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It occurred to Pooh and Piglet that they hadn’t heard from Eeyore for several days, so they put on their hats and coats and trotted across the Hundred Acre Wood to Eeyore’s stick house. Inside the house was Eeyore.

“Hello Eeyore,” said Pooh.

“Hello Pooh. Hello Piglet,” said Eeyore, in a Glum Sounding Voice.

“We just thought we’d check in on you,” said Piglet, “because we hadn’t heard from you, and so we wanted to know if you were okay.”

Eeyore was silent for a moment. “Am I okay?” he asked, eventually. “Well, I don’t know, to be honest. Are any of us really okay? That’s what I ask myself. All I can tell you, Pooh and Piglet, is that right now I feel really rather Sad, and Alone, and Not Much Fun To Be Around At All. Which is why I haven’t bothered you. Because you wouldn’t want to waste your time hanging out with someone who is Sad, and Alone, and Not Much Fun To Be Around At All, would you now.”

Pooh looked and Piglet, and Piglet looked at Pooh, and they both sat down, one on either side of Eeyore in his stick house.

Eeyore looked at them in surprise. “What are you doing?”

“We’re sitting here with you,” said Pooh, “because we are your friends. And true friends don’t care if someone is feeling Sad, or Alone, or Not Much Fun To Be Around At All. True friends are there for you anyway. And so here we are.”

“Oh,” said Eeyore. “Oh.” And the three of them sat there in silence, and while Pooh and Piglet said nothing at all; somehow, almost imperceptibly, Eeyore started to feel a very tiny little bit better.

Because Pooh and Piglet were There. No more; no less.

I knew that intellectually but it never truly clicked until I opened an old favorite last night to get lost in for the thousandth time. But if you’re a fanfiction author, someone out there is reading and rereading your stories. Someone out there is loving your world and words not just once but over and over and over again.

That’s amazing.

So here’s a shoutout to the readers and rereaders. The commenters and kudosers and lurkers and everyone and anyone who has ever picked a fic up and loved it.

And here’s a shoutout to the writers, in case you need a pick me up or a slight bit of love. Somewhere, out there on a screen under a sky you’ve never seen, your story is coming to life.

She didn’t see the similarities of how she locked me away in the house, or how she kept me under the tightest supervision under the guise of keeping me safe. I spent the entire mother knows best song stealing glances at her next to me in the theater just waiting for her to drag us out of the movie because she couldn’t stand to have her “love” portrayed as evil. And she didn’t see how the fact that she created her identity completely around being a mother and nothing else was like mother gothel’s dependency on rapunzel’s magic hair.

healing is going to take work.

healing isn’t easy.

healing feels impossible some days.

healing doesn’t happen the same way for everyone.