worry – peterelbridge.com

Roots

What are your roots?

And who told you?

Therapy homework one year consisted of writing the letter to my parents that I’d probably never send but always needed to write. At the time, the words gushed like a fresh wound–thousands and thousands and I never even reached the end. At the time, reading what I wrote and sharing bits and pieces became a cathartic therapy for me. It felt a bit like watching the wound scab over. Last week–and I don’t remember why–I pulled the letter up again. This time it felt strangely foreign. Oh I remember every second, but it’s not . . . I just don’t . . . need to remember anymore? It feels a little gratuitous now?

If I decide to go back, I can remember the odd and dizzying experience of trying to find my footing as a 20-year-old in a reality very different than the one I grew up in. Slowly dicing onions with shaking hands, I would contribute some thought to the chatter, something I thought sounded normal, and the whole Chipotle crew would fall silent and turn to look at me a little too curiously. Like I was from a different planet. We’d open the doors to a stream of normal people on their normal lunch breaks, and as I looked down and fidgeted with the tortilla press I would deliver the tense line, “What can I get for you?” over and over until Max stepped in with some brotherly taunting to teach me how to speak terrifyingly confident greetings, like “Well hey there, what brings you in today?!” My shoulders tightened progressively through the day until I ended my shift with a splitting headache and found myself back in bed crying over how completely lost I was.

Memories like these once served a useful purpose in fortifying my rejection of the world I had known where there were no crowds of normal people and I wasn’t allowed to get a job and rarely allowed to go to a friends’ house. The memories helped me prove to others (really so that I could prove to myself) that my childhood had been dysfunctional, that it was a culty experience that left me helpless in the outside world, and that I was right to get out when I could.

But now the memories feel, as I said, a little gratuitous. Like re-watching a bloody surgery I don’t need to re-watch. Reading my letter with its story after story of weird abuse doesn’t seem therapeutic anymore, at least for now. That time of uprooting is done.

We all come with confusing stories about who we are, why we are, where we must be headed, and what is even going on in this strange world. Many of these stories we’ve accepted from others, and they can feel set in stone. The stories speak of values deeply ingrained by our families, or by our cultures large and small. Values we rarely stop to question. Assumptions rooted deep within our psyches. Truths rooted deep within our bodies.

And then when things hit just enough of a chaos point, just enough dissonance and impossibility, just enough crashing and burning–we sometimes get to see that these roots may have been quite arbitrary, and realize it’s time to dig ourselves out.

So we uproot and replant. Or uproot and be blown around a lot and maybe never replant. Life can be hard and is different for each of us.

Uprooting, by the way, is not always a choice and is rarely pleasant. It takes courage and it usually means having hit a low point. So when you see someone uprooted–whether they’re still blowing in the wind or have found different soil–remember compassion.

So what were you told were your roots? Were they really roots for you? And are they still? And do they have to be? And are they allowing you to grow beautifully? Or are they stifling and starving you?

When I wake up in the middle of the night and, with the willpower of a person half asleep and half needing a distraction from the high pollen count, find myself scrolling from Kyiv bombings to missiles in the Korean peninsula to a senator swearing assault rifle regulation is off the table to a rich bully threatening the employees who make him his money to a major news outlet reporting on a major celebrity stating the least sexy thing a guy can do is fart to a money guru tweeting in all caps about the economy crashing and how you need to buy silver . . . it makes me wonder where my roots are?

I think a lot of us these days are finding ourselves tangled in news feeds. Somehow supposed to digest a thousand threats and crises and scandals and tragedies and offenses during an afternoon on the couch. Until we’re left with no willpower and little imagination and just a fizzle of who we were somewhere deep inside, sputtering a little weaker each day.

And then there are those who have a firm foundation from which to accuse and judge and know. Simple arguments and convenient theories and too much confidence and too narrow a window on the world. Some of us live with unquestioned roots that explain everything for us so that we’re not lost and anxious and we know exactly how it will all turn out. Until something drags us down into the street and exposes just how full our society is of things we don’t know, don’t understand, and wish we hadn’t seen, but can’t unsee.

In my experience, the logic-y, dogma-ish roots are too dry and inflexible and they tend to snap when life gets stormy enough. Which may be why despite hundreds of millions of people who are pretty sure they know what’s up, our society seems to blindly stumble from year to year, blaming and blaming and never quite fixing.

