We are so insulated from the shadow side of life. Poverty. Mental illness. Death. Grief. Chronic illness and disability. (And many specters more.) We like best to view these things at a safe remove, through our media, perhaps, or in a context of whispers and closed doors. When they come up in our own lives, or the lives of those we care about, we often have no map to guide us, no models to show us the way, thanks to this distancing. If we’re lucky, some one among our support system will have faced these trials before, or something like them, and can offer a little help in navigation. Otherwise we turn to strangers, if we can afford it. Professionals. And for every one person in our web of friends and loved ones who can guide us, there will be several others who turn away in confusion or fear.

The unknown is fearful. Shadows are threatening. Confusion is uncomfortable. It can be very hard to sit with someone, and not have the right words to say, or any notion of how to find them.

I’ve been there. I was once locked in fear born of my own perfectionism, locked so tight I couldn’t find anything right enough to say, and wounded a friendship with my silence. Another time, with another person, I tried, and did say the wrong thing. When my friend lashed out at my clumsy words, I retreated in hurt confusion, feeling my fears all coming true.

But that doesn’t mean I get to quit.

I have compassion for my confusion, for my fear, for my potential for mistakes. But to be true to myself, I have to stay. I have to look into the great, ugly maw of darkness. Accept that these things are part of our world. And stay.

Stay beside friends who are struggling with debt. Stay beside friends who have to cancel on our plans again and again when their bodies or minds won’t cooperate. Stay with the grieving, the frightened, the sad and the depressed. And embrace the fact that this could be me, that this will be me, that sometimes this already is me: that I, too, will experience pain, and illness, uncertainty and sadness and fear, loss and grief and anger. My body will betray me. I will sometimes be the one in need. That’s okay.

Here, in the dark, a hand extended is worth everything.