🪷 Hold On and Survive

A short learning-poem about overwhelm

Things have felt tough lately; I’ve been sick plus emotionally/mentally burnt out by full-time childcare (but school starts next week!). So I haven’t gotten to post much, but today I managed to write a super-quick poem reflecting some of my recent struggles.

The phrase “heartaches of life” covers everything from frustration and shame about clutter/household problems I’m not managing to deal with, to ways in which I feel like an imperfect mother, to empathy with friends’/loved ones’ sufferings, to grief and horror about things going on in the world beyond my little nest. All these things loom larger and darker to me when I’m feeling low than when I’m not, in the ironic cruelty of how anxiety and depression affect the mind.

It helps to keep reminding myself that my viewpoint is skewed when I’m feeling low, and that I need to keep turning my attention from things I can’t solve/help right now to things I can.

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Hold On and Survive

When my body is weak
   and so is my mind,
I feel overwhelmed
   by the heartaches of life.
I want to remember
   that I'm compromised:
until I feel stronger,
   hold on and survive.

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My cat Milky (short for Milk Toast [or Milquetoast?], named by my kids) perched on the ledge of the deck… “holding on” is a particular talent of cats