When we’re feeling alone, beat down, confused, neurotic, there’s help for us. All of us:

In the midst of our full joy in love, other things in life have been hard.

Life inexorably flows forward, and life is full of love, but heartbreak, too—and goodness, and obstacles, altogether.

And, but: in the midst of things being hard, we are kind in our love together and for our world, too.

Love can help us forward.

When times are hard, I’ve always reached out to friends, to folks I barely know but like, to mentors, to teachers, to neighbors. Even moreso: it could be the guy in the line for coffee at the Trident, the father and son at the ice cream shop. It can be anyone.

It’s called community.

Community lifts us when we’re down, inch-by-cheering inch. Community enlightens us when we’re neurotic, lost, confused, off course, full of ourselves. Community advises us when we’re ignorant, looking for direction.

Yesterday, Kelsey and I needed help. We talked with a neighbor. We’re 1,000 miles a way, but she rung us up at the appointed time and, while she puttered around and did dishes in the background, subtly and firmly and smartly changed the course of our life. We talked with my mom, wise and sweet, who’d also gone through some of the same things. We talked with Michael Christie, generous and wise where we lacked knowledge, though he was on lunch break smack in the middle of the RAGBRAI in Iowa. Kelly watered all my plants—1,000 miles away, left behind in 100 degree heat—two floors of them, and my garden, making sure they weren’t overwatered, rag-drying the floor where they were. So did Elyse, before.

We’re not alone. We’re alone in our hearts, our souls, and can find simple solace there. But we’re not alone when we’re lost, when we’re down, when we’re broke, when we’re struggling.

Find a way to reach out. Appreciation goes a long way—it’s mostly what anyone will want in return. A smile. A hug. A thank you. An offer to help, right back, some day, when the tables are flipped.

We’re not alone. We’re powerful, and can find the path—together.

~

From Kelsey: In feeling community near and far, we also notice the organic community woven into the fabric of our day-to-day in Indianapolis.

The couple and their blended family we continue to run into in all of their beautiful familial configurations (they originally met on a train in London, she from there and he from the states, making our 1,111 mile distant relationship seem a stonesthrow); the classmate of Leo at the ice cream shop “there’s Leo’s Mommy!” as we bike on the Monon trail to pick him up from daycare; the woman and her daughter, again at the ice cream shop (vegan ice cream in an old train station, walkable from L’s school, has been the Kraemer-Lewis headquarters this midlatesummer); the local vegan cafe making W’s birthday special with a cinnamon bday roll while he’s away from the community he’s been ingrained in since childhood; just yesterday the friends at Brics recommending carriage houses for our stay; Johnnae at the vintage store who saw our love and playfulness in my trying on new old wool and cotton dresses and dress suits and gifted us $20 toward whatever we liked best; our BnB host Layne who sweetly gave us $100 when she accidentally double-booked us; friends who’ve housed us and homed us and lent us bikes with a kid seat and played in the creek and climbed trees with us.