You guys. I have been so overwhelmed by the response to I Am The Keeper. So overwhelmed that it took me this long to even write this very belated thank you. It’s digital and not handwritten and it’s 3 weeks late so I’m fairly certain my father is rolling over in his grave at my lack of manners.
But I hope you know how sincerely grateful I am to those of you who read it, who commented, who shared it, who tagged their fellow keepers, and, especially, to those of you who reached out with your struggles and your own stories.
The greatest gift in the world, I think, is sharing a little piece of your soul with another human being and having them share a piece of their soul right back.
Perhaps the other is the gift of knowing we are not alone. That someone understands us. That we are messy and rigid and passionate and apathetic and confident and confused – and sometimes we are all those things at the same time. That being complicated humans doesn’t mean we can’t find joy amidst pain or gratitude amidst frustration. That we are bigger than our problems and always better together than apart.
So thank you for joining me, whether today or 2 years ago.
What started as a venue for my irreverent Top Ten lists and a way to poke fun at my obsessive love for Virginia Men’s Basketball turned into a blog about love.
About loving big and loving hard. Even when it is hard. Like when my dad died in the middle of our family vacation. Like when parenting is really hard. Like when my boys struggle with the genetic disease we share called Epidermolysis Bullosa. Like when my beloved Cavaliers became my grief therapy, linking my past to my present. Like when I lost myself last year in a spiral of self-doubt. Like when I had two suspicious masses this summer that fortunately turned out to be benign.
No matter what, I try to recognize that beautiful things happen and terrible things happen. And sometimes they happen at the same time.
Loving hard is an action. A choice. And I try to do it every day. It is the only thing we take with us when we leave this world and the only thing we leave behind.
Oh and if you’d like to read some of the stories about how you guys broke the internet, click on any of the pictures below.
#LoveHard
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1 Comment
Dear Cameron…
Thank you for such a beautiful way to describe what it is to care and all the places we can show love despite the enormity of it.
I am a keeper of the keepers… a grandmother.
I, and others like me, stepped out of the 1950’s traditional roles into a bolder more realistic view of the world. We are exceedingly grateful that you, our daughters are living that reality. You got the message. You grasped what we were trying to stretch out to you– that you can have it all, but it just wouldn’t look like you thought it would. To stay that course, we had to be really honest about what we wanted for ourselves. For some of us, the cost was immeasurable, it scared people and it got messy.
We are the keepers of emotional honesty, the truth-tellers. People trust us with the messiness of their lives.
Being the keeper of emotional honesty is not a job people apply for and lives in a place in the brain with other savant-like behaviors. In our clairvoyance, we hold our breath and hope we are not “shot” delivering a message. We weep for those who are in pain that we cannot fix. The backwash sometimes feels like the weight of the ocean, but we just can’t stop because we know we are birthing GROWTH. What my daughter recently pointed out TO ME, was that I shouldn’t be surprised. I guess it means swimming in the ocean instead of trying to weigh it.
Emotional honesty takes fierceness and gentleness. Once we understand the balance of holding on and letting go, we become the keepers of the long lense–the keepers of human growth, to more whole selves. That’s priceless AND weightless.
Thank your mother for me, she did a good job.
Leslie Evans