"I'm Right Here"

Just Be Present

Hello ♡,

I have been thinking a lot this week about how unhelpful we can be to one another when we are trying so hard to be helpful.

When someone shares something difficult with us sometimes: We rush to quick solutions. We get squirmy and uncomfortable with someone’s else’s vulnerability and we change the subject. We try to get fix it, when we most likely can’t. We give too much advice. We minimize things. We try to pass out the one thing that worked for us to everyone. We truly miss one another when we do this.

I wrote a whole chapter on this in my book because it can often be an obstacle to finding a name for your pain…we are given quick solutions, 1-2-3 step promises, or invalidation.

In our attempts to be so helpful, we often neglect to offer the one thing that can be the most helpful: our presence.

But what does that actually mean?

Being present with someone is offering them your attention and connection. It means not looking away, metaphorically or sometimes literally. It means staying when you want to bolt. It means listening when you want to “fix.” And it means knowing that being WITH someone in emotional pain is more important than what you may be scrambling to DO for them. Certainly there are times when acts of service are the greatest and most needed balm, but we miss the incredible power of just staying present with someone in a hard moment, month, year or season.

We fear it isn’t enough to just to be present with someone. But what if it is the most important thing? We are in fact wired for connection. There is more and more neuroscience research supporting the power of the human connection.

I sat down in the recording booth this week to record the audiobook for Your Pain Has a Name. For those of us that have never done this (I certainly hadn’t), it was indeed a human sized small box, big enough for 2-3 people. It was padded on every side, ceiling and floor included. There was some lamp light, some water, and you are a good distance away from two producers in another room who you can hear through your headphones, and see the tops of their heads on an ipad nearby. But you are really alone in there, completely by yourself reading your own words.

My book, in “readable script” form was on an ipad on a music stand in front of me.

I was nervous at first, nerves of a new experience. But I settled in and loved it. (By the way I really like this book I wrote for you. I thought of listeners and hoped certain moments would be meaningful as I read them I hope you feel the love and care if you listen.)

After the “Dear Reader” letter that opens my book (which I recorded as “Dear Listener”), and the Introduction, two of my favorite parts, I got to Chapter 1. This is the vulnerable chapter where I let the reader, or listener!, in on my own story - how I struggled for years with unnamed pain, which is why I became a therapist and wrote this book.

I took a sip of the bottled water provided. I shifted in my chair. I cleared my throat and said into the microphone to the guys recording in the other room, “This chapter is a little vulnerable.”

Tyrrell, the producer, turned on his own mic and said simply, “I’m right here.”

It was so surprising. And? Really comforting. I felt less alone.

That was all I needed. Presence. The invitation in presence to connect more was there if needed.

I settled in, exhaled and owned my story as I read it out loud.

What if Tyrrell had turned on his mic and said something like, “whenever my friend is nervous she claps twice and breathes three times.” Or, “Don’t worry about it, you’re fine!” Or “It’s just a chapter, no biggie.” Or worse, silence. None of these things would have been as helpful as presence.

Tyrrell is a skilled producer, and we don’t know each other outside of this context. He doesn’t need to know me, or have a solution, to be a present kind human doing his job well.

And the thing I want all of us to take away from this is how often we think we need to know everything and alllll the solutions to be helpful. When really our presence, and a version of “I’m right here,” may be just what is needed.

Thanks Tyrrell for the great recording experience and this week’s lesson.

What might it feel like to say your own version of, “I’m right here,” to people who share vulnerably in your life? To just be present, no rush to fixing.

What might it feel like to say the same to yourself?

With you,

Monica

---

Book News!

Well, I already gave it to you - I recorded the audiobook! I am having a lot of fun working with the marketing team too, what an amazing group of women. It has been really encouraging to have people who believe in this book. I could cry, and maybe did a bit, at how much that meant to me after the long road to get here.

Preorder here today! Or here! Or here! Or anywhere you want to support!