Help Others To Help Yourself

 

"Even when you are hurting, someone is needing you more than you need your pain and so you give of yourself." - Jen Lynn Arnold

I am sitting at my computer tonight, tears streaming down my face, feeling like a total sham. Here I am telling you to be brave, like it is an easy thing. To focus on the beauty in your world rather than have pity on yourself.  Who am I? Why should you listen? What am I doing?

Is it okay to cry?

Are you still being brave when you feel needy and alone?  When you are admitting you can't and don't want to go it alone, mighty and strong, all the time.  Are you still brave if sometimes you want and need to be held, reassured and told you are loved and doing a good job rather than to clam down and that you are blowing your feelings out of proportion.

And maybe you are; grief, PTSD and anxiety have a tendency to do that. Don't be surprised by that. So often you feel like you are on a cold, lonely and isolated road where no one can understand you and all joy and color has left your life. These  emotional intruders to your life are relentless and even when you know what you are doing and why, it still won't back off.  Breathing it's hot, foul breath down your neck, putting everything under a microscope, eating at you and whispering  in your ear "You CAN"T do this." 

Ah, but you can! You are right now.

Even when you feel low and the weight of your trials bears down on you, as you press on, with tears and sorrow....you are indeed being brave. Bravery is taking the sorrows with you that you can't ever put totally down. Heavy as it may  be...even if you have to drag it behind you.  It is your refusal to quit that is the manifestation of your bravery.  Just because you need encouragement, does not mean you are not brave. Just because you have self-doubt, does not mean you are not brave. Just because your  trials have plagued you with; Grief, PTSD and anxiety, does not mean you are not brave. If fact is it the greatest expression of just the opposite.

You are being honest with yourself and feelings your emotions, admitting your needs, and still making your way rather than bottle them up with grief, PTSD and anxieties worst BFF avoidance. You are still making breakfast for your living family or going to work. You are opening doors for a stranger or taking donations for a fundraising walk to support your charity of choice. You are wearing awareness ribbons and offering kind words of encouragement to someone who's life just took the same turn for the worst as your has. You are waking in the morning, choosing to get dressed rather than stay in bed (no matter how long it took you to get out of it), you are living and so yes, it is still brave even with tears streaming down your cheeks.

So with mine, I sit to write to you, my tribe, and remind you (so that I may remind myself) that even in the times that tears flow and you are knowingly feeling low, you still have something to offer. You will have bad days. You should not impose an unrealistic expectation on yourself to not. Then you will pick yourself back up, wipe your eyes, blow your nose and press on because even in moments when you are feeling weak, you are still and always have been brave and you will still continue to be, just by being here after tragedy and loss.