Someone Who Remembers You Before You Do
Sometimes the greatest act of support is reminding someone who they are.
8/1/20263 min read
A month ago, I met a version of myself I hoped I would never meet again. I've gone back and forth about whether to write this. Partly because I don't have a neat ending. Partly because I'm still finding my way through it. But maybe some stories don't need to be finished before they're worth telling.
A month ago, I slipped again.
I left all my rituals behind. No journaling. No meditation. No walks. No coaching sessions.
On the surface, I was functioning. I went to work. I showed up for family. I attended birthdays. I smiled when people expected me to.
If you had met me then, you probably wouldn't have known anything was wrong.
Inside, though, I was disappearing. Hope felt impossible to find. I couldn't see a way forward. I wanted to run away from everything, including myself.
The hardest part wasn't that I had no tools. It was that I had too many. I'd spent years learning how to find my way back to myself. This time, none of it worked.
What frightened me most wasn't the sadness.
It was what the sadness meant. I'd been here before. And every memory of that version of me came rushing back. I was terrified that everything I had rebuilt was slipping away. Terrified that I would become the person people pitied again. Terrified that I would lose the strength to stand beside the people I'd promised to help.
As always, I wasn't afraid of the darkness. I was afraid of becoming someone I no longer recognised.
The only place I found even a little relief was my Thursday healing circle, where I admitted that I was losing myself. I asked everyone to send healing energy.
Whether it was the healing itself or simply knowing that someone was holding space for me, I don't know.
But it helped me continue. Sometimes for a few hours. Sometimes for a day.
Then, one afternoon, my phone rang. It was a friend. She asked one question.
"Are you okay?"
I answered the only way I could.
"I'm managing."
She knew I wasn't. Something broke open. I cried. I expected comfort.
Instead, she got angry. Not at me. For me.
She cursed every person who had ever hurt me or disappointed me while I simply sat there crying.
Then she said, "Enough." "Get up." "Go look at yourself in the mirror." "Get dressed." "Now go outside."
So I did.
The courage lasted about an hour.
Then I slipped again.
But that hour changed something.
In that one hour, I called my parents and became the daughter they needed. I called a client because I wanted him to know he wasn't alone. I joined a work call and solved problems that had felt impossible sixty minutes earlier.
Nothing around me had changed.
Not my circumstances.
Not my struggles.
Not my depression.
The only thing that changed...
...was that, for one hour, I remembered who I was.
I've thought about that hour ever since. Not because it cured me.
It didn't.
But because it left me with a question I still can't stop thinking about.
Why could another person's voice reach a place inside me that I couldn't reach on my own?
I don't think my friend gave me strength. I think she reminded me of the person I already was. I've started wondering whether that's the hardest part of struggling.
Not the pain itself.
But the quiet way it convinces us that this version of us is the only one that exists. Little by little, we stop recognising ourselves.
We forget what we've survived.
We forget what we're capable of.
We forget the people we've been.
We forget that we're more than the version of ourselves that's hurting today.
Maybe that's what support really is. Not carrying someone else's life for them. Not rescuing them. Not fixing them.
Just remembering who they are...
...until they're able to remember themselves.
Because sometimes we don't need someone to show us the way forward.
Sometimes we just need someone to help us continue.