Emotional Support Sisters

My wife told me on numerous occasions of her new symptoms. She couldn’t quantify or qualify them other than “I hurt”; other times it was “I am exhausted”.

These talks rarely occurred in a sit-down or even sick-in-bed kind of way. For the first year, they were mostly just part of the day-to-day check-in one has with a partner. I would follow up with words of encouragement such as “You’re doing great”, or “Get to bed earlier tonight”.

Frankly, I didn’t want to admit to myself that my wife was sick. The psychology of that deserves more space than this post has for today. Still, there is a fear of not being able to fix fatigue or an undiagnosable pain that flat out made me a passive cheerleader instead of a dedicated supporter to go beyond encouraging words and to help her start the path of finding answers faster rather than suffering alone for as long as she did.

What those words should have been were more questions. “How long have you felt like this?” or “Do you feel this is a bug or something more?” plus several other more concerned questions rather than passive support for my partner who was slowly getting worse and worse.

So, if those first statements of “I really hurt” or I”m really tired” are coming from your partner, be better than I was and encourage them to do more than take a nap.