And if you also find yourself sleepless some nights, I wonder how your body itself may support you with its own roots in those worried moments. When all the reasons and plans and budgets and jobs and rules and structures and explanations aren’t working for you, maybe your breath will still sustain you like it always has, and your feet will find they’re still rooted to the ground, and you’re still alive, and you’re still here, and you can still touch and taste and see and hear and feel and laugh and cry and hug and dance and sing and do the body things that don’t require a credit score or a stock exchange.

Your feet can’t tell you why the world is the way it is today. Your hands can’t tell you where we’re headed. Your breath can’t change the trajectory of humanity–except that it can calm and center you and that a bunch of you’s make up humanity and that maybe if we all stopped to breathe calmly our trajectory may change. You, though, in your body, right now, can’t solve it all. But I think it’s your chaotic, scrolling brain that is insisting you find all the solutions–not your body. I think your body is just waiting for you to drop in and find the same aliveness and ease that you did as a running and pushing and swinging and bouncing and singing child, before you joined the world of the adults who have to know it all.

Today, your feet and your hands and your belly and your lungs and your movement and your stillness and your ears and your eyes and even your nose and your mouth can be your roots to a different kind of place, a different state. Not one of fixing or judgment or worry or need. One of aliveness, of being. And with those roots you may find some rest and peace.

And while the world needs you to come back to the work from time to time, when you find yourself blowing in the wind I wish you the courage to let the wind blow around you as you feel the ground with your feet and enjoy being a body.

Let’s find roots together as we go? Email address below. <3

When it feels like too much

A soft, fuzzy mommy with no food. Or a wire mommy with food. Which would you pick?

In a 1958 experiment by the scientist Harry Harlow, baby monkeys gravitated heavily toward the soft, fuzzy mommy with no food.

Comfort and security mattered the most. Like even more than dinner. And not much matters more than dinner.

We humans seem wired to desperately seek and hold onto comfort. Even when the comfort is unhealthy or doesn’t serve us in the long run. It’s just how we are.

In his two podcasts about The Office and its making, Brian Baumgartner, who played Kevin on the show, repeatedly asks the question: Why do people obsessively binge The Office? And the answer, repeatedly, is it’s familiar. It’s a comfort thing.

The more familiar something becomes, the more we turn to it for comfort. That can be good, bad, or neutral. Like getting hugs from your best friend, or returning to your abuser, or just streaming The Office long past Netflix’s “Are you still watching?” intermission.

Familiarity makes comfort. And on the flipside: unfamiliarity–or change–triggers discomfort.

Like when Netflix’s contract for The Office expires.

So what happens with change? What happens when we suddenly lose the familiar? Suddenly step out of our comfort zones? Suddenly find ourselves in this strange, new, and uncomfortable world?

Very often, what we think will happen turns out to be very different from what actually does.

We humans tend to be far more capable of recovering from emotional crises than we expect. When faced with loss and challenge, people frequently overestimate how long it will take before their minds can return at least partial attention to their typical day-to-day concerns. We frequently end up at least some version of “okay” more quickly than we expect.

And I think that’s very much worth thinking on for a bit. With the big discomforts and the little ones.

What actually happens?

A friend adopted a dog last week. Being a mom to furry friends wasn’t new to her, and everything was ready to go, but still she couldn’t shake this anxious feeling. She felt stressed out and on edge. What could go wrong? Is it going to go okay?

I shared my own story of adopting our pup, Junko, a year-and-a-half shepherd mix rescue. We brought her home a few months ago and, although she was about as well-behaved as they come, and we also were more than ready and not new to this, the next few days were some of the highest anxiety we’ve ever felt–panicky. The unknowns, the “Was this a bad decision?” thoughts, the fear that we wouldn’t be good care-takers for her.

The moral of the story seems to be: All significant changes–even the EPIC ones–are stressful.

Change is uncomfortable.

And we desperately want comfort.

A ray of hope in the height of the Junko-anxiety was: Someday it won’t be this-week anymore. In other words, this maximum-feeling stress isn’t going to be forever.

And while that reminder is common sense, it’s one I think we forget a lot.

So I’d like to explore this change/discomfort thing together.

When we experience a new thing that comes with stress, we tend to worry that we WON’T get comfortable with the new thing. The discomfort feels so uncomfortable that all we want is to go find our fuzzy mommy. We don’t think we’re going to make it out here in this scary new world, because we know we can’t survive this tight feeling in our chests and the woozy feeling in our heads and the tummy-waves forever. It’s too uncomfortable. And we need to get out.

