The days feel short, while everyone’s expectations of you stay long. You can’t feel the warmth of the sun on your skin. Scrolling over images of genocide juxtaposed with celebrity gossip, cognitive dissonance feels like nausea. Winter storms knocking out your power, your heat, your plumbing, your childcare. And at the same time you might be going through grief, job loss, abuse, recovery, conflict, chronic health conditions, loneliness. Sometimes it’s enough to wonder if you’ll be crushed, unable to get up and get through another day. You’ve stretched around and out for any kind of help or hope and maybe only found scraps.
What do you do when you can’t find the light at all? Maybe it seems gone for good.
Sometimes, all we can do is ask ourselves to stay one more day, realizing we really don’t have a lot of control over even that and maybe there is one tiny blessing we can find in just that one day. Or pride in ourselves for choosing to try again for one more day even when it’s hard as hell. Determination.
Sometimes, we look back to ancestors who lived through excruciating experiences or eras and ask “what got them through? How did they cope? Is there anything I could learn from them even if I have to guess what it was?”. Sometimes we pray: “help me”. Spiritual perspective. Sometimes we let even just one person in on how bad we’re feeling, how afraid or lonely we are. Connection. Even for a few moments. Sometimes we see somebody who clearly has it even worse and figure out how we can extend to support or help or simply acknowledge them. Contribution, Community.
Sometimes we remember: the days sweet with heat, times in the past where hope wasn’t so scarce, those obstacles we overcame some way, somehow. Sometimes we dream: it could be possible that I’ll be covered in light again, that I’ll belly laugh again, that I’ll be held and embraced again, that I’ll feel confident again, that there will be peace, a new (or old) way to live, that I’ll feel free, that my kids will be taken care of, that everybody’s kids will be taken care of. There it is for that minute: Hope, Vision, Risk.
If you’re wrestling the sun and moon to shine on you now and need help cultivating these seeds inside yourself, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
