I spent years of my life skipping over the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme to get to little Miss Muffet. To me, Humpty was pretty weak. Let’s be real, the egg man (or whatever you want to call him) fell off of a wall but then no one, absolutely no one, could put him back together again. Where is the happy ending in that one? What could I possibly learn from good ol’ Humpty? Don’t fall?

Up until just this afternoon was I quite content with erasing him from the nursery rhyme gang altogether. It was not until I fell into the broken shoes of Humpty and fell off my own wall that I realized why he was never put back together again. And so this the question that I would pose to him if we were sitting down for a coffee date: Do you ever make any effort yourself to put yourself back together again? Do you think you deserve to be whole?

Many of us are lucky to have friends and family members who support us. They arrive with tissues and good advice, they leave with wet shoulders and a coffee order that they pulled out of us in between our sobs and wails. They are rarely ever given enough credit for spending countless hours attempting to put as back together again even when we all know the task is impossible. They are the ones who hate to see us hurting and more than that they hate seeing us fall off the same wall over and over again. Each Time More Broken But Swearing We Are Fine. Of course they don’t believe our invincibility but they let us figure things out for ourselves. After all, it is no secret that this is only way.

If advice we were given by the cheerleaders in our lives was actually taken, well then each day would be a sweet and easy piece of strawberry shortcake. Humpty would have been put back together and would have never dared to climb that wall again, Jack and Jill would never think to fetch another pail of water, Miss Muffet, well, she would have learned to get over her arachnophobia. But healing is essential inside of our own selves first before others can make us whole again.

I get Humpty now. I bet he was lying on that ground, his frown still intact, begging all those King’s horses and men to kindly back off. “Guys, let’s be real, you know I am just going to climb up this wall once more and fall off all over again,” he said with a moan, contemplating just how he might climb back on his wall and NOT fall this time. He, like us, needed to learn the lessons on his own, to experience the pain on his own, to come to a realization on his own that he was never meant to be hanging out on such a treacherous wall all along. And when we come to this realization, that not everything goes our way, that we sometimes fight to lose, that life does not always grant us a happy ending in all cases, then we can finally accept our fall and make a decision to piece ourselves back together.

It would be impossible without our friends and our family. They can certainly help us up after the great fall. But not until we make the decision that we want to get off the ground, that we want to stop climbing the wall, that we would prefer to stay put together as opposed to stumbling and shattering once more. And that takes bravery. That Takes Courage. That takes us making the decision that we are better off and that we are worth more than situations that will continually break our hearts or wear us out.

So today is in memory of poor Humpty for he never came to the same great realization. He never decided that he was worth it enough to be put back together and for that reason no one could help him enough. But you won’t find me today placing flowers down by his wall in memory of him. But you can find me if you need me, I swear, sitting down next to my friends and finally helping them assemble my own pieces.