Let's Get Real

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day?…"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child [or a sister or brother or spouse or friend] loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

--Excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit, written by Margery Williams

I’m becoming Real. With Kendall’s death, with my eating disorder LITERALLY almost taking my life, and then my soul, and then coming back from that. I am becoming Real by being a mother, and crying when Cade cries, and silently praying to God to heal his bladder and kidneys and emotional trauma he has suffered as a result. I am becoming Real because my husband and son love me, and I love them. I am becoming Real because life hurts. But would I really have it any other way? No freaking way.

...Because as the Skin Horse so wisely says, “When you are Real, you don’t mind being hurt.” Because you know that the hurt you experience will match, one day, the joy you will feel.