Last night I looked Link in the eyes and, with every ounce of intensity I could muster, I promised him “I know it is hard now, but it will get better.” He believed me. Even in the middle of feeling like his life was impossible and his challenges were insurmountable, even though he is fifteen and has begun to make value choices independent from mine, even though I’ve sometimes failed him–in that moment he believed me. It helped that I spoke truth.
I’d been listening to him for thirty minutes as he described the difficulties and emotions he faced. I tried not to speak too much, because it is a failing of mine to try to give him words to describe his experiences. I love words. I love wrapping them around concepts and experiences. For most of his life my son has not loved words and he was happy to let me provide them when he did not have them. But now he needs his own words, not mine. He needs to wrestle and struggle to give his own shapes to his thoughts. He needs to cry out in frustration until he manages to discover the words which fit his feelings. I must bite my tongue and not try to fix that struggle, because the struggle is what he needs. In so many ways my son is like the hatchling who must push and work his way out of the shell, because the effort to escape will give that chick the strength to survive everything else that comes later. I can already see the end of this struggle. I can see how far Link has come and how close he is to being free from the shell. He spent thirty minutes talking to me about his feelings, this would have been an impossible feat for him just six months ago. So when I told him it would get better, I knew that it was true. And he believed me.
Within an hour, better had already arrived. I didn’t know it would arrive so quickly, but I’m glad it did. I also know that more struggle is ahead, because he is not done with this process. Watching a chick struggle to hatch–without helping–is hard. So I do the equivalent of making sure that the egg and chick are in a safe place, a warm place. I speak encouragement. I prepare the food and other necessities that the chick will need which the egg did not. I do everything I can to make this easier, except pull off the shell. Then I wait, and occasionally I look into Link’s eyes and promise him that his struggles are temporary. It gets better.