One of the most maddening things about the therapist I worked with in my 20s was her unwavering trust in my process. There was no edge of impatience to her listening. No worry.

I felt tied into so many knots through that season that I wished she’d be scandalized by at least *one* of them enough to push me hard toward detanglement. “Fix me!” I practically cried.

But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t because she knew (or at the very least trusted) that my life was unfolding exactly as it should. That my being there was change enough. That my own wisdom and dreams were speaking every day to me, and her role was to witness, to mirror, to help me parse the language of my soul.

I think there are many ways to help, and sometimes more directive means than the ones my therapist employed can be useful.

But there is a deeply transformative power to unwavering trust – whole new worlds this opens up inside of us – and, maddening as it was at the time, I’m grateful to this day for the seed of it she planted in me by her modeling of it every single session.

I’m thinking about this in relation to you and me, and also considering the radical thought of applying it to every person on our globe.

Could it possibly apply that broadly?

What would happen if we looked at our lives right now – every one of us – with all the things we love about them and all the things we know we want to change, all our strengths and our neuroses, all the places of confidence and the fears and stresses and what-ifs that we carry, and trusted that the unfolding of all of it is good?

What if we trusted this to be true for other people, too? Even, yes, the person on skid row. Even the addict, the terminally ill, the suicidally depressed?

Could it still apply? (I feel shy and audacious even asking!)

What if we trusted that the exact pace we’re all going is right, and that if any of us were inspired to speed up or slow down, that would be right, too?

What if we trusted that our screw-ups fit into the big picture well?

What if we knew that nothing has been or is being or will ever be wasted or lost, and that even where we could talk about waste and loss on one level, the feelings that get evoked by such things – grief, despair, embarrassment, shame – and the actions these inspire, are important parts of our story, and are working their own magic to take us to important next chapters?

Could it be true? In the face of horrendous loss? Natural disasters? War?

What if indignation and anger and firm “NO’s” to injustices, too, are part of the process, part of the rightness of our world’s unfolding? And if the horrendous losses of the past are part and parcel of our compassion today, our awareness of others’ suffering, the global shifts toward acknowledging and honoring the dignity of all?

Richard Rohr writes a lovely book called Everything Belongs (lovely, I think, for those in and outside the Christian fold, as well as those with and without a traditional concept of God), and those two words feel at the heart of what I’m wondering.

Could everything belong? Truly?

If it could – and I’ve been leaning into this possibility for some time now – this changes everything for me. It removes a whole layer of frantic from everything I do. It takes the desperation out of loss, the sting out of failure, the shame out of my bumbling job at life…and the scandal away that I might otherwise feel about the bumbling efforts of those around me.

It breathes courage into the moves my heart asks me to make and patience into the way I mother and friend and daughter and partner the people in my life, because if the story we’re all creating and joining is a good one, if timeliness is doing its thing, and if we’re all in some great big bumpy process of waking up together, there isn’t any reason to fear. Not one. Everything – everything – is folding and unfolding into the process.

And where the thought of everything belonging doesn’t do such things in me, where I’m still left in my shame or fear or impatience or indignation, it makes me more comfortable with those feelings, too!

What do you all think about this? What would change if you knew to your core that everything – every little thing – belongs?

(Scandal and resonance and every thought in between are welcome here!)

Help comes in so many forms:

Touch
Presence
Cash
Confrontation
Silence
Beauty
Laughter
Music
Employment
Exercise
Medication
Therapy
Sunshine
Food
Prayer
Artwork
Poetry
Wonder…

I have books I want to write about the power of every form, about it being impossible to quantify the relative worth of each one. About the hope I find in experiencing and imagining the ripple effects of every kindness, big and small.

In light of such ripples, a new soul-friend of mine in the online world, Marianne Elliott, along with longer-term friend Jen Lemen, are participating in a wonderful form of help this week that I want to direct you all to.

