When ‘Hold My Hand’ Is All You Can Do

Cheerfully I walked through JCPenney one Saturday afternoon as the song “Hold my Hand” by Lady Gaga was playing in the store. I’ve always thought it to be a beautiful song, but the lyrics didn’t resonate with me until that day.

“Hold my hand, hold my hand
I’ll be right here, hold my hand.”

Her voice combined with those words shifted my lighthearted mood, infiltrating my thoughts with situations beyond my control. Situations like:

When children need someone to look for monsters under their bed, we can have them watch us as we look to prove there’s nothing there, but we can’t take away that nightly fear.
When teenagers are navigating peer pressure and direction, we can set curfews and boundaries, offer advice, and help them with confidence building strategies, but we can’t take away the feeling of insecurity.
When young adults are figuring out who they are and who they want to be, we can provide them with resources and assure them that everything will be alright, but we can’t take the necessary actions for them.
When friends or family go through an illness, we can take them to their doctor’s appointments, and be their sounding board when they need it, but we can’t go through the illness for them.
When someone loses a loved one, we can create a food train so their meals are taken care of, we can check in on them, and we can hug them, but we can’t take away their grief.

There are just some things that people must go through and do for themselves. For some of us, it’s almost harder to watch someone go through hardships than it is to go through them ourselves. Maybe because we have control of taking necessary action to overcome and endure our circumstances, but we don’t have that same control over the people in our lives, they must walk the walk themselves.

We can coach them, but we simply can’t play their game. We can’t face the consequences of their inaction. We can’t carry their pain, their frustration, their worry, their uncertainty. “Hold my hand” is the only thing we can do…and sometimes, that really sucks.

“So cry tonight
But don’t you let go of my hand
You can cry every last tear
I won’t leave ’til I understand
Promise you’ll just hold my hand”