So sometimes we take it back. No change. Stay safe.

Whether they’re big changes or lesser bumps in the road, we expect that we won’t get comfortable: A new community, a new person, a loss, a habit, a decision, a life-path, a job or promotion, learning something you didn’t know about someone, etc. All these changes lead to lots of worry and anxiety, and while the alarm-bells are ringing, we overestimate how permanent the stress will be.

Which, again, can make us take it back. Bail. Give up on our deepest desires and truest selves. No change. Need to get back to comfortable.

But what if comfort in the new reality is just a matter of time?

We found our dream home one September night and made our first offer since we’d started house-hunting. It was perfect. One we knew we’d never leave. So we threw more at it than we’d budgeted. And it scared the hell out of us. We backed out right before we signed the offer. Then we jumped in again an hour before the deadline. We couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t calm down, couldn’t eat. Work that day was awful. I had this sick, end-of-the-world feeling in my gut. Could we really afford this? (Yes. Very much.) Were we signing our lives away? Would we go bankrupt? Barely scrape by, stressing constantly about money? Find ourselves years later trapped in our not-dream-jobs making just enough money to afford this crazy choice? Making the wrong decision that would change our lives? Finally out on a distracting-walk, we got the phone call. It was a no go. Back to the drawing board. Deeply stressed, not ready to keep going with this panicky feeling, maybe a little traumatized. For the next 9 months we made that offer again, reviewed that budget again, slept on it again, and again, and again. Finally we saw a home and had 15 minutes before the deadline to submit an offer. In minutes we hashed out our most aggressive offer yet, signed it, and hopped into a boat to relax with our best friends. The deeply scary, uncomfortable, stressful thing we didn’t think we’d be able to handle had become . . . easy.

We went stand up paddleboarding lately, my wife’s first time. It’s a weird, tiring thing for your legs and feet at first. The goal was a relaxing adventure and it didn’t feel relaxing. After a bit she wasn’t sure it would ever get chill enough. Fast forward 45 minutes and we were cruising and laughing and chatting away. The uncomfortable thing had become . . . chill.

I felt like I was going to pass out when I gave my first impromptu speech in high school. It lasted about 20 seconds and consisted mostly of messing with my feet and chewing on my lip. It was brutal. This was not for me. Public speaking is outrageously uncomfortable to most people. Until you do it again and again and again. And then, for many, it sort of clicks. Sure, still some butterflies, but we’ve got this. Nowadays, I get a thrill when I have a chance to present in front of a group, and there’s no such thing as too unprepared. I’m 100% there for it. The terrifying thing has become . . . exciting.

Speaking of speaking, I joined a Toastmasters club years ago, looking for some like-minded people. And while speaking was exciting for me, the socializing was nerve-wracking. I was super anxious to make good impressions, and everyone there seemed so put together and intimidating. I felt like I could feel my blood pressure rise when I’d get there, after the hours of anticipation. It was a lot. Stressful, even if a sort of exciting kind. And then all the intimidating people became my good friends and I slowly became one of the long-time members welcoming shy new members. The lonely, anxious space had become . . . home.

A common theme I’ve found with all my co-workers is that we all have this idea that “those professionals,” the ones who have been doing it longer, are in those more advanced positions, must have some special knowledge and expertise and capabilities. Those positions seem scary, out of reach, like we couldn’t keep up with them. Until we take that next scary step and jump in the deep end. After each stressful promotion or transition our splashing about slowly turns to a smooth stroke, and suddenly we just are those cool people we didn’t think we could ever be. Again and again and again, the uncomfortable jobs had become . . . mundane.

Have you ever admitted some deep secret to someone? Shared something that you’re afraid will change how they feel about you? Maybe sometimes it does change how they think of you. In fact, probably most of the time it does. But how long does that change last? When I’ve found myself in that position with friends or family, I’m always surprised by how quickly people are able to adjust and accept. I’m still me. You’re still you. Those scary conversations we think will ruin it all, typically end up just growing the relationships deeper. The upsetting or confusing new side of you quickly becomes for them just . . . you.

Even Willoughby. My last few blog posts have been pretty messy about my Willoughby buddy I lost in April. And you don’t lose the sadness, but I don’t spend most hours of most days in deep sadness about it anymore.

