Your Gift Offers Someone To Tell It To

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

     Maya Angelou

He needed someone to tell it to.  We had no idea who we were meeting, what he needed to share.  A mutual friend accompanied him to meet us late that afternoon.  He wasn’t comfortable “going to an office or seeing a counselor”.  But he was willing to meet two guys at a coffee shop for something to drink. 

After about 15 minutes of the usual “How are you’s?  Tell us a little about your background.   Where do your work?, etc.,  he got right into it without our prompting.  And for the next hour we heard his life story and we were moved to compassion and awe at how anyone could experience all that he had and still keep going every day.  His was a tale of multiple divorces, debilitating disability, anguished deaths, chronic disease and decades-long family dysfunction.  He was not an old man, but looked much older than his years.  For good reason.  He desperately needed to share it, to unburden himself of what he had been carrying for so long.  And so he did. 

He couldn’t even afford the drinks that we shared with him that day.  We bought them for him, to ease the way, so that he could be as comfortable meeting with us as possible.  His friend thought that it was a miracle that he was even there, and even up until he walked through the door she didn’t know if he would actually come along. 

But on that afternoon he poured out decades of long-held grief, disappointment and pain.  Thoughts and feelings he had never really shared before.   He needed that day.

We meet a lot a lot of people in circumstances such as this.  Each one’s story is unique.  But each one needs to be shared.  So many people need someone to tell it to, a place to share their stories.   But so many don’t feel safe or have the income or insurance to help them do it. 

Your gifts to us make these kinds of meetings possible.  Without them we couldn’t do what we do – listen compassionately, offering safety, enabling healing to begin.  The more gifts we receive the more people we can provide that safety, that release, that listening ear, that caring heart. 

If you can help us by offering your financial gifts you can help many others to receive the support and encouragement that we all need at times in our lives.  

Photo by Mitchell Hollander on Unsplash 

And as Maya Angelou has said, maybe liberating your soul when you do.