Carolyn:

There have been times in my own illness when I found myself exhausted both physically and emotionally.  I was empty and incapable of dealing with any issue large or small, silly or significant. Everything was a struggle, an exhausting struggle; and the issues that arose, at times dramatically,  within my family around my illness, added to my exhaustion. I wanted to address those issues. I wanted to resolve them.  I wanted  to somehow brush them away so that I could rest, could rest, could rest.  And it broke me over and over again to realize that such easy resolutions were the stuff of Hollywood, that this communal suffering was part and parcel of the illness we were all enduring, all suffering, and the only way out was through - for all of us.

It was at such times of confusion, pain, anxiety, and exhaustion that I needed to be held, and my kids needed to be held.  No Hollywood stuff here.  No magic.  No marvellously scripted and eloquent words.  It is all too complex and lonely and fear riddled for such simplistic solutions.  I simply needed to be held and to collapse into the arms of those who held me - to give up, for at least a moment, all of my responsibilities, all of my hopes that I might somehow be able to dispel the grief of my children.  I simply could not do so.  It doesn't work that way, and the hope that I could do so, the struggle to do so, only added to my exhaustion. The best that I could do was to hold them, and just as importantly - to ask them, to deliberately ask them to hold me so that they were not alone, and I was not alone, and they could feel that, as could I.   

Words have power to clarify and comfort, but being held by those who love us, and holding the ones we love goes deeper, and resonates longer than even the most eloquent of words.  I hope you will have such moments today and tomorrow and tomorrow again.  I hope in such moments you will find rest and consolation and strength; and I wish the same for your family.

With affection -

Jim