Blogging is a good one, too. There have been some big blog or even social media risks I’ve taken. Scary, brave feeling ways I’ve put myself out there. Opening up about trauma or mental health. Speaking up on sensitive topics. Marketing myself and asking for attention. And each one of those uncomfortable steps I’ve taken that have felt like they’ll be too much, forever putting me in a new space of insecurity, has ended up being totally . . . okay.

Or even this pandemic. No, it’s not all okay now. Not at all. But there is a significant difference in how we function day-to-day as compared to the first month. Remember being super nervous and over-aware every time you left the house? How you’d catch yourself touching your face? Washing your hands and wiping stuff down? And how literally uncomfortable the masks were when you first had to wear them? How complicated the zoom meetings were? And now? It’s . . . normal. In a strange way. The fifth COVID-test feels much less monumental than the first one did. Sometimes you forget you’re wearing the mask until you’ve already made it home and inside. You’re a zoom pro now. And you just don’t think about COVID-19 every minute of every day anymore. The world outside doesn’t look or feel quite so eerily post-apocalyptic as it did at the beginning. The uncomfortable “new normals” became just that . . . normal.

What about you? Can you think of something in your life that went from extremely uncomfortable to comfortable? Scary to happy? Difficult to chill? Stressful to normal? Crisis-y to completely and utterly mundane?

Something you thought you’d never be able to handle? Something you thought would be permanently hard? And now it’s . . . not?

We are emotional creatures. And we learn discomforts way faster than we learn comforts. We are on the lookout for danger, and changes stresses us the hell out.

But, can we give ourselves these little reminders that the uncomfortable things will get more comfortable?

And quite possibly pretty quickly?

What could this awareness do for us?

Maybe it would give us the strength to do that big thing we’ve been putting off in fear? Knowing that the fear would subside? We could chase our dreams a little more?

Maybe it would give us the strength to keep going with those practices we know are healthy even when we hit a wall that feels like a crisis? Having the perspective that even though it feels like the world is ending, we can keep being us, because if we’re still going to be here, we still need to be ourselves? Like muscling my way through my yoga practice even though the capitol just got stormed because by summer that crazy new reality will have just settled into the actual reality I live in? And yoga would have helped along the way?

Maybe it would save us some hours of intense worry? The stress-feelings could start to just mean that we’re stretching and growing and on a new adventure?

Maybe it would help us connect and communicate genuinely. Speaking our uncomfortable truths, trusting that the more we speak them, the more they’ll feel like they belong?

Maybe it would mean we could be our truest selves through the stress times, the change times, good, bad, or neutral.

Do you remember going to the gym for the first time? Seeing all those fit runners and badass lifters doing their thing as if it’s no big deal. And you awkwardly put your stuff in the cubby and try to decide whether to keep your water bottle with you and glance around for a place to tie your shoes where you won’t be in anyone’s way? You wonder a lot what they think of you. You try the machine you’ve always seen used and you can feel the sympathetic grins burning through the back of your head. You see the trainers high five the members they already know so well and convince yourself that you’ll never be one of them.

And then, as happens when you immerse yourself in any community and stick around through the discomfort, you eventually find yourself at home. Or at least no longer on the edge of a panic attack.

The places and spaces and big life changes that we think are going to make life impossible and lead to permanent fear and stress and stomach upsets . . . we get used to them. They become okay. It just happens.

And that’s really quite hopeful.

We’re going to be okay.

You can do it.

It seems that almost everything we think will never get comfortable ends up getting comfortable–or at least routine. When we find ourselves thinking that something will permanently bother or upset us, it can help to be a little more down-to-earth and realize we’ll probably feel differently in a few days.

So what adventure or cause have you been desperately wishing you could pour yourself into, but keep finding yourself holding back, afraid it will be too scary?

Or what struggle or change or new reality are you currently going through that is keeping you up at night, leaving you afraid this peak stress is here to stay?

Can you remind yourself that you’ll grow into it?

That the scary will become routine or happy?

The uncomfortable will become comfortable?

The scary new you will soon be the strong new you?

What if you just gave yourself permission to go ahead and chase the thing from the bottom of your heart? Dive straight in, even though the butterflies do their thing in your tummy?

What if you just trusted the process?

What could you do?

What would you have?

Who will you be?

You are safe.

And don’t worry. Your body will discover that’s true. For today, ride the thrills.

