Grounding in Difficult Times

The first ten days of 2026 delivered little snow and many painful, disturbing headlines. I want to write about all of it, and also about nothing at all. My brain spins with news of invasions and climate catastrophes, the death of innocents—then leaps away from every touchpoint like a finger retracting from a hot stove. The body knows when to pull back, when exposure threatens to burn us beyond our capacity to heal.

My New Year's goal to meditate—or at least breathe in a focused way for five minutes—lasted two and a half days before collapsing under the weight of reality. I've downsized the ambition: now I aim to remember to take a deep breath every once in a while, to focus for one minute on where my feet are and how I can stay rooted to that particular spot on earth. I will return to the expanded goal because meditation has steadied me through previous dark times, and this practice of returning—of beginning again without self-judgment—may be the most important lesson of all.

I find myself asking when we collectively lost access to our prefrontal cortex, that crucial portion of the brain that manages emotions, attention, self-control, and decision-making? When did our society surrender the duties of self-restraint, respect for others, and the assumption of positive intent? The questions themselves feel inadequate, searching for a single moment of fracture when the truth is more complex—a slow erosion rather than a sudden collapse, countless small abandonments that accumulated until we woke to find ourselves here.

As a white person born in this country, I've been shielded from rage and reactivity for much of my life. As a woman, I've endured being bullied or ignored, minimized and scrutinized by society, yet I've been fortunate to escape far worse. This awareness sits heavy—how I've mostly evaded the crushing weight of sustained trauma, the exhaustion of existing as someone else's target, the shock of becoming a repository for misplaced rage. Many people in our country have endured these conditions for what must feel like never-ending lifetimes, and also lives cut tragically short. Their resilience in the face of such sustained assault offers its own form of testimony, its own quiet instruction in how to persist.

I struggle under the onslaught of bad news, the struggle compounded by guilt and uncertainty about how to create meaningful change. Yet I keep returning to what I can touch and tend: my family and friends, those connections that anchor me when the world spins too fast. We've planned a visit to New York to see William. We celebrated our youngest's acceptance to CSU for fall 2026—his face splitting into that particular grin that erases years and lights the future. We carved out a day of rest watching sports, letting ourselves look away from the headlines without drowning in shame for the looking away. These moments don't solve anything, but they sustain us for the work ahead.

Writing about difficult times can deliver me from the mental treadmill, that "monkey mind" that ambushes me for thirty minutes each evening when my head meets the pillow. Focusing on gratitude and moments of genuine connection also helps, as do plans for future reunions—the simple act of believing in a future where we can gather. I'm learning that tending to my own people, ensuring they're seen and loved and supported, is not selfishness but preparation. We cannot pour from empty vessels, cannot offer strength we haven't cultivated in ourselves.

If you're feeling this weight, you're not alone—though I know that knowledge doesn't always lighten the load. We're all searching for our own forms of grounding, our own ways to remain present and useful in times that demand more than we have to give. The work is to keep showing up, to practice those deep breaths, to notice where our feet are planted, to tend our connections with care. Some days, that's enough. Some days, it has to be.

Barriers to Connection

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." - Rumi

We tumbled through a life-affirming weekend—Friday's dinner dissolving into games and music with friends, Saturday's wedding reception spilling margaritas and laughter, Sunday's fall hike threading us through aspens ablaze in October gold. My eyes felt gritty from sleep deprivation, yet my heart expanded Grinch-like, swelling several sizes as we moved from one gathering to the next.

A persistent inner whisper craves weekend nights at home, pajama-clad and nestled into the couch with a magazine, novel, or remote control in hand. This domestic longing intensifies when the alternative involves navigating conversations with unfamiliar faces. I once made small talk with relative ease, but somewhere across the past two decades—accelerated by a pandemic that hermit-crabbed us all into our shells—I misplaced that social fluency. Here lies one of my barriers to cultivating platonic love: transcending superficial exchanges and investing sufficient time to build genuine trust, rather than executing an Irish goodbye the moment anxiety stirs.

