Tuesday Thread: Feeling overwhelmed

There’s been so much happening lately, at least it feels like to me. I’m feeling super overwelmed by all of it.

Content warning: the next few paragraphs are a list of all the very specific reasons I’m feeling overwhelmed.

I’m not sure whether it’s surge of vaccinations and the imminent return to “business as normal”, the steady drumbeat of depressing climate news, the double mass shootings and hate crimes, the intense social anxiety I’ve developed during the pandemic, or the fact that I recently turned 40 and my kids are growing up very quickly… but it’s been a lot.

What feels worse to me, personally, is that people I know and care about are making tangible choices to return back to business as usual – as is the larger economy as a whole – and that’s being celebrated. I just want to scream: “WE CAN’T GO BACK TO NORMAL, NORMAL WASN’T WORKING!”

And then, after experiencing that, it takes *a lot* of emotional energy to find myself in a place where I can honestly imagine the transformative change that needs to take place with the scale and speed and justice that it needs to. I mean, I wrote a whole book about this, it should be easier, right? It hasn’t been.

I know that moving through this requires waking up, living in community and solidarity with everyone else around me, no matter how they’re handling this transition, and mutually helping each other get to a place where a better future is inevitable for everyone. I know I’ll get there, I’m just not quite sure how – and that not knowing is the source of my anxiety.

Maybe some of you are feeling the same way. How are you coping with the rush of emotions you’re feeling?