Make sure your friends eat

We’re all doing important work

I heard something a few weeks ago I haven’t stopped thinking about, which usually means it’s something worth sharing.

Someone said to “make sure your friends eat”. They were talking about how, anywhere we look, we see people behaving strangely. Most of us are actively confronting individual and collective shadows which have laid dormant for generations. I see it in my friends, in traffic, at work, at the grocery store, only more and more, all the time. The water is boiling.

Recently, I feel an emergence from my own season of shadow work. I didn’t see it as that while I was in it. The chaos just felt subjective. Many connections fell away because they were repelled by my process and the layers of me it exposed.

Some stayed, though, to reflect my lovability back to me, reinforcing love as the path back toward center. I am grateful for those who didn’t expect a performance in exchange for their care. They kept me breathing while I moved through the process. They didn’t shame me nor did they look away. They didn’t engage my shrouded perspective, my ugly behavior, my volatility, the parts I’m ashamed of, nor did they take any of it personally. They didn’t require an outcome. They just made sure I ate until I could access relief from my pain to feed myself.

I couldn’t have appreciated it from within the process, and they didn’t need me to.

I lived through it to remind you to make sure your friends eat.