I Understand You.
Not advice, not cheering up, not “it will pass” – sometimes support is someone sitting beside you who understands.
Bella asks a question this site circles constantly without ever asking it this directly: what is support? She has just walked through the answer from the receiving end – quitting smoking, a pregnancy, almost thirty kilos, a body that makes every day heavy. The rational comfort lines she can recite herself. They don't help.
The Healer tells of a healer who never once touched Elizabeth Gilbert's aching feet – and they stopped aching. Healing is not one person fixing another, and neither is support. Every “it doesn't matter” and “it will go away” tries, kindly, to fix – and lands as one more argument against what she feels. What actually helps grants the feeling its full right to exist: someone close enough, saying I understand you.
She wrote this two months before her daughter arrived. Keep the sentence – you will need it, in both directions.
🌸 Support
What is support?
Convincing you that you're wrong? Lifting your mood? Saying “you're doing great”? Or simply sitting down beside you and saying: “I understand you”?
After the wedding I quit smoking. IQOS and those awful vapes. The result – +18 kg. From my usual 50–52 I got to 68. And then I got pregnant right away, and the weight kept going. Right now I'm at 77 kg, there are still two months ahead, and in total I've gained almost 30 kg.
And yes, sometimes it all gets to me.
It hurts that I'm not a “beautiful pregnant woman” – just an elephant. I'm out of breath, I get tired, I can barely walk, lying down is hard, sitting is uncomfortable. I oink, I puff, and I feel like one huge elephant.
My mind understands: everything is going as it should. I know I'll lose the weight after the birth. I know weight isn't what matters. But inside it still hurts so much that sometimes I just want to burst into tears.
And in moments like that I do NOT need “supportive” words –
“it doesn't matter”, “it'll go away later”, “at least you quit smoking”.
I already know all that.
Sometimes I want only one thing:
for someone beside me to quietly say –
“I understand you.”
Thank you for reading.
If her words reached somewhere mine don't – good. That's what this blog is for. Take what fits and leave the rest.
– Jan