I am at a loss on so many levels…

I have not remotely recovered from all the things that have happened in the past month, to my family, my community, to those I love and hold dear and so also to me. And then more happens around me and I don’t know how to carry it all. I just keep moving forward.

There is so much violence and loss for so many. None of it makes sense.

There is such a sense of helplessness.

I grasp for the moments of joy that have come in unexpected ways, big and small throughout this time. But that doesn’t really make sense either.

I am slipping.

I am struggling.

And when I think I get my footing again, when I manage to feel like I might make it, that we will make it to the other side, the ground beneath my feet begins to shift again.

There have been so many lifting me up. I am blessed by a community that deeply loves me.

But, it feels like we are standing together on this rocky terrain, and that at any moment, any one of us may fall.

I am so tired.

I am surviving.

I am trying to hold on to what is not there.

It is hard.

I am trying to believe that it is all going to be okay because that’s my nature, to hope.

But I am also making space to struggle, to slip, to allow myself to fall, to be okay with survival and not more, to accept what is not there.

It is hard because I have trained myself to open and close my heart on a dime; to cry and minutes later to hold myself together to lead and love; to be there for others and forget myself. It is hard to seek an integrated self when your whole life has been built on a compartmentalized existence that has helped you to survive.

I have trained myself to keep going.

But I am forcing myself to pause.

To feel.

To acknowledge what is so.

To acknowledge what is so far away, but what I want with my whole heart. To feel the distance between my heart and my reality.

I write these words because sometimes honesty is more necessary than hope. Even though it is often more painful.

But if we cannot reckon with ourselves, we can’t hope to stand on solid ground.

And if we cannot feel the fullness of our grief, we cannot move through it.