The world is on fire.  

I wake up with that feeling most days… if I start my day with my phone. But if I start my day with a deep breath, a snuggle of my baby’s head, and some scrambled eggs, then the world is a better place where the small things mean the most.

The speed of crisis feels insane right now. Empaths everywhere are no doubt holding their heads in their hands on a daily basis. Friendships and relationships feel uncertain or shattered, depending on how far we have taken our arguing and discord. There is rarely common ground, nothing is neutral. Almost everything feels like it rides in the black or white, left or right. And each day, there is a new crisis – and each crisis feels large enough to topple our world. And yet it keeps cycling. We are forced to form opinions and stand our ground. We are forgetting what we used to do before we openly debated matters of the world we barely know anything about.

And we forget that, at our core, we are all wildly human.

What connects us will always top what separates us. When we stand face to face, our differences feel smaller, our humanity looms larger. We crave connection and vulnerability, and now both those things feel unsafe. We are buried under the weight of the world’s crises, and now we do not know how to exist properly at home. We are mad at our neighbors, restless in our pews, short with our families, and uncomfortable with our own words. What we are sacrificing is becoming so much more than what we are gaining in our fights.

A few months into the pandemic, while election conflict was still raging quite high, I had a simple thought that I could never quite get away from. It still haunts me, and the answer seems further and further away: How do we all come back together after this?

Is there a coming back after this? Have we forgotten what matters most? Have we become so consumed with taking a stance that we forgot to just sit down together for a minute? Maybe share a meal? Lend a hand? Be human together?

A few weeks ago, I bumped into someone in public I hadn’t seen for a few years. We talked about our kids and houses and churches and job changes. We smiled and laughed and bid farewell. And for that moment in time, I totally forgot that we agreed on nearly nothing as far as headlines were concerned. We shouldn’t be getting along. And yet, there we were, standing outside our cars, being human.

I miss neutrality and common ground. And then I remember one thing: Common ground starts with me. It is my job to keep showing up as a human. As hard as it seems, it’s my job to remember what connects us and not always see people for what separates us. Largely, we are tired and overwhelmed, almost no one is their best version right now (and if you are, please share your secrets). But if connection and vulnerability is what I crave so much, I have a choice to show up and provide that as well.

Our hearts are aching with the weight of the world on our minds. Sometimes I envy those who have come before us who have not had the cumbersome tool of the internet. I wonder what it would be like to only be aware of our own communities – to always remember that how we show up in our houses, with our families, and with those in closest proximity to ourselves will always be the most important thing. I have to trust that there is a reason I am in this particular corner of the cosmos – and I need to make my biggest impact here at home. I can’t be so distracted and disillusioned by things a million miles away to where I cannot function in my own sphere. I send help when I can to those fighting the good fight elsewhere, but I always need to remember that, with being human, my limitations are great, but my love is even greater.

If we cannot exist together, we have lost something even greater than the thing for which we are fighting. Let’s not do that. Let’s remember how human we are. Let’s move in, link arms, and just exist sometimes. Together. As humans.

I hit close on the tab and took a deep breath, another session under my belt. This one felt really hard to show up for. I was exhausted, spent. I was worn out from being vulnerable and having the hard conversations earlier in the week. I felt like I was on the edge of relapse, and I just could hardly breathe. My back was tight and my chest even tighter. But now, a deep breath.

I love how therapy puts things in perspective – how I can see what I need to work on but also what I am doing really well. I love how therapy lets that stack up. There is someone who remembers where I used to be and can tell me how far I’ve come… and steps to go even further. It’s the trust built, and the progress made. It’s having a space to say literally anything on my mind without fear of judgment or what will happen when I am honest.

I talk about therapy all the time. If you have spent any amount of time around me, I’m sure I have brought it up. I’ve been in individual therapy, marriage therapy, and group therapy. I’ve been going to school to get my degree in Psychology. I’ve been passing out phone numbers of great counselors I know for years.

I. Love. Therapy.

But I don’t always feel like showing up. Showing up takes work. Vulnerability is hard a lot of the time, even for an Enneagram 4. What always leads to me being a better person is sometimes that hardest thing to want to do.

Here’s what I do when I don’t want to go:

1. I keep a consistent schedule. At the end of every appointment, I schedule my next one. I trust the timing that by then there will be more things to talk about. And even if there aren’t, it’s good for me to show up anyway. Even on my “good” days, consistently talking to someone and letting them have input in my life (especially a skilled professional) is one of the best things to keep my life on track.
2. Show up regardless of how I am feeling. The days I need it the most are the hardest ones to show up for. It’s hard to admit when I’m struggling and made mistakes. It’s hard to open up when I just want to hide away and not let anyone see me. But the beauty lies in being seen at our worsts and being loved anyway.

Going to therapy guarantees that I will be seen, and in the best ways. It serves as a looking glass to give a good perspective on where I am actually at. And it allows someone to deeply believe in me and give me helpful tools to move forward. It has been an incredibly important part of my life whether things were going smoothly or were terribly rocky. In every season and at every point, therapy has been nothing but helpful and valuable. I recommend it to everyone. All the time.

