That Safe Place

I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.

      Marilyn Monroe

A huge part of our job, our mission, calls for us to see people at their worst – angry, lonely, insecure, desperate, broken, hurting, bitter.  It’s all part of the human condition.  All of us, at times, are in those places, places where darkness overwhelms us and brings out our weaknesses and vulnerabilities.  Sometimes, it’s ugly, for all of us.  Sometimes, we’re hard to take.  Sometimes, life throws us blows that knock us off our equilibrium.  Sometimes it feels as if we’ll never get it back.

Here’s just a sample of what we often hear:

• It is so frustrating right now. I am looking at having to put my cat to sleep.  It is one thing to pee on a stove but another thing to pee on a $10,000 dollar baby grand piano.  I don’t think there is anything they can do to stop his peeing all over.  It’s just one more thing I have to deal with, along with everything else confronting me.  The terrible job.  That jerk of a neighbor I’ve been telling you about.  My $1,500 I still owe on the car repairs.  It’s too much.  Just too much.
•  I am very discouraged today and not sure I am up to talking. I am so pissed off I could spit. I am so angry and disappointed.
  I wish I had never met her….the whole thing has ruined my life.  I am divorcing her…the car is a mess–my finances are destroyed—I hate my life right now…I don’t want to continue in this way of life.  I don’t want to take care of my brother with all his issues.  I don’t want to be divorcing her.   I don’t want to do it anymore.  I just wish I could go back to last year at this time and change everything. I love her dearly; I am glad she is in my life—but things would honestly be better with me if we had never met. I know how horrible that sounds but my life has been a living hell for months now.

• If things in my life couldn’t get worse? They JUST DID!
  I cried my eyes out—-just knowing what is going on.  I hate it.  I hate the fact that I caused it all.  But at the time I was just dying in the relationship.  I kinda wish I hadn’t started any of these events.  We really didn’t need this on top of everything else we are going through.
  In other bad news–my childcare will be stopping in a couple weeks because of the caregiver’s insurance running out.  So next week at some point we are going to meet with her to figure out what we can do.   I don’t know where that is going lead.
  Yesterday also I finally went to the doctor as I had a migraine that wouldn’t go away and they gave me a shot.  It helped a lot.  I felt like crap.  I was just so tired of hurting.  It sucks. 

But we simply try to provide a safe place for them to share it, to get it out and to release the pain and frustration.  We walk with them as they sort it out and look for the light again. 

In the book, Bo’s Café, author John Lynch writes: 

“Safe is a place where you can get out the worst about you and they don’t run you off, talk you down, or head for the hills. It’s having someone to stand with when you start to face the shameful stuff. It’s where you can be a jerk and still have a place at the table the next day…where you don’t have to hide or fake or pretend or bluff. Safe is being loved more for revealing your crap, not less. Safe is not having to ‘man up’ or be coerced to ‘get real’ or none of that nonsense.”

That safe place.  We all need one.   We hope that people can begin to find it here.

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Photo by Kate Darmody on Unsplash