You don't know. You can't possibly know. Not until you've been without a home, not until your only transportation is how far you can walk, not until you've tried to live off of twenty dollars a week.

So many people think that they've been there but they haven't. Not until their pants are tattered, not until their shoes leak, not until their every meal lies in question.

And they have so much advice too. Like everything hangs in the balance of simply being positive. As though simply believing you're going to make it, will somehow make it so. And I'm not saying that hope isn't important... that hope doesn't often times take us just those extra few steps that would have otherwise been impossible. It's just that, to truly be there, to truly be the friend, you have to be willing to take the sour along with the sweet.

Sometimes it's in being negative and getting it all out that we're actually able to continue on... we just need that person to vent around. To be ourselves, to be real... to gather the strength to then move on once again and be that strongest part of us. And maybe they don't even realize that they are the strongest part of us if they'd only help to lift us up so we could continue walking...

~ KT