  At the very least it’s, “Hmmmm, interesting.”   I’m grateful that the downsides of my life experience have mostly been more of the “broken toe” variety, but I’m also grateful that I can share my “broken toe” experiences with people who are travelling with me. I honestly and fully feel it all, and thus, I deeply understand.