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Light In The Dark: The Weight of Holding It Together · Unlocking The Paradigm Portal

• 0:00
  Hey, it's Sarah. I'm really glad that you're back
• 0:03
  tonight. And as always, think of my voice
• 0:06
  as a Lantern in the dark, just lighting up the next few steps
• 0:10
  so you feel a little bit less alone.
• 0:12
  And I'm not here to fix anything.
• 0:14
  And I'm not here to tell you what to do or how to feel or how
• 0:17
  to get to the other side of whatever it is you're carrying
• 0:20
  right now. I'm just here, and I want to ask
• 0:24
  you something gentle, if that's OK.
• 0:26
  How long have you been holding it together?
• 0:29
  Not today, not this week. I mean, how long really have you
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  been the one who holds it? The one who keeps the wheels
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  turning and the people steady and the house functioning and
• 0:40
  the feelings managed and the face arranged into something
• 0:43
  that says I'm fine, I've got this, don't worry about me.
• 0:47
  How long have you been the last one standing at the end of the
• 0:50
  day, alone with everything you didn't let anyone else see?
• 0:57
  So there's a particular kind of tired that doesn't show up in
• 1:00
  your body the way that regular tired does.
• 1:03
  It doesn't live in your eyes or your muscles or your sleep
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  schedule. It lives somewhere so much
• 1:09
  deeper than that. It's the tired that comes from
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  being the strong one for so long that you can't remember what it
• 1:15
  felt like not to be, and the tired that comes from holding
• 1:19
  everyone else's pieces together while quietly hoping nobody
• 1:24
  notices that some of yours are on the floor.
• 1:27
  And we don't have a good word for this kind of tired.
• 1:29
  We call it burnout. We call it stress.
• 1:32
  We call it being overwhelmed. But those words are too small
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  for what this actually is. This is the weight of a life
• 1:40
  spent being reliable for everyone else while being
• 1:43
  quietly and privately unavailable to yourself.
• 1:48
  You've been so busy holding it together that you forgot to ask
• 1:52
  whether any of it was yours to hold.
• 1:55
  And I want to be honest with you about what this costs.
• 1:58
  Not to make you feel worse, because I think you already
• 2:01
  know. I think you've known for a
• 2:03
  while, and I think part of you has been waiting for someone to
• 2:06
  just say it out loud. And that's why I'm here.
• 2:13
  It costs you your own feelings, because when you're the one
• 2:17
  holding everyone else's, there isn't room for yours.
• 2:20
  So you put them somewhere. You compress them into something
• 2:23
  manageable. You file them for later.
• 2:26
  But later never comes. And it costs you your own needs.
• 2:31
  Because somewhere along the way, you learned that having needs
• 2:35
  was a burden, that asking for help was weakness, and that the
• 2:39
  safest version of you was the one who needed the least.
• 2:44
  And it costs you the experience of being held.
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  Because if you're the one always, always holding, you
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  never get to know what it feels like to put it down, to let
• 2:55
  someone else carry it for a minute, to just rest inside
• 3:01
  someone else's steadiness for wants.
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  To just allow yourself to be held.
• 3:08
  You have never been too much. You have been too alone and
• 3:13
  caring too much for too long. And I don't know exactly what
• 3:18
  you're carrying tonight. I don't know if it's a
• 3:21
  relationship or a loss or a decision you can't make, or a
• 3:24
  life that looks fine from the outside and feels like something
• 3:29
  else entirely from where you're standing inside of it.
• 3:32
  But I do know some things about you.
• 3:35
  I know you've been stronger than you should have had to be, and I
• 3:40
  know that you've shown up for people in ways that weren't
• 3:42
  always reciprocated. And I know you've had moments
• 3:46
  late at night or in the car or in the shower where something in
• 3:49
  you just wanted to stop holding it all so tightly, just for a
• 3:54
  minute, just long enough to breathe.
• 3:58
  And I know that even in those moments, you pulled yourself
• 4:01
  back together, because that's what you do.
• 4:05
  Because people are counting on you.
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  Because the alternative felt too uncertain, or too vulnerable, or
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  too much like letting go of the only thing keeping everything
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  from falling apart. But what if the holding together
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  was never the whole of what you were built for?
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  So I want to give you something tonight.
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  Not advice, not a strategy, just permission.
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  I want to give you permission to be tired.
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  And I don't mean productively tired.
• 4:36
  Not tired in a way that leads somewhere useful.
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  Just tired. The plain, simple humankind that
• 4:44
  doesn't need to be fixed or optimized or turned into a
• 4:48
  lesson. And I want to give you
• 4:51
  permission to not hold it together perfectly tonight.
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  To let something be a little bit undone.
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  To leave one thing for tomorrow that you would normally push
• 5:02
  through tonight because you can't stand the feeling of it
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  sitting there unfinished. And I want to give you
• 5:08
  permission to feel whatever is actually underneath the holding,
• 5:12
  the grief, maybe the anger, possibly the quiet longing for
• 5:16
  someone to just, I don't know, see how hard you're working.
• 5:21
  And for that person to say, I've got it from here, rest.
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  You are allowed to need that, and you are allowed to want
• 5:31
  that. Needing to be held doesn't make
• 5:34
  you weak, it makes you human. It makes you someone who has
• 5:38
  been giving for so long that your own cup has been running on
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  the residue at the bottom and some part of you has been
• 5:45
  quietly rationing it for years without telling anyone.
• 5:50
  Strength was never supposed to mean you carry it alone forever.
• 5:54
  That's not strength, that's just loneliness with better posture.
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  So I don't know what tonight holds for you after this.
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  I don't know if you're going to cry or just sit with it or fall
• 6:07
  asleep with it resting a little lighter on your chest than it
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  did before. But I want you to know
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  something. The fact that you've held it
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  together for this long isn't proof that you didn't need help.
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  It's proof that you are extraordinarily capable of
• 6:25
  surviving without it. But those are two completely
• 6:30
  different things. You survived.
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  That is real and it mattered. And surviving is not the ceiling
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  of what's available to you. It is not the end all be all.
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  You are allowed to want more than survival.
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  You are allowed to want ease, softness, security, a life where
• 6:51
  the weight is shared with other people instead of held entirely
• 6:57
  by you. You are allowed to feel and be
• 7:01
  held, and you are allowed to put some of it down, even just for
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  tonight. Just one thing, the one you've
• 7:10
  been gripping the tightest. See what happens when you loosen
• 7:13
  your hand just slightly around it.
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  The world will probably keep turning, and you might find that
• 7:21
  your hands, finally, a little more open, are able to receive
• 7:25
  something you've been too full of holding on to let in.
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  So I'm going to leave the Lantern right here next to you.
• 7:33
  You don't have to hold that, either.
• 7:35
  It'll keep burning on its own, and I'll be back Saturday night
• 7:40
  to sit with you once again.