The Value of Just Being There

Part 1 – by Kerri Green

I have a friend named Ori.
Ori is a seer, a feeler, and a knower.
However, when I first met Ori,
those things were not yet revealed;
as I met her in the throes of her nearly crippling postpartum depression,
when she wasn’t who she was.

But I didn’t know her yet.

At first she was just a woman who had introduced herself to me with soft eyes,
and a warm, pink-cheeked baby perched on her hip.
A baby whose eyes were like the water in Aruba.
Hers were deep and sad.
His hair like dandelion fluff.
Hers just pulled up in a loose pony tail.

I offered friendship in the only way I could then, with my own kids in school, and daycare kids in my house,
my time to give feeling limited.
I only had the mornings free,
an old lumpy couch,
and barely adequate coffee beans,
but I opened my doors to this new friend as often as she could come.
It was often.
She came over willingly into my mess and chaos,
and I tried my best to be there in the middle of hers.
I held her big-eyed baby, Indy, while she held her coffee tight and with both hands.

We foraged on together that way,
just two hot-mess friends on a hand-me-down couch, and little by little our friendship grew into what is now one of my most treasured ones.

It’s been nearly 4 years now of that friendship, struck up over a church coffee bar.

Ori has never shown up hoping to receive,
she has shown up because she wanted to dive deeper, and hoped to find someone who wanted that, too.
I gave her space to just come be who she was without expectation, not realizing that everything I would give to her in friendship,
I would be giving MYSELF in the end.
because
what you pour in is what you get out, after all.

Your sacrifice of time, and care, and thought will come back to you some day at the very moment you need it most,

and that moment felt like today.

Ori messaged me.
She, now stronger;
That baby now 3.
She was simply just checking in to see how I was,
and so I told her the truth;
because the truth is what you can tell to a person who has spent lots of days on your lumpy, hand-me-down couch,
gripping their mug with both hands.

“I’ve been struggling pretty bad for awhile.”

And that friend,
who had kind of just come tumbling into my life, and my home,
weary, and needing to be held herself,
picked me up and held ME by telling me the most beautiful thing:

“Hold on tight.
Fair weather is ahead. I promise.
I do know things sometimes,
and this I know with all conviction and truth.
Ease and calmness for a few years, soon.
But, in the meantime,
I’m here to catch you and bring light just as I will NEVER forget you brought to me.
I’m not lying when I say I kind of wanted to die after Indy.
It means everything to me that you provided a safe and easy path out of that.
I could just come, collapse, and my boy would be held safe while I brought myself back together piece by piece.
You taught me how to bring OTHERS out of that.
Many of you.

But you the most.

It will be OK, and you will be OK,
and in the meantime,
I don’t mind having a wet shirt.”

It was exactly what I needed.

Her words often are,
and I find all the holding I did in the beginning is now frequently holding me.

Never underestimate the value of just
being there.

You don’t need more than an old lumpy couch, a kettle, and some eye contact.
You will merely be making a deposit into your own life.
And never think you have nothing to give because you only wear leggings now,
or all of your shirts have a stain,
or your toddler is a terrorist,
or your house is not straightened up.

Most people just need a soft place to fall, some listening ears, and something warm in their mug to drink.

In my experience,
no hurting person ever goes out looking for a perfect one.

When you’re drowning, you want someone who knows how to swim
because they first got used to the water.

We are really all just here groping around to find someone who feels a bit like home,
and sometimes our homes are pretty messy ones.

Part 2 – by Orianna Schlepfer

I dislocated my hip when I was pregnant with Indy.
I always start with that because the shock of such a thing tends to stop the
“Why don’t you have another” questions.
That way I don’t have to go to the other half of that answer:
I got very dark with post-partum depression shortly after Indy was born.
Well, to be honest, I was already beginning the slide before he was born.
The pain and the crippling anxiety of not being able to be there for my older girl was more than enough to put me in a state of resolute gray.
I remember Kerri from those days,
but she is a vague memory.
A sparkly-eyed person full of laughter and emotion.
She was a light I was drawn to,
but limping along like I was,
I didn’t have it in me to chase her down.
I’m almost always the pursuer of my friends, picking them out as ‘my people.’
I knew Kerri was one of mine-
-an easy, talktave, authentic personality-
-but I didn’t have the strength to grab onto her very tightly.
She always seemed surrounded by others who also needed her hugs and her easy cheer.
I didn’t think I needed it enough.

Then I had Indy.

I could walk again, although my hip was sore.
I could run again.
But something inside me was not fixed by his birth-
-Something inside me hung askew.
I felt the yawning mouth of darkness at my feet;
Felt the pull of the lie of depression.

In the midst of those first few weeks,
while I clung to my there-for-me friends,
there was Kerri again.
For once, not surrounded by others.
Cooing at my baby,
and then…
Looking at me.

“I think we are meant to be friends.” I blurted out.
She smiled knowingly, and took my boy from me, giving me a few seconds to grab some coffee.
Shortly after, I was at her house,
seated on that lumpy brown couch.
(the brown ones are best for crying on, you don’t see the tear stains as easily)
My older girl was cheerfully ushered away to her backyard play-set, and built-in friends. Indy, stil floppy and incredibly needy, was given over to Kerri.
I sat there, without anyone needing me,
and began to patch myself up.

I healed up there on that brown couch.

I poured out my heart,
told my friend everything,
and found that I had been right.
She was one of my people.

We fit together without rubbing uncomfortably against each-other, and it was like finding another missing piece of myself.

A few months later, after all of the therapy, (couch-therapy and the kind you pay for)
I felt whatever hole that was inside me becoming healed over.
I could hold things again,
be poured into without it all immediately pouring out.
There was space again to breathe,
and to help others who weren’t breathing well.
Stronger again,
I came by Kerri’s house without even calling, certain of my welcome.
I found her a shaking puddle on her own couch,
hands wrung,
face wet.
This time, my big little boy crawled around the room, spilling pet food all over the floor and growling at the dog while I held my dear friend and she cried on me.

That mirror-bright moment felt good
and right.
I reflected what had been shown me, what I had known before I needed it.
Since then, we’ve had countless days on each other’s brown couches.
(seriously, everyone needs a brown couch)

Our hearts have creaked under the weight of our own sadness,
but then,
we shared the burden.
Lighter again,
we leave each other’s homes,
with truthful promises to return.

Truest friendship is built through shared tears, through the witnessing of joys and of sorrows, through the carrying of each-other,
and through the holding of each other’s children.

Mom Outnumbered

Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.