RunSingTeach

Dear G,

Thank you for so many things. For being real, raw, honest, and hilarious. For stripping the glossy finish off the brutiful in life. For making each and every person who comes in contact with you feel loved and valued. You are a gift to the human race. Last night, you spoke real life to a group of women in Birmingham. You probably speak similarly every time you speak and maybe you get tired of sharing the same stories, but you wouldn’t know it. Shoes off and heart bared-you let us into your soul and we got to share ours too.

Here are some of the things you said last night that made me love you even more:

• Use your broken heart as a teacher–it will teach you who you are meant to serve and that is your purpose.
• Some of us are made like canaries. (We are more attuned to the sensitivities of life.)
• You can be perfect & admired or you can be real & loved.
• Wisdom, kindness, and resilience are born out of pain.
• There is a before to redemption-and it hurts, but love wins.
• Now one is allowed to push us towards hope before we are ready.
• Rock bottom is the beginning.
• Be brave enough to tell your story but kind enough not to tell someone else’s.
• Everything we are meant to be is inside our pain. We need to transform our hot loneliness, not just transport it.
• The freer people are to be human, the better we are.
• Be still with your pain.

All of this. Yes. A thousand times. You have shown me that it is ok to be real and to be anything else would stunt my life’s journey. I am grateful to you. I am grateful to those who have held up my joist by sistering it with love, compassion, patience, grace, chocolate, wine (none for you my recovering friend), and laughter.

Love,

S