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Dear One,

Yes, the world is madness.

But, dearest, it’s been that way from the very beginning.

Not just since the beginning of man, but since the beginning of time. You’ve seen a Tyrannosaurus Rex, right? Those tiny arms. The Universe has its jokes, some of them laced with cruelty.

Some of us go through the wringer so hard and we’re not left with the large chompers and crazy talon claws to compensate for the tiny, useless arms.

Some of us are fierce, but also fiercely soft.

Squishy, mushy, and hearts wide open. While we’re also soaked in anger and sadness and a whole lot of “I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-this-ness.”

Sometimes it takes seeing one hundred butterflies, a couple hundred hummingbird sightings, and many days with our hands in the earth to shake off witnessing one horrific event, and then some.

Nowadays, the ratio feels off. That the horrific events are so mountainous and plentiful that there’s nothing we can do to cancel them out; we’re trying desperately to clear the weight so our souls don’t feel so heavy that we feel like we can’t get the oxygen to our lungs.

That’s why I’m here, called to share. For the ones with lungs struggling to breathe but hearts that are still desperate to love.

“Joy is resistance” is an excellent sentiment and it’s so true, but what does that look like?

How do we find joy when we are gasping for air?

I have a few theories and answers to that, take your pick:

1. The evolution of sharing information was not paired with an evolution of understanding how to prepare our nervous systems to handle it. Our brains can’t even tell the difference between the danger of an intruder lurking in our own bushes or an invader harming lives in another country. It’s important to understand that and give your brain a break. 

More neuroscience behind how much it matters when it comes to what we feed our brains? Let’s say you’re anxious, maybe on the way to a big job interview or a scary physician’s appointment? Sing in your car. Badly, it doesn’t matter. The activation of your vocal cords signals that there’s no imminent threat when anxiety is trying to say otherwise.

Because, within our nervous systems, we’re still technically cave people, meaning anxiety = danger = being hunted = needing to be as quiet as a mouse. We wouldn’t be singing like lunatics if we were in real danger, and that’s all your brain knows. Use those nervous system hacks like cheat codes when you need them the most. 

2. Then, there’s those messy thoughts.

I still have them all the time, too. What can’t be reframed can be thrown away, did you know? When a thought doesn’t line up to your core values and what you know to be true, you can say it out loud: “I don’t want these thoughts, they are not mine, and get them away from me.” Feel the lift. “Pluck” the thoughts from your temple, even.

Even if it feels silly to speak it out loud or pull invisible strings out of your forehead, I’ve learned from experience that the sillier something feels, the more benefit it holds. The Universe, energy, the Powers that Be…it’s all laced with silly humor and it loves to be matched.

Remember, tiny-armed T-Rex. Your nervous system will steady you, and nature will delight you. Both are teachers. It might take catapulting yourself into the grass unwillingly, but it will show you the way.

3. It’s okay to unplug, my friend. It’s not selfish. If you can’t unplug and you still need to doom-scroll, no shame, but change how you doom-scroll. I can’t sugarcoat this, you have to step away from the things that make you feel like sh*t on the Internet. You’re the only one who can do that. So, do it. Your baseline is always going to be the emotion you allow yourself to feel the most. Be mindful of what emotions you’re exposing yourself to. It’s okay to watch funny animal videos when the world feels like it’s on fire.

4. Take your empathy and learn how to wield it. By wielding it appropriately, you increase your capacity to be there for others and your community, which is what your gift of empathy really wants, isn’t it? Leaving it unchecked, it will eat you alive.

The good news is that however long you’ve been doing that, it doesn’t matter. When you reel it back in and dole it out the right way, the pieces that were eaten away regenerate like a starfish. And let’s be honest, that makes you at least part mermaid.

5. Remind yourself that these heart-wrenching things we’re constantly exposed to are ancestral; they’ve existed from day one, and they’ll keep existing. Take your grief outside of yourself and let it be collective—because it is.

Are you a person who would go out of their way to feed a starving child in front of you?

Yes?

Now, think about how much more you would have emotionally and physically to offer that child if you really honed in on what it means to fill your cup.

Compartmentalization of your grief, your anger, your outrage—it’s not being cold or turning the other cheek. It’s preparation. The protection of your energy will overflow into others when the opportunities arise; it’s as simple as that. Not protecting it means you’ll have little left to give if the time comes that your help is needed.

You’re allowed to take the chains off because you’re the one holding the key. It’s safe because you’re a safe person. You’ve just spent your whole life searching for a safe place…forgetting that you’re it.

You’ve walked this earth looking for the helpers, but dear one…you are one of them, now.

I don’t know who you are, other than I am you and you are me. Just in different places and different situations.

I don’t know exactly what your path looks like when it comes to allowing yourself to feel the full and beautiful range of emotions, while letting joy be your baseline.

I don’t know how to tell you that finding that place is the most urgent thing in your life right now, either. But, it is.

If a day comes where joy is hard to come by everywhere we turn, the joy we find now will only serve to carry us through.

Or, better yet, what I do believe to be more likely: we take our continued capacity to love, our superpower of properly wielded empathy, our ability to feel outrage, despair, and grief at horrific acts because of our hearts, and we wear it like a badge of honor instead of letting it swallow us whole.

We are the ones who will inevitably hold the world together. Those before us did, and those after us will: The Helpers, The Lovers, The Dreamers. The Open Hearted.

We don’t need acknowledgement. We ain’t that kind of folk, anyway. We’re just try to do the right thing, and we’ll keep doing the next right thing.

If you have this gift, that is all you need to be okay. It is all you need to have to help the rest of the world.

It just takes a lot of patience with yourself and even more fine-tuning.

Honing in that gift is what will fill your soul and ripple outward, doing exactly what you want for the world right now:

For it to change.

Being unapologetically you is the best thing you can do to help in times when it’s nearly impossible to know how to help.

Change does not live outside of you—it is you.

Softness turned power. You.

It lives in the cup of tea you make for yourself nightly, the one you always come back to realizing you let it get cold. In the soul work you’ve done. In the tears you’ve cried, the battles you’ve faced, the healing you’ve earned.

You’re not just a survivor.

You are the change; you are the helper.

You are the answer.

~