Hopped on here to work on the newest blog prompt and I saw you’d replied to our questions, Meredith! I’m so thankful to hear that report of a “win” with calling your friend and asking for help. Wow. That can be so so challenging to just send that text/ make that call.I’m so glad you did. I truly look forward to getting to know you more. I too am starting EMDR so I would love to talk to you sometime about how weird (haha – and amazing) it’s been for you.

Just wanted to acknowledge and appreciate your further reflections on this here. I am so sorry it’s been a month, but I am thankful for your ability to reach out to a friend and ask for what you need. What a step of self-care at the highest level! Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow and hearing more. Every part of your story I hear leaves me wanting to know more.

As I have gotten better in recent years at actually letting people come alongside me, and it has been the result of really hard work. I often find my temptation is to isolate and attempt to be self-sufficient… but I can’t actually do much of any of this on my own – none of us can. During a long stretch of EMDR therapy, my therapist helped me gather mental images to return to that helped me feel secure when I got a little out of sorts. Much to my surprise, every image that came to mind was an image of a friend embracing me or offering some other form of supportive physical touch. It made me realize that half the time what I need to be called back to myself is just a hug from somebody I care about or to sit side by side with a friend for a while and re-regulate. The hardest part after I realized that was doing the work of actually being able to tell people that was what I needed with all of my perceived risk of rejection that comes with an ask like that.

I’ve gotten more comfortable with this in recent years – and I’ve also built solid relationships where I know I can ask and if the answer is “not right now” it has nothing to do with me as a human. It’s still hard and I have to talk myself down from the instinct to isolate, but I’ll share a recent win: It has been a pretty hard month for me. Towards the beginning of the hard month, I got some news that threw me for a loop. I ended up crying so hard that I couldn’t get myself off my kitchen floor – I’m a big crier in general but this is rare for me. I talked myself into texting a friend I knew was around and she ended up coming to pick me up off the floor and she let me cry into her shoulder for a good hour before I calmed myself down. It was a real image of resting in my belovedness and an experience of deep community which I wouldn’t have been willing to risk for a few years ago. To return to the image Jer offered, it really is an experience of embrace – both literal embrace, and of a willingness to embrace my own belovedness and allow somebody else to embrace me as beloved as well. It isn’t always so extreme, but I do try to reach out and let people know when I could use a friend or a person to sit next to, and I hope to be the same kind of friend in return – mutually reflecting belovedness in our friendships.

Thank you Lindsay – I appreciate this. Longer reply in larger comment thread since there are similar questions…

Ah Katie, thank you for this! Longer reply to come in response to severeal questions posed on this comment thread…

I had some questions similar to those Katie poses above. What are some of the ways those around you call you back to belovedness? Do they know this is their role in your life?

I had some questions similar to those Katie poses above. What are some of the ways those around you call you back to belovedness? Do they know this is their role in your life?

As you said you usually need others to “call you back to yourself”. ..How can friends come alongside you and help you, as you said, “put your fists down and just rest in (your belovedness)? How have others been able to successfully do this for you, or what do you wish they would do instead?