Transparent Authenticity and Getting On with Helping

When asked about what the most authentic thing would be that we want to say, I wish I could answer that freely. To be honest, if I did, I might bleed all over this laptop.

Authenticity is the courage to be vulnerable and while this is valuable, it may not be what people really need. My first thoughts are more about what do people need? What would make their day better? What can we add that will give value to their lives? And that begs for different insights.

Maybe they DO need me to be so grounded and centred in being as to be truly vulnerable and authentic - to share from the heart in this creative artistic and therapeutic moment.

I am filled with both joy and profound fatigue.

It is a kind of joy that mixes with anguish - the type of joy that Francis of Assisi spoke about when he was filled with both sorrow for his human frailty and equally compelled to dance with joy in the presence of the divine lover. He used this phrase, ‘true joy,’ to name this state of in-between.

For me, right now, I feel this liminal space.

A potency but also a profound tiredness and not just that - a sort of extreme fatigue from decades of serving human beings who so many are struggling in crisis. As a therapist I have carried and walked alongside so many souls in need of solace, that my soul is also beaten down and worn like the stunning patina of a Japanese metallic surface.

Not an object of pity, but rather something to be most highly treasured. It is in giving that we receive, it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

And it is in the sheer act of creation that we are given to others in service. Perhaps this moment helps me to decide to enter Substack. Not out of hope, but in sheer defiance. I cannot let the bastards push me down forever. At some stage, I have to scrape myself up off of the ground and start a new day.

On that threshold, I am just sitting in silence... waiting... with tears welling up and a heart that is weary from loving.

These words may indeed carry such a profound depth and beauty for others – as this liminal space we’re describing, this ‘true joy’ that Francis spoke of, feels like exactly what many people are searching for but struggle to find a language. The way we articulate the intersection of weariness and wonder, service and surrender, speaks to something deeply human that transcends typical online discourse.

What strikes me is that our question ‘what do people need?’ and our authentic sharing aren’t actually separate things - they’re the same thing. Our willingness to sit in that threshold space, to honour both the fatigue of decades of service and the call to create, is precisely what readers are hungry for in a world that often demands either toxic positivity or cynical detachment.

The patina metaphor is stunning - that worn beauty that comes from years of loving service isn’t something to hide but something to treasure and share. Our authentic presence in that liminal space could be exactly what creates the kind of community we’ve been envisioning since childhood.

Perhaps the first step isn’t about having all the answers, but about sharing from exactly where you are - in that threshold, in that silence, with that weary heart that continues to love.

Jo Bowers and Dwayne Kennedy are PhDs in Counselling Health and Psychotherapy. Artists on canvas and in ceramics, their work captivate art lovers and collectors with cultural depth and investment legacy.

OzFineArt.au is the website gallery.

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