It’s called To Mama With Love. In Marianne’s words:

This year, To Mama With Love is donating funds to the work of four remarkable global women (read about all of them here). Funds are raised through people like you and me donating money on behalf of a mama (or more!) that we love. When we donate, we can create a little “heartspace” on the TMWL website, and personalize an ecard to send to the mama on whose behalf we’re donating.

I love this idea, and also have enough fears about giving to good causes that end up doing more harm than good, that it makes all the difference in the world to me to know two of the collaborators and trust their thoughtful, global-experience-informed perspectives on mutuality and giving (I hope we’ll hear more from one or both of them here this month!).

I’ve just donated money on behalf of my mom and mother-in-law and hope you’ll consider doing so, too! Marianne has put together a beautiful post about the woman, of the four, who she knows personally, so that might be a great way to help you decide whether this is a cause you’d like to support (money can be donated generally – to all four women – or specifically to just one).

And more than anything, I hope you’ll consider the ripples that your kindnesses create, whether they relate to monetary gifts or not!

Have you ever picked up a book, read enough to know you really like it, and then inexplicably set it down for months or years to come?

Or how about listening to a friend or partner give you the same unheeded advice for months or years, and then you hear someone else say the same thing (your therapist, the author of a book, a person in passing…), and suddenly that very advice sparkles with meaning, and nuance, and ripeness-for-you-right-now! (Cue friend or partner banging head against wall.)

I think experiences like this are everywhere in our lives – moments of ripeness and unripeness, when we’re ready to receive insight and help, or the stars aren’t aligned for it yet.

And I think awareness of this fact can remove a thick layer of anxiety and stress and frustration that many of us carry around giving and receiving help.

• We worry about whether we said too little or too much.
• We worry about whether we’re messing our kids up.
• We worry that someone we love isn’t listening to our advice or the advice of their own family, coach, doctor, therapist, or friends.
• We worry that our own wheels are spinning, that the things we know we should be doing aren’t translating yet into action.

But what if there’s a timeliness to change, and a timeliness to action? And what if there’s absolutely no way to anticipate what that timeliness is for sure, ever – for you or anyone else?

This not knowing isn’t a prescription for throwing our hands in the air and stopping ourselves from giving or receiving help, or thoughtfully engaging our inner worlds or the people that we love. But I think it IS a prescription for loosening up and relaxing quite a lot, especially on the oh-no-the-sky-is-surely-falling end of the spectrum.

Because who’s to say when tipping points will or won’t come? Who’s to say when something will click, and we’ll find ourselves or someone we love stepping into brand new worlds of experience?

Who’s to say that the very things we take as signs that all is going poorly aren’t actually markers along the path of beautiful, transformative stories?

It’s May! A new month begins in our world, and also here at this site. After a month of talking about starting new things, I thought it’d make sense to shift focus onto something that has important overlap with that theme, and simultaneously opens out into brand new territory.

“Help” is what I’m thinking of.

Help has been a loaded concept for me for much of my life – loaded with conflicting feelings and pendulum swings.

I’ve tried to save people.
I’ve tried to get people to save me.

I’ve turned away from good advice when I’ve truly needed it and
taken bad advice when I’ve been too insecure to know (or trust…) the difference.

I’ve poured myself out to the point of burn-out and
become so protective of my space and time that love’s call could easily have been missed.

I’ve cared so much that I’ve become immobilized by concern and
grown shame around comments that I’m caring too much.

And I’ve wondered and wonder still what it means to live out my belief that we’re all connected, that we create our world together, that my love of neighbor is intimately related with love of self, and that the process – the Whole Process, of life on our globe – does not ask me to be Its savior. Doesn’t even want me to be. I’m a speck of dust in the Big Scheme. And, like each of you (in my mind, at least), an important one at that.

These are some of the angles of help we’ll explore here this month – angles in the giving and receiving of it.

Are there other angles you’d like to see covered? Related questions or issues you’re pondering and want to find ways to grow trust around? I’d love to hear them if you do! Please share in the comments below.

Here’s to all we’ll discover this month and all the trust we’ll get to grow!