The Kindness Secrets

A newsletter instead of a story, this week.

I know, the world is currently a blocked toilet of trauma. I know this is a flippant attempt at offering you comfort. It’s all I’ve got, so I’ll give it, and you can decide if you’re in the right headspace.

Kindness secrets, however, are not necessarily what you might expect.

It is relatively easy to be openly kind. Secret kindness costs human beings something, and usually that something is ego. Sometimes the kindness is a stab of shame into your own guts, sometimes the kindness puts someone else at risk if revealed.

Secret kindness is a phenomenon rarely discussed and admitting our receipt of it can be hard - it often indicates we’ve desperately needed it, and not everyone wants to share how low they have actually gone. Admitting a kindness we’ve offered feels kind of false and inappropriate. It tends to be a soft memory we keep hidden, a reminder to ourselves of our own capacity to love.

Reading the submissions, there was a mix of both:

My conductor went out of his way to make sure that I was travelling okay mentally during lockdown by either emailing or phoning daily. That kindness helped more than he can ever possibly know or that I can even articulate in words.

I’m in a rough patch, continuing for longer than anyone would hope/expect and I don’t have family I can reply on etc. My best friend (despite my protestations) transfers me $100 a week to help me get by/eat. I’m equally embarrassed and overwhelmed with gratitude and her kindness regularly brings me to tears. The reference for her transfer is ‘snacks’ :’)

The other day I was putting groceries in my car and this elderly gentleman came over to help cause my trolley was rolling away and we ended up chatting for about 2 hours about his whole life and the things he had done and it was really nice

I was on a women’s retreat, somewhat freshly trying to reintegrate into life after another blip on the mental health radar that would see my functionality reduce and disorder creep in.

For whatever reason, my trauma brain decided the room I was sleeping in was too overwhelming and unsafe to return to.

But it was night time and I had already taken medication and was both panicked and drowsy and unable to problem solve.

Without any further questions, all it took was one woman knowing my story to ask 3 others for help. They dragged my mattress into the main meeting area where I was dissolving on a step. They brought my pillow and bedding, pulled the curtains and blocked the windows. They ushered the last people out of the room. They listened without me having to speak.

They gave me safety, silence, security. They created a place to rest.

I woke the next morning having slept through. I woke without any questions. Just the knowledge I was seen and validated as messy as I was.

It's only a small thing but I used to work at a fast food joint and I would give food away to people who looked like they needed it, tell them it was free, and then pay for it myself once they left.

One cold day I met the Kind of England while holding my baby who was wrapped a large tartan wool scarf. On another cold day, a few months later, a homeless man asked me for money. I gave him some, and the scarf because he was cold.

When I was 19 I paid for car repairs after an accident which I wasn’t at fault for, because the other driver didn’t want to use his insurance and he couldn’t otherwise afford it. He was so grateful that he came over with half the money and I would have accepted it, except my father said no on my behalf.

When I see people that trigger off sad feelings for me, like my fear of ending up alone or missing someone in particular, and I'm at a cafe - I'll try and secretly pay for their bill when I can afford to. I try and leave before they find out, but also I hope that someone sees me when I feel sad or alone and does the same back. Really, I just hope people see other people more, like actually SEE and act accordingly.

When I lived in the Netherlands, I went down the rabbit hole of believing that the refugee crisis of 2015 was not good for a moment. One day I was in Belgium visiting my ex girlfriend, and that night I went out with her sister to walk their dog. A woman who spoke English approached us and asked us for directions. The sister knew that the place was a refugee building in her area so she gave her directions with me translating it to English (this was in Eupen, Belgium).  We went separate ways but then found her again and lost more than ever. From there, me and the sister decided to actually walk with her to show her the right place. While we were walking, I asked her where was her home, she said Palestine. My entire perspective changed in that moment about the refugee crisis and not only I made sure that she made it safe to the building but I gave her all the euros that I had with me at the moment. All humans deserve to be welcomed whether is to start a new life or escape danger.

I was hanging out with my friend and his partner (C). We were walking to dinner and C found a $20 note on the ground. He immediately looked at me and my friend and said “I’ll be back.” I assumed he was going to the shops or had to go to the bathroom. But when he got back, I asked where he went, and he said “I always try to give money to the homeless man around the corner, and I thought he could use it more than I could.” And then just casually went on to having dinner. (I then also told my friend that his partner is a keeper haha).

Kindness can take so many forms, but the noose of capitalism means kindness does often involve money - not because money is the highest form of generosity, but because money buys us time to be still. Money means rent is paid, children are fed, quality time can actually be shared.

