I see so many of us trying so hard to "hold it together" in these heavy days, which I mean in the colloquial sense rather than a literal one - working so hard to hold everything, alone.
I think we have such a deep suspicion of togetherness in our culture - it’s not a thing we can rely on, not an experience many of us have had, or held in our bodies.
Many of us learned early on that people can’t be relied on, that our needs can be too big for the people who love us to hold, sometimes, that relationship is a place we get HURT, so, perhaps better to avoid it. We live in a world organized to direct us away from relying on each other, so it can feel easier, in a particular way, to white-knuckle it, hunker down, go without.
And, underneath all this, the threads of our collective loss, of sadness and grief are woven so tightly together with each other. So that I think deep down we’re really terrified to be close to each other, especially in times like this, when systems are fraying (or operating totally normally, depending on how you look at it) and people are suffering because of it.
And, all of that to say, maybe you weren’t meant to hold it all. Maybe we’re supposed to be holding it all, together. Maybe our fierce hearts are supposed to be breaking, over and over, as we witness the things that are happening to us, from what can feel like such a wide space between us. (Maybe there isn’t space between us.)
And if all of that feels like the unwieldy weight it is, I'm with you. I’m here too.