The Care Bears and I go way back to the 1980s but I never quite mastered both parts of the sharing thing that Share Bear tried to teach. I mean, I shared my toys when I was little, I share my money with people in need, I ALWAYS share any “too brown” french fries with David, but I don’t share personal stuff and thoughts with people. David, though, David knows all of my thoughts. David knows stuff he doesn’t ask to know. Like every detail of my conversation with someone at work or that the third toe on my left foot is mysteriously hurting for the 5th day in a row. He takes it in stride. He is the most patient person on this planet. Maybe even the first six planets…. but I digress. So why does it seem some people share more easily than others? Share Bear taught us not just to share our possessions but to also share laughs, joy, advice, and happiness. Does that include pain and sorrow? Does it help for others to know about these feelings? I think maybe it does. As David and I are making our way through this horrible, no good, very bad time in our lives, we are learning that maybe it is ok to let others in a little. Maybe it will offer us (or someone else) some kind of therapy. Last night we did a thing and shared with the “public” about David’s cancer. Sitting here reading through messages and comments in the aftermath made me think that maybe we did an ok thing. Thank you for the encouragement.
SHARING IS FINE (-d)
When we first considered making something to keep people updated, I honestly was just thinking of it being an easier way to put information out when we could in one form that others could access when they wanted to or not if they didn’t. I never considered that doing this could help anyone. Thankfully, after actually putting it out there, I was reminded that I don’t always see everything from every side and that not only could this help people who might tell us it’s helpful, but more importantly it could help someone that I never know reads it. It’s not easy for me to share things and most times it’s even harder for me to make myself sit down and focus long enough to get started writing something much less continue and finish it up later. So thank you to everyone who’s shown support for this and to anyone whose support we might never even know.
Back to the part about it being hard for me to share stuff. I always try to remember (not always successfully) something I heard at Mass years ago. The topic was helping others or something like that, but one of the points that struck me most was that helping others wasn’t always about you helping another person. This part of it focused on the ability to help others by putting yourself out there and allowing others to help you. By providing the opportunity for others to help you then you were helping them. Part of this also included how sometimes it was easier for us to throw ourselves into helping others and keep any difficulties we might have to ourselves because it was harder to be vulnerable and put out there that we needed help. I remember it striking home pretty hard at the time and to this day still does. I think this includes putting it out there that we’re going through some tough times, too.
So maybe just putting all this out there and allowing others to read it is a part of that. The reason I chose the tongue-in-cheek name I chose for this blog is because no matter what’s happening to me at the time, I could be in the middle of chemo or after surgery or some kind of pain, if you ask me how I’m doing the first thing that pops into my head is some version of “It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything is fine.” Even if it’s obvious that I’m not. If I don’t catch myself it usually comes out as “I’m ok” or some minimized version of “As good as you’d expect.” If I try hard, I can actually communicate that it’s a not so good day or something, but honestly that’s kinda rare. I’ve even had to work really hard on thinking about this when talking to my doctors and nurses and people like that. Sometimes I get confused as to how I feel or what level my pain “really” is or something. Needless to say, it’s really important to be as straight forward as possible about what’s happening with me and how I feel to all of these people. It has been and still is a struggle, but I’m working on it and trying to do better with each visit. I’ve been through plenty of counseling and done quite a bit of work on it, but I’m still kinda envious of people who seem to be able to share their feelings and/or emotions freely. I still struggle with what the “right” answers are to those things. Which, from what I’ve heard, totally misses the point. I suppose practice helps though, and writing all of this certainly seems to be the practice I need. Thankfully throughout writing these pieces I haven’t put much thought into what might be the right way to do it and that’s been really pretty freeing.
[DeeGee] Fun fact: Share Bear’s ice cream soda with two straws belly badge was changed in 2002 due to concerns from Play-Along-Toys (who owned a license to the characters at the time) that sharing drinks can spread harmful bacteria and even viruses. The decision was made after an outbreak of Meningitis in the U.S. the year prior. –CareBears Wiki