Rob navigates such social waters with remarkable dexterity. Saturday evening, he confidently steered me between different clusters of guests, undeterred even by the CU football game flickering on a nearby screen. If social anxiety plagues him, he conceals it masterfully, and I cling to his side like a burr in a packhorse's coat. He declared the evening successful, though I felt certain I'd babbled continuously like a brook swollen with spring melt runoff.

The following morning discovered us hiking by eight o'clock in Golden Gate Canyon State Park, having outpaced fellow leaf-peepers to claim a parking spot. Frost glazed the ground cover flanking the trail, rendering rose hips unexpectedly soft beneath our fingertips and demanding warm outer layers for the first time this fall. Sharp easterly rays from the morning sun sliced through the warm yellow aspen leaves, igniting the trees like beacons of joy against the shadowed evergreens. We traversed seven miles, absorbing panoramic views, and I drove away feeling replenished—my spirit restored by movement and natural beauty.

This past weekend, my barriers to discovering loving connection revealed themselves clearly: laziness, social anxiety, inertia, misplaced priorities. We toppled them one by one. I'm capturing this reflection now as a reminder to myself—to knock them down again next time, and the time after that, because the reward of genuine connection always outweighs the comfort of retreat.

Connecting IRL

Men "wake up at 30 or 40 and say, 'I have no friends,'" notes Sam Graham-Felsen in his New York Times  piece of May 25. "They actually have a lifetime of friendships. But really, the issue is that they haven't put in the effort they've needed to. Guys forget that friendship is a relationship—it requires watering." Among suggested watering techniques: "TCS," which stands for text weekly, call monthly, see quarterly.

The sentiment echoes through Alison Espach's novel The Wedding People, (Henry Holt and Co. 2025) where characters lament their shrinking social circles: "I know. I pretty much don't know anyone anymore," one says. "Right? The only person I know now is basically my mom."

Every day, my inbox fills with LinkedIn and Facebook connection requests from virtual strangers—people I've never met or barely remember. I delete them reflexively, though the irony isn't lost on me. Here I am, shutting down digital overtures while craving real connection, someone to share the weight of menopause, children launching into adulthood, aging parents, and the relentless churn of alarming headlines.

My neighborhood friendships remain solid bedrock—women who walk and hike together, exchange hopeful texts, gather for book clubs and occasional weekend getaways, host potlucks where spouses mingle over wine and conversation. But busy-ness threatens to erode even these connections. We're pulled in every direction by emotional family demands, challening careers, and marriages that need tending.

When our kids were small, we gathered daily at the playground after pickup, dissecting the minutiae of our lives while children climbed and swung. Now we're lucky to manage quarterly gatherings where so much ground needs covering that evenings blur past in breathless summaries—trips, visits, life events floating through the air like paper airplanes, dipping and dodging before disappearing.

The pandemic certainly fractured something fundamental about friendship, drawing us inward like turtles into our shells, boxing us into separate houses where relationships flickered to life only through screens. I've never fully recovered my instinct to reach out first, perhaps too comfortable in the safety of husband, children, and work colleagues. But pangs of loss strike when I realize months have passed without seeing a dear friend—no shared celebration of our sons' college graduations, no updates on her ambitious landscaping project.

Making new, deeper connections feels like swimming upstream. At Masters swimming, friendly hellos and how-are-yous punctuate my arrival, but there's little opportunity for real conversation when your head spends most of its time underwater. My texts suggesting coffee dates disappear into digital silence, leaving relationships as shallow as the children's wading pool.

Graham-Felsen captures this modern friendship drought perfectly, even including comedian John Mulaney's sharp observation from Saturday Night Live: "If you think your dad has friends, you're wrong. Your mom has friends, and they have husbands. Those are not your dad's friends." While my husband actually maintains his friendships better than most, work and family obligations still vacuum up most of his available hours.

Graham-Felsen's insights apply far beyond men—to anyone navigating our modern world where social media, emails, and texts create the mirage of connection without delivering genuine intimacy. Perhaps it's time to do better, to become the friend I'd want to have. After all, these connections to friends and family represent our only true wealth.