Be you through the stress. You’ll stick around longer than it will.

Want a bravery buddy in life? I’ll come with. Throw your email below. :)

“Will I ever get better?” can be a dangerous question

Will I be ever be able to get over my anxiety?

Will the back pain ever go away?

Will I beat this addiction once and for all?

Will not having a family ever stop hurting?

Will I ever get past this struggle?

Will I ever recover?

Will I ever be healed?

I think when we identify a problem–a struggle, an injury, a trauma–that moment we realize that a little thing has turned into a big thing, and it is taking its toll on us, and we just really want it to go away–all the way away–we immediately pose a question:

Will it ever get better?

Is there a cure?

Or am I stuck with this forever?

And I’m wondering now if that is a helpful question to answer, or even to ask.

Realistically, we won’t know the answer until we’re looking back on it.

Wondering, hoping, demanding, pleading for our lives or bodies or minds or hearts to “go back” to pre-struggle/pre-trauma . . . I actually think this gets us pretty stuck.

“[The Buddha’s teaching, ‘Nothing is to be clung to as I, me, or mine,’] is saying that it is our attachment to the thoughts we have of who we are that may be the impediment to living life fully, and a stubborn obstacle to any realization of who and what we actually are, and of what is important, and possible. It may be that in clinging to our self-referential ways of seeing and being, to the parts of speech we call the personal pronouns, I, me, and mine, we sustain the unexamined habit of grasping and clinging to what is not fundamental, all the while missing or forgetting what is.“
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Coming to Our Senses

I’ve heard that anxiety is what happens when you can’t live in the present moment–can’t just be where you are–obsessing, instead, over the daunting future.

Will I ever feel better?

The problem is, we can’t really answer the “will-I-ever” questions. The future has a tendency to do its own thing.

When we subconsciously tie our happiness and identity to “getting over” a thing, “healing,” “getting past,” we map ourselves a depressing journey.

Life before healing, fixing, getting-back . . . the now life doesn’t really count. We’re not living for now. This now sucks. I’m not supposed to feel like this. This isn’t the real me.

The days fly by as we wish them away, insisting on a “better” future to restart our living.

And as that future doesn’t come, we sink deeper into the “why”s and “if”s.

Why isn’t it getting better?

Why am I stuck here?

If I were more committed, maybe I could heal this pain.

If I weren’t so sensitive, maybe I could get over that loss.

If I had more faith . . .

If I weren’t so negative . . .

Maybe it’s you.

Yeah, maybe this is on you.

Maybe you should be better by now.

Maybe a stronger person, a better person, a cooler person, one of “those” people would’ve healed. Probably.

It’s you.

After all these years, you’re still the you that you hate.

You clearly suck at healing.

You can’t.

You blame yourself.

You feel angry with yourself.

Or if not quite anger, something along the lines of “No, Self, I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.”

I think the question “will this ever go all the way away?”–a question that only life itself as it plays out can answer, not all the guessing or hoping in the world–I think it’s a question that isn’t fair to put on ourselves. It can get us stuck in self-hurt, self-rejection, self-blame–as we push pause on our self-love and aliveness, because we can’t accept this struggling or hurting version of ourselves.

I think dwelling on that big question tends to dizzily swing us back and forth between determination and depression. “I MUST beat this” means that as long as I haven’t, I’m not good enough. And who wants to show up for a not-good-enough life?

If you look up a definition for “depression,” only half of it talks about feeling sad. That’s the half everyone knows about. The other half has nothing to do with feeling sad. The other half is about losing interest. Losing interest in activities, your life, the things you love. It all sort of stops mattering. None of it works anymore. None of it helps. None of it feels. None of it is good anymore. Nothing. Just nothing.

Depression is a complicated world, one that can’t be summed up in a 1465-word blog post. But if this “Will I ever get better?” cycle sounds familiar, I’d encourage you to consider what it does to your interest in your own life. Like your now life, not the life you think you are supposed to get to someday. Now. The you with back pain. The you that relapses. The you that suffers panic attacks. Not your “will-I-ever” you, the today you.

If your core objective in life is to become so fixed and healed and rescued that you don’t struggle anymore with the stuff you’re struggling with now . . . then each today becomes very uninteresting as you live for next-year-(if-I’m-better-by-then).

You may start passing up on activities and opportunities you used to do, because they sort of hurt and that makes you think about your struggle and that is no fun, so you’ll get back to them once you’ve beaten this.