With all the current stress in our lives, families, nation, etc, most of us aren’t at our best right now. It’s okay to seek help, recommended even. It doesn’t make you weak. Rather, it’s a very empowering thing, having someone in your corner.

What in your life could improve by opening up regularly to someone who could give skilled input? What might be holding you back from it? I have never regretted a session. Ever.

One of the hardest things about telling your story can be anticipating people’s reactions to it. This can be true if you are sharing it with one person or with hundreds. Maybe they experienced it differently than you did. Maybe they have a perception of you that doesn’t feel like it matches what you are telling them. Regardless the case, it can often feel like your words and experiences are up for debate.

It can be really scary to put your words out into the world, whether with strangers or those closest to you. And, I would venture to say, it becomes harder the closer the people are to you. Sometimes I wonder why I keep waking up and doing this – this whole sending-the-words-out-into-the-world thing. But, as I have said, this is the single thing I can never get away from and I can’t seem to live without it.

Our fears of what others might think or say can stop us from doing any number of things in our lives – and telling our own stories is one of those things. It can be really scary to tell our stories. It can be even scarier to let it up to others to do so.

When we write things down, we give them room to breathe and a place to exist. No longer do they only exist in our minds. And often, when we see those black and white letters on a page, we feel the shift in ourselves, pulling it into focus, making it all seem a little more real. Telling it our way and in our own words helps add to the validation of what we have gone through.

People might have a lot of opinions about your life – what you have gone through, what you should have done, what you could be doing now – but it isn’t really up to them, is it? What you experienced was real and how you felt about it was just as real. The feelings that you took away from the experience have shaped you as much as the experiences themselves.

When we leave it up to other people to interpret our stories and what we have gone through, we release our ability to have our own truths heard. No one understands your life better than you do; no one has experienced things exactly as you have. And so, no one can weave together the stories and lessons you can.

I’m in the process of writing a book about the last ten years of my life – the heartache, illness, addiction, pain, loneliness, struggles, and ultimately the hope on the other side of all of those things. Almost every day I wake up with crushing fear of how it all will land. Did I explain it correctly? Did I get all the details right? Did I remember the dialogue? Who will this offend? Who won’t agree with this? If I live in those questions for too long, there is no chance I will create much of anything. All my carefully crafted words will land on the page and dissolve because they don’t hold any weight. I have to trust that my vulnerability has always been the thing to carry me through. I have to trust that my story can stand for itself and that it will help those who read it.

It’s a wonderful thing, really, to have your words exist somewhere in the world. What are you drawn to create and what might be holding you back? Whatever it is, it is yours. And it is not up for debate.

Where to begin?

Right now, I am staring at no less than five house projects that need finished. There are more, no doubt, but actually counting them would bum me out too much. My husband loves to start projects. And I love when things are completely finished. And in the contentious middle is where we often find ourselves.

I have a hard time starting things if I can’t say with all certainty they will succeed. I like when things can wrap up nicely and I can stand back and admire a job well done. I like a start and a finish, a check in the box. But the thing about life is, we don’t often get to do that exactly. I know I certainly don’t.

I’ve started a lot of things in my life. Most of them met mediocre success. Not many were complete failures, but those pepper the list as well. There are things I would rather not talk about, pictures I don’t want to paint, chapters I would like to close forever. But somehow, the winds of time keep blowing the pages open.

When I first started writing, I was on a mission to say things that would change people’s lives for the better. I wanted to provide answers, road maps, boxes to check, and lists to cross off. I wanted those things for myself, too. And, for a while, it all felt within reach. I could keep things buttoned down, the ugly parts hidden away; I could fake it until I made it and look pretty good doing it.

Until everything crumbled.

I read back over my old writings sometimes and just sigh a little (and then archive them). My intentions were surely there but I just wasn’t being honest – not with myself or anyone else. I was chasing what I couldn’t hold, trying to escape a darkness I couldn’t name. And then it all caught up with me. The façade fell and I was better for it.

So, now there’s a new beginning – for me and for my words. This time I come to you not with answers but with stories. Most of the stories don’t have clear beginnings and endings. There are scuff marks, exposed cracks, raw edges, and gaping holes. I come in humility and honesty, not trying to hide the ball on anything. I’m figuring this all out with everyone else in the world. There are no steps and road maps, only places I’ve been and places I hope to be.

I hope you find yourself in these pages; I hope they reflect me well. I hope you hear me talking to you and not just about me. I want to be encouraging and realistic, hopeful and reflective, gracious and honest. I want to hold darkness and light hand in hand and know that one does not exist without the other. All parts have a place here.

I don’t want my fear of failure to stop me from doing the one thing in life I can never get away from – putting my words out into the world. I want to measure success with a different barometer than what seems the most obvious. I don’t want to keep denying what runs deepest in my veins because I don’t know where it will go. This is me giving it wings and trusting the process.

This is me trying something again and for the first time. Trusting. Hoping. Believing.

I am glad you are here.