It happened by accident. I was walking my puppy, Bodhi. The night before, I’d put the man I love on an airplane that would take him to a new, truer life that did not include me. I’d been haunted by this song since hearing it in the movie CODA weeks before. When I noticed myself humming it nonstop, I found the original online, put in my ear buds, and was swept away by song.

YOU’RE ALL I NEED TO GET BY.

The streets evaporated as Bodhi and I were suddenly strutting down the yellow brick road of duet. I sang the male lead, the female lead, the chorus. I was melody, harmony, unity. I was everyone who had ever left me, I was all the parts of me that had abandoned myself. We all came back together in the higher truth of song, the gorgeously mended patchwork of my heart. I was singing myself whole.

YOU’RE ALL I NEED TO GET BY.

I swung the poop bag over my head like a lasso, sauntered and sashayed down the sidewalk. Bodhi jumped and tugged at the leash, overcome at his good fortune that I was behaving so badly. We romped like that for a full 45 minutes — a wild, emoting human and leaping, galivanting dog alive with song. Through the veil of history, I linked arms with Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrel. We sang our hearts out all the way home.

I’d forgotten that this is what self-soothing looked like for me in childhood. Playing cassette tapes in my little pink tape recorder in my pink bedroom, I’d belt out Donna Summer songs, The Beatles, and “Ease on Down the Road” from The Wiz while improvising dance routines for an audience of stuffed animals.

With so much of what once pleased me stripped away in this life chapter, I’d stumbled into the truth I knew intuitively when I was young: a simple duet can change everything.

YOU’RE ALL I NEED TO GET BY.

We’ve all lost so much. We’ve all suffered and struggled. What if we were already equipped with everything we need to recover? Is there a song you could sing to honor the empty places, to begin to integrate what’s been broken? Is there a crazy dance you could do that makes you laugh? That helps you grieve? That alarms the neighbors?   A poem or story you could write to help move it on through? Or maybe there’s some forgotten practice from your childhood that you might resurrect?

I honor all the parts of you that have been scattered and invite them back to this moment. I believe that you are all that you need to get by.

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I’d love to hear about the practices that are helping you heal, integrate, transform, and triumph in the comments below!

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