a blessing for care-givers and care-receivers

Sometimes bodies or minds come undone
and you are carried by a caregiver (often literally).
Whether you wanted this or not,
you have been given the great gift of a Witness Bearer
(or Med Tracker or Insurance Battler or More-Ice-Chips-Please Fetcher).

But other times,
you haven’t found a partner.
Or you never married. Or they left.
Or your person died.
Or you feel like a burden to ask for the help you need.

Bless you, you who are so worth caring for.
You are worth having your needs met. 
You are worth shuttling to all of those appointments
and having someone to complain to about another day
of the same unresolved problem. 

Your pain does not disqualify you from love. 

And to the care-givers who continue to put another’s needs before your own.
Bless you. 
We know this isn’t what you had imagined for your life either.
That sometimes you are so tired or lonely or burned out.
But you serve and support and show up, anyway.

You are worth having your needs met too. 
But you often don’t. Because this is what the day requires.
This is what love requires. 

Bless you all. All you care-givers and care-receivers. 
You who do the hard work of love and hope-making.
May you receive the love you so freely give others
and then a little extra (because too much love is never enough).

This blessing was inspired by my conversation with Jay and Katherine Wolf on the Everything Happens podcast. Click here to listen.