Hi friends, it’s been a minute since I’ve written anything and frankly I just haven’t felt like I’ve had anything to say for a few weeks. Life can get overwhelming and feeling creative isn’t always compatible with what’s on the calendar. I’m working on pushing through that moving forward, though, and hopefully I can get back to a weekly schedule soon.
I do have something quick to say today and it’s not really funny, just something I’ve been thinking a lot about. This week my family unfortunately had to put our dog down. She was ten and sick and clearly in pain, so in a way it was a relief that we could take car of her, but man, what a loss.
I have found myself feeling almost guilty for how sad I’ve been. It feels superfluous somehow to grieve over a pet when there is so much tragedy happening simultaneously in the world. This is something I’ve heard a lot of friends expressing recently as well. I had a show last night and another comment was expressing how the election cycle felt like it was eclipsing the fact that she lost two grandparents and went through a breakup. Another friend talked about how planning her wedding feels insane right now given the climate, and it sucks that we’re all just feeling this collective burden so heavy that we can’t feel what is natural to feel.
There are a lot of problems with that logic, that because there are bigger things happening our experience is unimportant, but what I keep coming back to is that if I let the evil in the world rob me of my ability to grieve ‘smaller’ things, am I also going to let it rob me of feeling joy about small things? They’re taking away our rights, our freedom, our agency, we can’t let them take away the things that make us human, too.
I’m not the first to think or say this, but it’s a good reminder that it’s essential to keep living. Laugh when you see something funny, cry when you feel sad, don’t let this state of the world consume you! You have a right to live in your body and feel how it feels. Take a walk, breathe fresh air, catch up with someone you love today. I will keep singing karaoke with my friends, I will laugh openly and loudly, and I will feel what I feel. I hope you do the same.
With a lot of love,
Catherine
Love you Cate!!!
I was so sad to see a dying mouse in my basement. That felt silly. But I think what it really did was take off the armor I feel I have to have on to make it through the “slings and arrows” of every day and remind me I still can feel something besides outro. So I took it out to the garden to give it water. That felt right.