Today’s post from Kathleen Popa of Novel Matters | @KathleenPopa
I approach today’s post with an assumption about you: that some time in the past month – or week – you’ve felt a wobble in the wheels of your wagon of life. One more setback, one more bill, a single word more of bad news, and your wagon might collapse altogether.
I feel safe in my assumptions. I know so few people who haven’t commented that surely the present trial couldn’t last much longer. The five ladies I blog with certainly understand the feeling. When we first banded together – most of us strangers to each other, all of us newly published authors with big plans and high hopes – we thought our purpose as co-bloggers would be to encourage our readers and hoist each other to ever higher levels of publishing success.
We found out different. Even as our shared relationship flowered into a rare and special kind of friendship, we discovered that our purpose was in fact to help each other survive the coming wave of hardship. Maybe this is a case of “you had to be there,” but I cherish our lifeboat friendship much more than the hand-up-the-ladder kind. Or – to say it better, I hope: the surviving is more precious to me than success.
There is something lovely about falling into the hole you hoped to stay out of. Once you’re in there, you can walk its circumference, and feel the cool clay of the wall, and realize that you can settle in for as long as you must, and you’ll still be alright. The fear you might once have had of not being able to take it begins to show itself as the lie it was.
Even in the hole, you have friends. You learn, in whatever state you find yourself, to be content.
My prayer for you is that you will find the kinds of friendships that make surviving a beautiful thing. In that hope, I offer a few suggestions:
Choose people with a capacity for affection and optimism, generosity and humor.
Love them well.
Cheer them on when the news is good, sympathize when it’s not. Be lavish about this.
Stay in close touch, close enough to feel the pulse. We ladies at Novel Matters live far apart, but we email each other every day. We may not know how to pull each other from the hole, but we sing to each other till the wind picks up.
You know the wind, right? Ever hear the Ojibwe saying?
“Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while a great wind is bearing me across the sky.”
About Ariel Lawhon
Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.
Thank you for this lovely note of encouragement.