Share your joys, share your sorrows

Many hands make light work.

Everyone’s heard it before, and everyone has had an experience validating this. Moving is the easiest one. Offer all of your friends beer and pizza and eight people show up to help you move, getting it all done in an afternoon. The same thing with packing, cleaning, yard work, etc.

More and more people are coming to recognize that this works with a mental load as well. I don’t mean just complaining about things on social media. I find that’s sometimes helpful, depending on how you do it and how often, but usually more akin to shouting into the void, which admittedly, we all need to do sometimes, but sharing your struggles with those that can either lend a sympathetic ear, or offer help, whichever you need.

I find it helpful when someone is unburdening themselves to me to ask if they want sympathy or solutions. Sometimes you just need someone to hear what you’re going through and be a shoulder and a hug, other times, you may want someone to brainstorm with you. Sometimes, if I have the presence of mind, I’ll even let my friend know which of these I’m hoping for. Something like, “Hey, thanks for listening to me. I just need to talk to someone about this, I don’t need you to try and give me advice or fix this for me, I just want to vent.”

On the complete other side of the coin: Sharing your joys will amplify them.

And again, I don’t mean just posting something triumphant on social media. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but you’ll have just as many people glaring at you and resenting your success on the other side of their computer screen as you will people congratulating you. (Not that you should concern yourself with haters.) You know those people who will be truly happy for you and enjoy your success right along with you. Incidentally, these are the types of people you should cultivate in your life. Healthy competition is one thing, but your nearest and dearest should always be lifting you up. (As you should be genuinely doing for them.)

A friend with whom you can share each other’s joys and sorrows with is priceless.

I find that it’s helpful with niche emotions to find a group that can really identify with what you’re going through. With the internet, this is fantastically easy to do these days. I’ll give a couple of for instances.

I wrote last week about having patience, both with my writing journey and an injury I’ve been struggling with for almost six months now with very minimal improvement. Very few people in my circle of friends and family understand how much I love need to run. I am a part of a few runners groups online, but honest, I don’t want to hear about their bad running days or the races that they’re doing right now. I get jealous watching people jogging on the trail while I’m biking. Even people who have to sit out a month for another injury piss me off. One month? I’m sitting over here legitimately wondering if I’ll ever run again. I have dumped hundreds—if not thousands—of dollars into physical therapy. I’ve massively cut my calories to make up for all the ones I’m no longer burning. I want someone who understands this.

So I joined a group for Achilles Tendonitis that’s moderated by physical therapists. Yeah, they actually had one on Facebook. I made a post. People with the same injury, who cannot run (among other activities) and are trying to get back to it, are replying. It’s not the same as running. It’s not the same as a solid guarantee that I will run at some point in 2022 (or even 2023) but it’s something. I feel less alone. And who knows? Maybe I’ll get some advice that turns things around…

I’m a part of two writing groups that meet once a week. One of them is larger, and a bit more formal. We run all communications through the moderators, so very few of us have connected personally outside of the group, we submit our writings as there is space, leaving a certain amount of time between submissions so that everyone gets a chance, etc. The other is much smaller, and a group of four of us who have been writing together since the pandemic. We have ground rules around submissions, of course, but we know each other’s writing intimately and make time at the start of each session to just discuss personal writing stuff in general.

Celebrating the first among us to get published!

The people in that second group have been invaluable when discussing the highs and lows of writing. They get it, they understand how long this process takes, how much you learn, and what kind of encouragement you might need. We truly do root for each other whenever one among us has a success, even if it’s just a step along the way. An agent requested your full manuscript? OMG! Amazing! We’re so proud of you! They know what a big deal this is, they also know that you aren’t going to hear anything from that agent for six to twelve weeks, and when you do hear, it may very well be a rejection. And they’ll be there when the rejection rolls in. (Or the acceptance, let’s be positive!)

It can be very tempting to go through it all alone. I fight that tendency often. “No one else cares and compared to so many, my life is going great. I’ll just keep this to myself.” Sound familiar? How about this one: “I don’t want to brag. It’s not really that big a deal and probably won’t amount to anything anyway.”

Variations on a theme. Don’t listen to them. Find people who will lift you up. Even if it’s just one good one. And do the same for them.