Take my hand

I want to be a lot of things when I grow up.Among other things, Maya Angelou's Phenomenal Woman: Its the fire in my eyes, and the flash of my teeth, the swing in my waist, and the joy in my feet.I want to be all of that but most importantly, a woman who knows how to change a flat tyre and fix a light bulb.I love the concept of independence. I brew morning coffee around it in my head and dress it up in ballroom gowns. I've always thought being independent was as fancy as it gets. Having to build and create and be and do things just the way you want.Right from diapers and wool hats the size of our fists,we've been taught to crawl and toddle and walk on our own. So we learn to take steps and when we fall, we learn to rise- all on our own. And that's how we grow.But what if we didn't have to rise alone? What if there were other hands to heal our wounds? What if I told you that a little more love, a little more attention, a little more time never left a human less capable than they were?I think we are all so afraid to rise together than fall alone. Because we can't bring ourselves to trust. Because we can't bring ourselves to lean again. And so we put things in place of humans. We build rebounds of everything and nothing at all. Because we will fall and when we do, we will be too independent, too firm to reach out, too strong to be held by another hand.Oh but how beautiful it is to be held by hands that have been scarred too. To sail through long nights by a familiar voice at the end of the line whispering "I'm sorry,baby. You'll be fine. Everything will be fine. I'm so sorry you're in this place"Oh but how beautiful it is to be seen and heard in our brokenness.Jamie Tworkowski puts it in the most beautiful way:You'll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips and airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs. But more than anything else, you will need other people. And you will need to be that other person for someone else, a living, breathing, screaming invitation to believe better things.We will need other people, darling.And people need us.I think the problem is that we are too full.Too full of answers we already know, treasures we already have.And so we are proud and enough.But this can't be enough. Being whole alone cannot be enough. I want to overflow with wholeness, with light, and with love. I want to be brimming with this golden goodness inside of me; this wildness in my heart. So much that I can wrap myself around the emptiness of the souls in my life, watch their walls break and blend into this place of heart and mind.This place where they matter. Where they are seen and heard. This place where they are surrounded by too much of my light that they cannot stop to think that they too, can shine this bright.This one place in our beings where we are brave enough to step out into the woods , taste loneliness and need, and with the sweetest conviction,we say with our eyes what we can't speak with our tongues:"Take my hand. I see the places in which you're chipped. I can't promise we'll put the pieces together by dusk. But I can promise I'll stay. I can promise you will heal. I know. I know because I've been here too."