It doesn’t only happen during years when there’s a pandemic. Or murder hornets. Or fraught elections and let’s not even discuss the divisiveness which is another sort of pandemic.

It happens during, well, almost every year. To almost everyone.

Days or weeks or maybe it’s just hours if you’re one of the lucky ones. Could be months, or years even. That feeling that it’s all just too much.

I have found, for me, that it’s no use to hear from well-meaning friends the old adage that God never gives us more than we can handle.

My usual response to this is the rather snarky “well, then He must have me confused with someone else!” Which helps no one, least of all me.

What is of use, then, when everything’s awry and you know it?

Remembering helps.

Dark chocolate does too, in a pinch. Almonds dusted with dark chocolate almost always help.

What helps most, though, is radical self-care.

As in…speaking to oneself as though one were friends with her. Or him.

Shutting the door, turning off the phone, turning on the music maybe or the tap for filling a bath, or a pot of tea.

Mostly, maybe, it’s letting go of expectations – of oneself and of others.

Being kind enough to let yourself feel exactly what you’re feeling.

Some days (weeks, hours, months, years even) just really are too much.

And it’s okay to feel that, when you feel that.

Because feelings do change, eventually. Eventually everything does.

In the meantime, how about a nice cup of tea?

~xo,
LuAnne

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“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” (~Buddha)