“People who are hurting don’t need Avoiders, Protectors, or Fixers. What we need are patient, loving witness. People to sit quietly and hold space for us. People to stand in helpful vigil to our pain.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior: A Memoir
Keeping silent to keep the peace comes at to high a price. Let us listen to each other. Listening takes courage, patience, grace, humility. Listening is for BadAsses. I hope to become a better listener….and surrender my need too be heard.
Much Love,Magda Gee
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In other words, as the late Alice Miller observed long ago in “The Drama of the Gifted Child,” someone who is an Enlightened Witness.
The most difficult human endeavor is to be present for someone else’s pain.
That’s why people don’t just STFU and listen: It hurts the listener too much.
No kind holding of space for people with pain, unless you are impressed by them and want them to think highly of you, then you listen attentively and feel lucky and chosen and superior for the opportunity to connect and bring a pie and then go tell everyone.
A lot of pity and envy, not much in between from those in my FOO. Envy and pity separate people. They are just not my tribe. And somehow I deserve to be punished for that and they are entitled to wreak havoc on my life in order to meet their own needs and ideas about family while my boys foot the bill.