Support

I’m struggling with how to open this week’s reflection. I find myself wanting to check in and ask how you’re feeling as you sit down to read this. Perhaps you are generally feeling good – little niggles with work or family, but nothing majorly getting you down. Perhaps, on a surface level, you are feeling good, but below that surface level, you are feeling real angst about something – whether it’s aging parents, financial stress, or the broader state of the world. Or perhaps you are in a more acute state of distress, whether about the war between Israel and Hamas, the war in Ukraine, mass shootings in the US, or any number of other deeply painful events taking place.

I’m wondering how well we really know each other. The other day on LinkedIn, I read a post by a woman I worked with briefly on a client engagement a few years ago. She was hired into the organization for her expertise with change communications. I experienced her as bright, friendly, and action-oriented, and thought “what a pleasure – here is a woman who ‘gets it’ and can make stuff happen.” I had no idea, until I read her post on Wednesday, that her husband had recently passed away from a sudden, unexpected heart attack, that she was going through an immense grieving process, and that she had set aside her own business and taken this job to provide some steady income for her family, for whom she was now solely financially responsible.

I wish I had the ability to attune to the pain people carry around underneath the veneer they present to the world, but it’s a muscle I’m still building. This past week, I have been deeply moved by what some of my friends have shared with me when I asked how they were: how they can’t focus because their synagogue is receiving death threats; how they are worried for the safety of their children on university campuses in the US; how they are afraid to even speak up for fear of being censored in some way. Humans are meant to be 70% water, but sometimes I wonder if that water is freezing into ice, weighing us down and numbing us.

It can be hard to know what to do when someone invites us in and shares the burdens of their heart. We can’t fix what’s broken. We may not even fully agree with what they have to say. But what we can do is leave our world behind for awhile and visit theirs. We can listen with compassion and without judgment, and by doing so provide an opportunity for the ice hardening within them to melt and flow again. As Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer writes, “It is not wrong to feel small, to feel frightened, to be lost. Nor must we feel these things alone.” This weekend, I invite you to reach out to someone with whom you may not have spoken in a while, and just check in. Ask how they are and share how you are. Perhaps, in these broken moments we find ourselves in, it is enough for now.

About Friday Pauses

We can all sense how a lack of presence in our daily life affects the quality of our relationships, our ability to form real connections – and yet we struggle to set aside distractions. In my Friday Pauses, I want to encourage us all to do just that – pause for a moment and feel what it’s like to be present by reading a poem.

If you’re new to Friday Pause, here’s what I suggest:

• Minimize or close other screens.
• Put your phone on silent.
• Close your eyes and take a full breath in…and out. Maybe count to four on the inhale and six on the exhale.
• Read the poem below – out loud, if you can. It will slow you down and help you feel the words more.
• Take another deep breath in…and out.
• Resume your day.