You may find yourself opting for bed instead, more and more frequently, because that thing doesn’t feel as good while you’re in pain.

And the emotional toll from repeatedly giving it a shot, hoping that this time it will be like it used to, and then realizing no, it’s not, and maybe never will be . . . it’s exhausting.

Exhausting.

Desperately needing to be a different person is exhausting.

Disappointing.

Depressing.

Paraphrasing Jon Kabat-Zinn’s explanation of the Buddha’s teaching: Clinging to our vision of who we’re supposed to be can frustrate and numb us–keep us from appreciating who we are today.

The good news is that it’s surprisingly helpful to finally admit: “Maybe this struggle is here to stay.” “Maybe I’ll always experience some pain.” “Maybe I’ll never fully be over this.” “Maybe there’s nothing I could do to fix it.”

First of all, when we stop fearfully trying to predict the permanence of something, we may find it’s grip will loosen a little. Like, not that it’s all in your head–but there’s nothing quite like “Maybe this will kill me!” to keep you hopelessly stuck in it, even when it could have improved.

But perhaps more importantly, if it really isn’t going to get better–and it really might not–admitting that this may be the rest of your life is quite freeing, in a strange way. Self-compassion starts making sense. It really is heart-breaking that you’re feeling this pain or struggling with this thing. Goodness knows you’ve tried to fix it, but it still hurts, and maybe it always will. Maybe it’s not all your fault. You don’t need blame here, you deserve support. Love. Self-care. Understanding. Acceptance. Maybe a little hug from yourself.

And as you accept today’s real you, you get to redirect your “I-can’t-do-this-life” energy into “how-can-I-do-this-life?” energy. Stop rejecting, start learning to live with, live through, live fully as the real you. Being present with yourself. Showing up for and as yourself.

What regular treatment would it take to keep doing things that I love?

Who do I need to have on my team so I can live a good life despite these impulses?

What do I want to experience in life while I carry this struggle by my side?

How often would I like to show up now even though I’m sad?

What could a beautiful, fulfilling life look like now?

Most things aren’t a death sentence–but if we decide that we absolutely can’t live with them, they sort of are.

I’m not saying that it won’t ever get better, get healed, get fixed, get corrected, that you’ll never move on, that the struggle will never be a thing of the past. Again–maybe step one in the possibility of healing is letting go of the fear and rejection. Maybe it will get better. Maybe. Maybe.

But real-big-maybe, it won’t.

So what if you gave yourself permission to be the you-with-the-thing? The you that feels that pain, that struggle?

What if you could just accept your today self, for today?

What if you stopped fighting who you are?

What if instead you loved and supported who you are?

Would that be better?

Could you give it a try?

Who knows what will happen tomorrow or next year . . .

So can you stop waiting for your life to count again?

Can you accept yourself and vibrantly be who you are now?

Thanks for reading! Wishing you all the self-acceptance and self-love in the world on your journey! If I can share the journey with you, throw your email below. :)

Is the world a dangerous place?

Woman Smiles and Waves at Stranger

Hard-Working Cashier Promoted to Management

Local Man Reports He Still Has Wonderful Relationship with His Family

Single Mother Laid Off but Is Doing Fine with the Assistance of Unemployment and other Support

Nobody Was Murdered In City Today

Group of Friends Really Enjoy Laughing Together Every Week on Game Night

These are a few headlines we will never read.

Because . . . why would anyone care? Right?

Except, now we have a problem. . . .

“Bad news travels at the speed of light; good news travels like molasses.”
Tracy Morgan

How many minutes a day do you scroll “news”-feeds?

How many headlines do you see in those ~~minutes~~ hours?

If you had to guess, in all those daily headlines, what is the ratio of terrible news to amazing news?

Or how about the ratio of terrible stories to everything’s-just-fine stories?

In this quick-look-for-all-the-dangers-NOW world (which, yes, may have helped us survive as a species), we don’t really hear about how frequently life goes well, things work out fine, and days go by peacefully.

We hear the bad stuff.

All. The. Time.

So much that we might start to believe that the bad stuff is all the world’s made up of.

What have you internalized, from the daily intake of “oh-no” stories, about how safe the world is or isn’t?

And what could help remind you daily that reality may actually look very different?

That maybe things will be okay . . .

