Dear Daughter, I’ll Sit with You in Your Pain Until You Begin to Heal

Dear Daughter,

I’ve never seen you cry this hard. I’ve never seen you feel this hurt. I know this pain is unbearable and you feel it will never end. I’m crushed for you, devastated too. This wasn’t how you expected things to go. You never imagined it would turn out this way. I know, sweet girl. I know.

Life with all its beauty can sometimes seep ugly spores that ooze into our lives suddenly tearing us apart and taking us down. Nobody is without such heartache. Everyone gets hurt.

Today your pain is palpable and darkness has cast a shadow on your beautiful spirit and bright light. Today is hard. It took you to depths you’ve never sunk to before. And there’s nothing worse than watching you fall, there’s nothing more painful than seeing your heart shattered and your hopes dissolve into scattered pieces of debris.

I’ll sit with you until the pain is gone.

So, I’ll sit with you in the darkness as long as you need me to. I’ll cry with you, and then cry some more until your tears run dry. I’ll listen to you share your story as many times as you need to tell it. I’ll catch all of your anger and all of your sadness that spills out each time, hoping that the sting of it might lose its grip.

I’ll lie with you on your bed and stare at the ceiling in the heavy silence that carries the weight of this day. The tears and pain and story will linger on as the waves turn to ripples and the storm begins to settle. Hours will pass while the echoes of thunder are still heard in the distance and the darkness still covers us like a weighted blanket, dingy and damp.

I’ll remind you of your strength, of your resilience, of your worth, until you can believe it for yourself. I’ll help you sort through the layers of questioning and uncertainty and walk you slowly through this mess, one feeble step at a time. I’ll pick up the pieces of your heart and hold them in my own trembling hands, until you can figure out a way to put them back together again. I’ll try as hard as I can to find the right words to say that will help you survive this suffering.

And we’ll wait restlessly for healing to begin, for forgiveness to settle in, for any light to break through.

It will take time to recover from such things. It will take time to move on and forgive. Healing takes time, but it always comes. I’ll tell you that with a soft and subtle whisper, not wanting to push you through or pull you out too soon. Healing requires patience.

So, we’ll wait, together. I’m so grateful you let me in. I’m so grateful you let me carry the weight of this pain with you. I’m so grateful you trust me with it all. I’ll be so very careful, so very mindful, so very aware of your needs as you let me walk alongside you through to the other side…

And when I feel the time is right, when I can sense you’re ready to hear these words, I’ll tell you the most important thing you need to do. I’ll offer you the next steps you need to take and hope and pray you carry them through, because it’s so easy to allow hard things to submerge you. It’s so easy to let pain consume you and taint your memories and cloud your future.

But precious girl, don’t let this one terrible situation take away all the amazing things you’ve experienced before this happened. Don’t let this one awful day take away the joy of all the days you’ve lived until now. Don’t let this darkness cast a shadow on the thousands of days that stretch before you. Don’t give this horrible pain that kind of power. Don’t let it take over your life.

You have too much of it yet to live.

Tomorrow you will rise to face another day. It might be hard and you might feel weak and sad and vulnerable. But I’ve learned through all my years of living and all my own painful falls, that getting back up and giving life another chance, is part of the healing and part of the recovering.

So, take those courageous steps forward into your day no matter how shaky and injured you feel, and look for the goodness, the beauty, the gifts that might appear. It won’t be easy; it will feel unsafe and uncomfortable. It will be hard to push yourself onward despite feeling so wounded and so fragile, but you can do hard things. You may not feel confident that you can, but I’ll believe in you until you do.

And slowly, you will build your strength back and learn to trust again. It might take time; it might take more tears and heartache that spills over you and soaks you once again with recurring pain. But I promise you, that in time, you will heal. And in time, this awful experience will slowly release its grip on your heart.

And in time, your steps will become stronger and your heart will slowly mend. You’ll begin to see all the good in this world and all the wonderful things in your life too, because there’s a lot of it yet to live.

But for now, I’ll sit with you in your pain until you begin to heal.

The author of this post wishes to remain anonymous.

You Might Also Want to Read: 

Why This Mom Won’t Diss The Guy Who Broke Her Daughter’s Heart

10 Things to Say to Your Kids When Their Hearts Are Broken

About Grown and Flown

Mary Dell Harrington and Lisa (Endlich) Heffernan are the co-founders of Grown and Flown the #1 site for parents of teens, college students and young adults, reaching millions of parents every month. They are writers (Lisa is a New York Times bestselling author), moms, wives and friends. They started the Grown and Flown Parents Facebook Group and are co-authors of Grown and Flown: How to Support Your Teen, Stay Close as a Family, and Raise Independent Adults (Flatiron Books) now in paperback.

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