Recently I reconnected with a friend of over twenty years when she called out of the blue with a question. In the way of many enduring friendships in which there are seasons of regular communication and others when the perfect storm of life’s demands necessitate us going dark, we picked right up as if the past two years of radio silence had never happened.
After a few minutes of the usual “Are you well?” “How are the kids?” and “What have you been doing since we last talked?” she paused, took an audibly deep breath, and in the rush of the exhale asked, “YouknowMartinandIdivorced,right?” I was speechless. I did not know that she and her husband of twenty-five years had divorced because fortunately no one in our mutual friend group is inclined to “spill the Tea” and so her news had been respectfully omitted from my conversations with these women. “Oh Courtney, I had no idea,” I replied, “How are you adjusting to a different kind of life now?”
For the next hour I listened as she shared the details of the past year that were understandably still raw: making the decision with her husband, sharing the news with their four children, letting their biological and church families know, and then beginning the painful process of dividing up their lives into his and hers stacks. “Courtney,” I began, “I do understand your need to keep this part of your life private as you were processing these major changes, but it makes me sad that it seems like you went through this mostly alone.”
“You have no idea how ashamed I was,” Courtney told me. “On top of the grief I felt at my marriage ending, I felt like such a disappointment to everyone. I failed at what was most important.” Her response humbled me, because I knew that I had been part of the reason she didn’t feel she could reveal any imperfections in her life. For all the time I’ve known Courtney, she has made everything look so easy. I met her only four weeks after the birth of her first child, and she was already back to training for her next marathon, for goodness’ sake! I am certain that I played a part in holding her hostage on a pedestal, marveling at how she was effortlessly beautiful, enviably fit (she is the only person I’ve met who can prepare cookie batter and never, not even once, be tempted to eat a spoonful of the dough!), supportive of her friends, able to prepare nutritious meals for her family (who are all as lovely on the inside as they are on the outside) each night, and still perform so well at her job that she continued to climb the ranks. Moreover, she and her husband seemed to be so happy.
I can see from my own comments to Courtney (which I thought were praise- and admiration-filled) that I contributed to her feeling trapped by others’ expectations and unrealistic standards. Consequently, during what might have been the hardest time of her life, she felt completely isolated among people who loved her, unable to tell them she was struggling and needed support.
There’s a new movie called Kate in which the protagonist (apologies for the plot spoiler here) realizes at the end of her life that she’s never truly known anyone, and no one has ever truly known her. To be known by at least one person is more important than she had believed possible. This scene has remained with me long after the details of the movie faded mainly because it depicted my own conviction that in a world where we hold back the most vulnerable parts of ourselves because as Brené Brown taught us, not everyone has earned the right to hear our whole story, it is the greatest gift to find someone who welcomes our ugliest self as much as our loveliest self. Allowing someone to be exactly who they are and responding with, “I see you and I love you” is undoubtedly the most soul-filling experience we can have on Earth. Sharing our moments of need and uncertainty with someone we trust and accepting their support goes a long way in shattering the myth that we can handle everything on our own, or that we should even try to.
PartWolf 