There will be times in your life where people will come to you in their most brazen & honest moments. They will intrust you with information about who they are, what they stand for, who they love, what they do, etc. It is your job as a friend, parent, sibling, lover, mentor, etc to remain as judgment free as humanly possible & make that person feel seen & heard & accepted in those moments.
I’m sure many of you have already had such encounters in your life. If not, there may be a reason why. There is a lesson I came across a few years ago that has stuck with me to this day. I can’t for the life of me recall where I heard it, if I could I’m sure it’d be linked below., but he point of this discussion was “testing the waters” specifically where the ‘parent/child’ relationship is concerned. In the discussion it was brought up that children will often, as the name would imply, test the waters with their parents. They try to gage little bits of information on how their parents may feel regarding certain topics or use hypotheticals to see what the outcome would be if they were blatant, honest, & authentic with their parental units. Often parents fail the test, they give their child an answer that builds a wall or creates a divide & all of the sudden, several months or years down the line, these parents feel like they don’t know who their kids are anymore. That’s because their child has decided it’s in their best interest to stay resigned because they no longer feel safe sharing information with their parents.
So too do we do this to the people we care about. Our friends gage our responses on how we feel about certain things or our willingness to be openminded before they confide in us. If we don’t pass the test, the relationship remains shallow. I pride myself on being able to be the keeper of the true lives & selves of many of those I hold dearest to myself. You see I’ve built up an err of compassion. My friends & loved ones know they can come to me with anything, as their true & authentic selves & know that I will be grateful for their vulnerabilities & embrace them as who they are, accepting the information they’ve told me as their truth, knowing it may have been a conversation, confession, or thought years in the making.
We never know how long these machinations stew in the minds of our peers. It may have taken them years to have the courage to voice exactly what they’re trying to say, it may have taken years for them to even come to the conclusion themselves & they felt safe making you privy to this new found part of self. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that this person felt it pertinent enough to tell you, they saw you as a large enough part of their life or even someone they thought they could receive counsel from. You have been honored with vulnerability, the worst possible thing you could do is respond with judgment or rejection.
The more occasions that your loved ones come to you with their vulnerabilities, the more you meet them with love & understanding, the deeper your relationships & bonds will grow. As a friend we can easily let those who reject us go or cut them from our lives but when it’s a family member, it becomes much harder. When holidays & family gatherings are still a thing for the member who feels estranged or like they can’t be authentic in those spaces, the time spent wearing that mask of “the perfect family member” can be exhausting & disheartening.
We are social beings, creatures of community, & when our chosen community meets our authenticity with a cold shoulder it scars, deeply. Feeling the outcast in an environment meant to cultivate & embrace your humanity gets very lonely very quick.
My challenge for you this week is to be honest with yourself. To look at the times where maybe you fell short of being the perfect confidante, friend, lover, or mentor when someone chose to confide something deeply personal in you. I then want you to reach out to those people, to mend the gaps, & in turn, to share your own vulnerabilities. I also want you to find someone you deem “safe” & foster a space to be vulnerable with them. Fortify that relationship, for as the song goes, “we all need somebody to lean on.”
I hope you have a fantastic week going ahead!
Much love to you all & appreciate you taking the time to read my thoughts every week.
Thank you, truly,
-C