Hey you,

If you’re alone tonight and you don’t want to be —come join me in the togetherness we can always find when we stare up at the wisdom of the same bright moon. You whisper her your secrets, and I will whisper her mine, and she’ll hold them both safely and wink back at us to remind us that we’re never really alone as long as she’s watching.

If you’re in your own dark night of the soul and things seem bleak, and you’re not quite sure how you’re going to make it one more moment — come and sit here together with me in the sort of silence that knows all things. Let me light a candle as we sit in vigil for each other, because god knows we all need a little more light and a little more presence and a little more of something that feels like it should be called holy. 

If you’re grieving or heartbroken or wondering how you’re going to go on without someone in your life or in this world or in your heart or in your arms — I’ll meet you there, out in the place where hope retreats into the shadows.  I’ll tell you stories of all the times I had given up, only to find magic that I could never have seen coming. And you’ll remember stories of your own. And then we’ll throw our heads back and laugh at how easily we forget how much we’ve already survived and just how possible it is to love again and again and all over again. 

If your body is hurting, bones and muscle and joints and all the moving and beating and breathing parts not working like they should. If this robs you of independence or identity or ability or options or desperately needed rest. If the silence left in the wake of holding it in, of being stoic, of not letting on just how bad it really is becomes a roaring cacophony that fills in all the spaces. If it wears you down and down and down again, all that your one finite body must hold in a single day — give me some of your load to carry. Tell me where it hurts, let me lay my hands on the aching parts and offering healing and love and care and tenderness as if you already knew you deserved it.

If the bills are high and the tension is mounting, and you can’t see a pathway through no matter where you look. If it feels like everyone is looking to you for the answers and all you have are increasingly desperate questions. If you’re working deep into the night and waking before dawn and giving it your all only to feel like it all keeps slipping between your fingers — reach a little farther into that void.  Grab my hand and hold tight and I’ll hold tight too, and together we’ll remember just how much more you can carry and hold when you’ve got two sets of hands to do all the lifting.

If you’re so starved for connection, for contact, for the feeling of a body holding yours or to lie in the arms of another. If it’s been so long since your skin has felt the weight of another body that it tries to forget that it ever mattered and to erase the muscle memory of a time when it was here. If your skin is hungry and your body is ravenous, and your soul is desperate  — let’s just lie here, heart to heart. I’ll hold you, and you hold me, and we will stay without moving until the fierce animal of our bodies begin to relax and unwind into something that feels like breathing. 

If joy feels like a distant, far away thing. If you’ve wandered far enough off the path that you can’t quite sense yourself any longer. If questions about what you like or want or need send you into a tailspin of panic because you had forgotten you had a right to those answers.  If the sadness or the depression or the anxiety has cost so much, cut you off not only from the people you love but from the root of your own heart, come out into the earth with me, barefoot and ready. Let’s imagine we are trees, with the roots we most need growing out of our own feet and deep down into the earth, and the sun above raising our arms as branches to the sky so hungry for the light, and we are living and living and living without even knowing how, because we are. We always are. 

When all that you hold is too impossibly heavy, let’s find somewhere beautiful to lay it down together. 

When the hurt runs so deep and so high that the dam threatens to burst, let’s cut a swath through the terrain and thunder our way to the ocean. 

When you think that you’ve never felt more alone, let’s play marco polo at the top of our lungs until we can find each other in the dark. 

When it’s all just too much, let’s remind each other that we are always and forever precisely enough. 

When protection and walls and hurt have barricaded your heart, invite me over for a demolition party. 

When the demons speak loudly and try to convince you that you do not have worth, you call me up and let me remind you that you are priceless. 

When the silence fills the room, let’s turn up the music and dance. 

When it seems like there is no chance, let’s paint the walls with an endless list of just how many second chances got us to where we are right now. 

When the loss is too much to bear, let’s redistribute the weight and find a different way to carry the load. 

When the light threatens to go out, let’s light a thousand more candles until the whole world glows. 

You’re not meant to do this alone. 
You’re not meant to bear this alone.
You’re not meant to live through this alone. 
You’re not meant to have to keep all the lights lit or the demons at bay or the questions answered alone. 
You’re not meant to suffer in silence or deny your pain or hold it all inside alone.
You’re not meant to walk this alone, nor survive this alone, nor heal this alone.

We are not made to be alone. 

We are made for a complex and infinite web of love and family and community. We fit inside of it all, each a puzzle piece with a million possible placements, but not a single one that doesn’t fit somewhere and everywhere all at once. 

This is it, I am learning. The whole fucking reason for the whole fucking thing. We are in this together. 

We have to be, or it all ends. 

We have to be, or what’s the point?

We have to be, because if not, we just keep wounding each other. 

We have to be, because that is how we were made and this is what we were made for. 

So lay it all down, just for a moment. 

The pain, the hurt, the grief, the depression, the trauma, the heartbreak, the anxiety, the strain, the loneliness, the fear. 

The all.

All is not lost. 

You belong to something greater. 

I promise you this. 

We all do. 

We belong to each other. Fumbling caretakers though we may be. We belong to each other. 

So, lay every last bit down right now. 

And come find me, out there in the vastness of this world, this lifetime, this night. 

Come find me.