You are doing the best you can. 

Take three slow breaths.

Nothing is normal, there is no normal, and likely, normal never was. We can just see the cracks a little better with the lights on. 

Relax your jaw. 

Unmarry your shoulders from your ears. 

You do not need to be doing more. 

When you mutter to your partner that all you’ve done this pandemic is keep a baby alive, while Taylor Swift has released two whole albums, keep his reply close to your heart: But Taylor Swift doesn’t have a baby. 

You do not need to “make the most” of this time. 

It’s okay if you’re not okay. 

It’s okay if you’re not okay. 

When the uncertainty mires in your chest and every mouth you know opens with yet another question, answer only: more will be revealed. 

You have made it this far. 

You are allowed to be angry at all you have lost. 

Suffering is not a competition. Not suffering the worst does not mean you have not suffered at all.

You will be happy again. 

I promise. All of the data supports this. Humans, even after experiencing the most devastating horrors and losses, usually report later experiencing levels of happiness similar to what they knew before. 

What is true? That sorrow carves a new trench for joy. 

Your jaw, once more. Let it go. 

You are enough.

Caterpillars, before they emerge from their cocoons, experience a literal organ meltdown. Beauty can come of this, but first it’s going to hurt. 

Then again, some of us are moths, and that is also okay. No need to be flashy about it. 

Consider that fairness may not exist. You have earned neither your fortune nor your misfortune. 

Turn on some music. It’s quiet in here. 

There are people in your life who need you. They do not need from you. Even if you never again provided a thing, they would need your existence and presence. 

This is love. 

Consider what you know that you didn’t know ten months ago. Consider what you might know ten months from now. The dark truths and the light truths, both. 

Name the things this year has not taken away: the goodness of dogs, holiday greenery, hot coffee, postcards. 

Library books, sunrises, baths, the smell of a campfire. 

You could keep going all day. 

These are not consolation prizes, silver linings, or “at least.” Goodness exists and persists. 

As does its companion, sorrow. For it is true that everything is also terrible, the hottest ten years on record, the inequality, the murder and strife. The uphill battle we need to fight. 

Your fight will make itself known to you. The proscribed, obligatory fight is not your fight. Any fight that happens largely on social media is definitely not your fight. Your fight will say its name soft in your ear, and you will know: this is how I am meant to help.  

Consider the lightness of knowing that no one, absolutely no one but you, cares what your hair looks like.

Chips and salsa are dinner if you say they are. 

The person you most admire and envy in this world also, frequently, feels they are not good enough. 

And you possess a life someone else desires. 

This does not take away your own misery. It just relocates it to a different view, situated, perhaps, outside across the road, in the cold, glancing up at your window as you sit and read these words. Someone is out there thinking

I wonder what lucky person gets to live in there. 

Your shoulders again. 

Thank your lungs for their work. Your heart for its loyalty. Your bones for holding you together. Your feet for carrying you this far. 

Even in times of your own stillness, the universe is moving around you. 

You do not have to run to keep up. Waiting is its own motion. 

You do not need to say anything new. Everything has been said before, or better, in different words. We must only say these reminders again, loud enough for our own ears to hear them. 

You are not failing, you are surviving. 

And so are the people you love, and also the people you hate. 

Try to survive softly. Try to do the least amount of harm. 

You may not be able to hold it all together, but that doesn’t mean you can’t bend over, again and again, to pick up what you have dropped. No one gets to decide you are broken beyond repair. 

Not even you. 

Time is both thief and healer, question and answer. Do not lean on it too heavily. You have everything you need in this moment. See? Look how you are still here, right now, in these uncharted days. 

You are here, you are loved, you are safe.