Silent Battles and Those Who Carry Them
This Post is for You ❤️
Hello ♡,
On any given day, a client may walk into my office and spill all of it. All the overwhelming multitude of feelings they’ve been holding back about all of the things they can’t talk about (or keep talking about) to everyone they meet. We sit in it together. We name it together. It is in fact too much. And there is no way around it.
They still go to the job, pick up the kids, make the dinner, repeat. They have the awkward conversations at school events and extended family gatherings, they bring the meal, they honk the horn at the person who cut into their lane, they cry when they hurt their toe on that same damn table, releasing the tension that never has time to come out otherwise.
The silent battle is the one that no one sees, or no one in their own busy lives has the time to keep up with. It is the thing, or things, you don’t get to escape. Even when others forget or don’t know. It is the thing, or things, that each of us are carrying besides, on top of, or underneath all the other life.
Life doesn’t always stop when you’re carrying things. Sometimes it will briefly in crisis, but not for long.
And so you keep going. Carrying it.
This post is for you.
People often say some version of the famous line: you never know the battles someone is fighting.
I also find: you never know how quietly courageous someone is being.
I think about that a lot. When I am in the grocery store, checking out. The person running the cash register, what is today really like for them? The person who seems distracted in the parking lot. The pissed off anxious driver annoyed at me pulling out of a space. I really don’t know. We really don’t know.
But they know. And you know your own too.
Some battles are too private to share. Some feel too chronic, we worry wearing people out with them. Some literally never change and there is exhaustion in that fact. Some are not ours to share, but we still carry the emotions of them silently with our loved ones. Some we don’t know how to fix. Some are a conflict with someone we can’t talk about. Some we are sure no one else deals with. Some we are embarrassed to admit. Some we are ashamed of.
But they go on. And so do we.
This post is for you.
I take my hormone suppression pill every night. The oncologist told me the cells in my body would have quickly become invasive breast cancer if not removed. She makes sure to tell me the pills cut down my chances for recurrence but won’t guarantee I will live longer. I ask her to clarify that math three times. She patiently seems perplexed at my confusion. I pray for my child about that one thing again and again. I send a direct and pointed email to the school. We face a new family health crisis now, one that I won’t share because it isn’t mine to share. I fill the prescriptions. The pharmacist is so nice to find me a coupon. Then there are the other big things. I don’t know how to update the mom whose child was so mean to my child and wants to know how I’ve been, chirping “I haven’t seen you!” I sit with one of my children watching another child, grateful for the cool evening and her little hand in mine. We gather the older child, unpacking the stories of the day, drive home, figuring out what we will have for dinner.
I know without having to know, many would trade with me because their silent battles are harder, more final, more more. I know without having to know many are dismissing their silent battle right now, because it’s “just not as bad as everyone else’s.” It’s not that big a deal, you think.
Yes it is. It all is.
Comparative suffering is a wasteful trap. You shut your heart down more to others when you deny your own pain. You do the opposite when you attend to your pain. Open makes you more open.
I don’t know what it is for you. But I know it matters. And I know it wearies your shoulders to carry it. I know it causes an ediginess when you just want to Be. Nice. I know it is not what you wanted.
And though me making space for your battle won’t solve it. I hope it will help you turn towards it, and towards yourself, with tender compassion.
Because you deserve at least that.
And more.
I see you.
Hand to heart, see yourself. Name it as valid. I often put my hand on my heart and say, “I’m listening.” Try that if it works. You may not be ready to share your battle, you may not have people to share it with. If you do have those people, share it. If you don’t, be a sacred and loving witness to yourself, “I see you.”
Finally, I have had the honor to sit with a lot of people fighting silent battles over the years. And I find two things most often: They are not validating their struggle enough, and they are doing a much better job than they are giving themselves credit for.
So, my guess? You deserve some validation. And, you’re doing a much better job then you are giving yourself credit for.
With you,
Monica