A few weeks ago I was listening to a podcast and they were talking about how we have friends at different stages and different purposes in our lives.  Right now a lot of my friends are my son’s parents and we have a common experience with our kids being in school together.  It’s been such a beautiful thing to have our relationships develop alongside our kids.  But we need something more than that.  We need the friend we can be real with.  In both circumstances we are relating on common ground, but we need someone who understands who we are.  We need the friend who just shows up or who we can just show up to their place.  We don’t even necessarily need to talk or do anything, we just need the company and the support.  My husband and I were reminded of that the other night.  The week was a bit rough and I think we all knew we needed a break.  Our friends invited us over.  Normally we do something like play a game or have a few cocktails, but instead we ordered some pizza, sat on the couch, and watched some movies.  My son cuddled with me and we all ended up pretty much dozing on the couch together.  Nothing really needed to be said, we just needed to unwind.

I haven’t felt that level of trust in a long time. It may sound silly but it’s true—I often feel like I have to wear a mask around people or keep up a façade—I know I certainly do it until I know someone or until I know how they will react to certain things about me.  There are still certain things that I don’t share with specific groups of people because I either can’t tell how they really feel or because I know it wouldn’t go well.   While we were with our friends the other night, being vulnerable, not necessarily sharing anything other than what actually happened, it felt like I was letting my guard down and it felt amazing.  It was simply nice to have a night to recover and not put on airs.  So the truth is the value comes in the full acceptance of who we are and our ability to be comfortable wholly in that state.  In my lifetime I’ve experienced some not so pleasant things in my family and I’ve done some not so pleasant things myself, so I have learned two things: I have a high tolerance for what I accept from other people and I have a low tolerance for myself.  Plus I was fairly well trained to keep it all inside anyway.  But we need more than that.

This entire piece is about nothing more than connection and acceptance.  As humans, that’s what we need more than anything in this world next to sustenance, water, and shelter/clothing.  Finding those types of people is a remarkable gift because we get the connection we need but we also learn to accept parts of ourselves.  Most of the time we are taught to hate ourselves and that we always need to be something else so it’s an incredible feeling to shift into taking care of self, accepting self, and knowing that who we are at our core is ok.  We are all fundamentally ok, we just go through various stages of our reality getting twisted.  Sometimes we need some help bringing that reality back to the truth.  As cliché as it sounds, the truth is we are all inherently worthy as we are, we all have value as we are, and we all have gifts/messages/purpose that needs to be shared with the world.  Sometimes it takes a night of simply sitting with friends exactly as we are, where we are in that moment.  THAT is something to be grateful for.