There’s been a voice inside me since I can remember that told me love could be healing. That it should be. That it was possible to love somebody in a way and let them love you in a way, with all the courage and hope and vulnerability you both could muster, so that all the big and little ways you’d been hurt and used would be mended and whole. You’d think after a lifetime of earnestly testing this theory, I’d have given up. (And I guess I kind of did over the last couple of years; I settled for just surviving in an abusive marriage.)
But then she came along (well she came along ten years ago, actually). But then she came along again March 23rd of last year. I keep stumbling through this story over and over because I still can’t quite make it make sense – but I opened the door for our second girls’ weekend in ten years, and Kara stood there looking like bright sunrise on a crisp autumn day and everything in me knew all of a sudden all over again that it was true…that love can and should free up every locked up part of you, take all the broken parts piece by piece and make you whole, straighten your forever bent shoulders and help you learn how to cry again, that tears can matter, that you don’t have to work so hard to earn it, and stillness is more than okay.
These truths saved my life so many times and I let them slip away when the last person I love tried to destroy me over and over.
She brought them back and so much more, and my heart my heart my heart…

-A