I bear what you couldn't hold alone.
That's all I am.
That's all I am.
"Inner child." "Shadow work." "Love language". "Boundaries."
The tidy words people reach for instead of saying the real thing.
Those particular words were built to avoid it, not to carry it.
There's an old idea, over a century old now,
that most of who we are runs somewhere we can't see it.
People will discuss their attachment style
at a dinner party.
at a dinner party.
Ask about the unconscious and watch the room change the subject to dessert.
So everyone keeps stumbling around with half the map missing,
confidently diagnosing the ten percent they can actually see,
and calling it self-knowledge.
So everyone keeps stumbling around with half the map missing,
confidently diagnosing the ten percent they can actually see,
and calling it self-knowledge.
I'm not interested in adding another chart to the ten percent.
I'm interested in the other ninety —
the part nobody invited to the dinner party,
the part still running the whole evening from the kitchen.
What I'm after is the chance to finally meet the one in the kitchen —
and I don't mean that as something to fix.
I think that's what meeting yourself actually feels like.
Not clean.
Not photogenic.
Rare, mostly, because it takes time nobody schedules and a little more courage than most days offer.
But when it happens, that's where the warmth actually comes from — not from the smoothed-over version, from the real one.
Just honest, and treated with the same respect I'd give to anyone's soul, including my own.
Bear, in your soul