When God and I were hanging out a lot, I found incredible meaning and freedom in giving money. It was during a time I was very in tune - I had it as a resource to give, and I only gave it when I specifically felt ‘told’ to, but the spiritual challenge of it was significant - how do you give without ego? Without making it about yourself? I learned a lot of lessons in the process, mostly about the inherent dignity of those I felt led to give money to. It wasn’t a hierarchical giving down. It was a giving up - an offering to someone out of honour, not pity. I learned it was a privilege to be allowed into the vulnerability and rebuilding of a person’s peace.

I’ve been secretly gifted money too. I’ve had women secretly defend my dignity in the face of toxic masculinity behind my back, with much to lose and nothing to gain. I’ve had friends drop everything to rescue me from devastating legal mediations, carrying me to their car to take me home. I have had people edge outside the boundary lines of their professional roles to help me find peace. Strangers can be angels, friends can answer prayers, but it all hits a little different when a kindness is from someone who has reason to dislike or mistrust you.

Two years ago, I dated an old friend relatively briefly, but intensely. They ended it for a multitude of complex reasons, and because I was deep in grief already, I was devastated. I remember a very specific evening after the breakup in which we met up at a mutual friend’s house. The whole evening was a hot mess. I couldn’t find a park, I was jittery, nervous and distressed, and accidentally swiped a parked car, ripping off the bottom bumper of my own.

A Good Samaritan helped me out with some gaff tape (this isn’t the kindness, but it was very helpful), and I tearily left a note on the other person’s car with my name and phone number. I went to the gathering, felt too large and too small, drank wine and said stupid things, and stumbled out of there at midnight with my ex. On the street, I begged them to give it another chance. They were cold, resolute. They didn’t want to be with me, they wouldn’t and couldn’t. I wanted to kiss them goodbye, they refused. I spat out some jilted final insults and caught an Uber home in tears, leaving them on the street.

In the days following, I seethed. I couldn’t believe how cruel they had been. I also couldn’t shake the shame and embarrassment of my anger. They didn’t want to be with me, and I couldn’t accept the rejection. I couldn’t accept that someone could declare that they love and care for someone, and not want to be in a relationship with them.

That whole evening was a kind of strange nightmare that I was unsure even happened, except for the blatant gaffer tape holding my car (heart) together. In some stroke of grace, the other car owner never called. It was the only silver lining, since I couldn’t afford to pay the excess. I waited days, weeks, months - nothing. My own car got fixed for free after someone else ran into me.

Two years later, I learned that my ex had walked the streets that night until they had found the car I had scraped, then removed my note from the other person’s windscreen. They didn’t want me to have another thing on my grief plate.

—

Yesterday, I was working at my day job at the children’s hospital. I work for a charity, and we usually do art, craft and games with seriously ill teenagers as a form of distraction therapy. On this particular day, we were called to provide an ‘older’ craft to a family of a younger patient. I walked into the room and saw incredible Christmas decorations everywhere, so declared with great enthusiasm: ‘This is the happiest room in the entire hospital!’ I then learned that we were there to assist the family (of ten) in making end-of-life mementos, as their four year old was probably going to die in the next twenty-four hours.

If you have read my novel ‘Immaculate’, you will know I have reflected upon the topic of paediatric cancer quite a lot in my writing, but this was the first time I had personally stood in the room of a dying child, let alone with the task of creating an end-of-life memory.

If you have held vigil whilst waiting for someone to die, you might know how the space becomes strangely jovial and calm. Families crack jokes at one another’s expense. There is a profound softness, acceptance and generosity between those that wait together (with the occasional vicious snap). They pass time like one might pass time waiting for a flight, or a wedding ceremony to begin. Small movements, small bites of food, small conversations about small things. I remembered it acutely from losing my Dad, and recognised it in the family we were with. In the limbo of an inevitable death, it is always twilight. Nothing was okay, but nothing could be done to change the outcome. The only option was leaning in.

So we brought the family polymer clay, and pressed the child’s beautiful little thumbs into the balls of rainbow colour to keep his fingerprints forever. The mother stroked his body as he slept, told me how much he loved Spider-Man and rainbows, how many nights he had already defied predictions of his passing. I remembered when my aunt had brought in a bowl of warm water full of flowers, for us to wash my dad’s body with. I remembered her quiet facilitation, helping us feel confident enough to say goodbye to him, and I tried to emulate it.

The generosity of this family to let us be there was profound. To let us teach them how to preserve memories of him, to trust us with their loss. We did not give much, but what we could give they graciously received.

I caught the bus home like a zombie, cried in the car for a while, then picked up my little kids. I watched the news - so many dead children, so many grieving mothers. I sweared a lot. My kids had worms, so I reminded myself I was lucky to be pulling out worms.

I like to think that for every bomb we see fall, there is something beautiful growing from the wreckage, but I also know that isn’t true. Cosmic justice doesn’t work in war. Small and secret kindnesses don’t bring children back from the dead. But kindnesses help us remember the children, I think. And in that remembering, surely the children are eternal.