This week asks a lot of us. Not because of the holiday itself, but because of what rises up inside us when the noise quiets. Gratitude isn’t about pretending — it’s about staying human, staying honest, and staying connected to what’s real.

You are not too much—you’re just not fully met. Yet.
This letter is for the ones who keep showing up with tenderness and presence, even when their care goes unreciprocated. It’s about the quiet strength of staying open without self-abandoning, and the courage it takes to meet others exactly where they are—without bypassing your own truth.

The world feels sharp right now — too much and not enough all at once. Our chests ache with it. Our breath catches on the edge of it. And still, we keep trying to love our lives inside it. This letter is for the ones whose hearts haven’t hardened, who are still daring to stay alive in their skin while everything around them shakes loose.

You don’t have to let go all at once. Even when the world tells you to leap, to break open, to “trust the process”—you get to take your time. But eventually, the part of you that’s been gripping will tire. And when it does, I hope you remember this: not all falling is breaking. Some of it is becoming. This letter is for the one who’s still holding on.

We are living in a time where political violence is sharpening and public grief is swelling—but the deeper crisis might be this: we don’t know how to regulate anymore. We don’t know how to soften into connection across difference. We’ve mistaken rage for power and isolation for protection. And somewhere along the way, we stopped offering one another the sacred possibility of co-regulation—of feeling and healing in proximity. This week reminded me: no matter how loud the headlines get, healing begins when we can breathe in rhythm again—when we dare to hold someone we disagree with, not to convert them, but to care for the humanity inside them. That’s the breath we’ve been holding. That’s the one we need to release.

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from thinking so much we forget we have a body. We calculate, anticipate, intellectualize—and somewhere in the maze of analysis, the voice of our body grows quiet. But we are not broken for this. We are practiced. And there’s another way. Our body holds the map our mind has been searching for. And the next step isn’t more thinking—it’s noticing. One sensation, one breath, one heartbeat at a time.