This WEIRD Weekend

There is still that soft breeze you can feel touching your skin and blowing gently through your hair when you go outside.

There is still that song that moves you deep inside every time you hear it.

There is still that cup of coffee you make in the morning, the exact way you like to make it.

There is still that friend you used to phone with before life got so busy.

There is still the taste of pizza–to taste again, or even just to think about for a while.

There is still that pair of running shoes, and you were so excited when you bought them, and maybe you’ve forgotten how exciting they are to you, and maybe if you scrub them off and shine them up a little, you can feel the same excitement.

There is still that one scene of Michael Scott’s, after Oscar accepts his little homemade scarecrow goodbye gift, that has made you laugh from deep in your belly time and time and time again.

There is still the sound of geese, honking you awake in the morning, on their way back to their summer home somewhere up north, honoring this strange and strong force called life.

There is still a dusty comic book sitting somewhere in a box, waiting to be rediscovered.

There is still a stranger’s real smile as you walk by each other keeping an awkward little distance because you’re pretty sure you’re supposed to right now, but my word, that smile felt close and comforting.

There is still your little kiddo’s uncontrollable laughter when the whole box of cereal spills on the floor.

There is still your hand that can feel and touch and hold your other hand, clasping, intertwining your fingers, squeezing, massaging your palms, proving for your own sake that you are still here, grounding you in the reality of life in its most beautifully basic form.

There is still your favorite game to play.

There is still your blanket you’ve been missing.

There is still a quiet trail in the woods.

There is still that YouTube video of yoga for beginners that you saved to your watchlist a while ago when you were in too much of a hurry to give the new thing a try.

There is still kombucha.

There is still that journal you’ve been meaning to start writing.

There is still the old album on your computer full of happy photos of adventures that, though “past,” are still just as real a part of your life as this present moment.

There is still the nap that you’ve wished, on every other day, that you had the time to take.

There is still the magical painting on your wall that you could just stare at.

There is still the tail-wagging, hyperventilating, zoomies-inducing excitement of your doggo that OMG YOU ARE HERE WITH ME TODAY!

There is still your comfy couch.

There is still your piano with eighty-eight wonderful keys that have always, always, always been there for you to come back to when you need to find your heart again.

There is still your best friend.

There is still a bubbly creek you could sit down and listen to.

There is still that book you’ve been looking for time to read.

There is still a warm bath to take, and I bet that eucalyptus scented Epsom salts aren’t out of stock today (I could be wrong).

There is still pen and paper, and you’ve meant to start drafting your big dream project for years now.

There is still a floor, and there are still hands and knees you can crawl on, as silly as that seems, and if you try you may find again this weird feeling, now foreign, that you used to call “play” when you were so little, so silly, and maybe actually so wise and so in touch with life.

There is still a closet you’ve been meaning to clean.

There is still that book you want to write.

There is still Winnie-the-Pooh.

There is still the old jigsaw puzzle you never opened, and maybe you don’t know just how fun those can be.

There is still your favorite shirt.

There is still intimacy–loving, comforting, caring, silly, needed, amazing intimacy.

There is still a massive, loud, rushing waterfall for you to sit and watch.

There is still that movie you’ve been meaning to watch ever since it won an Oscar four years ago.

There is still the new hairdo you’ve been wanting to try.

There is still conversation.

There is still that other career you’ve been waiting for time to research and explore.

There is still the documentary you saved to your list for some free afternoon.

There is still a letter you can write to someone who means more to you than maybe they realize.

There is still the blog you’ve been nervously waiting to start.

There is still your phone’s internet browser with, I bet, a bunch of tabs you opened to read on some hopeful but imaginary future date when you’d “have time” again.

There is still the recipe you’ve been waiting to try.

There is still a colorful and imaginative storybook or twenty-two that your little girl or little boy would love to hear you read, if you’ll let them turn the pages.

There is still a field or a pot full of flowers that have been waiting for you to see them.

There is still the friend you’ve wanted to reconnect with.

There is still a walk you can take.

There is still a meditation practice waiting to be tried.

There is still the friend who told you they’d always be there for you if you needed to talk.

There is still a mountain (big or little, it really doesn’t matter) that you’ve been waiting to climb.

There is still the language you’ve been wanting to learn.

There is still that weirdly and powerfully magical little moment where you glance outside and, look, the sun is coming out!

There is still your body, ready to wrap itself in a safe and comforting hug.

There is still life.