Ever since COVID, it sometimes feels like the world has been dishing out one major event after another. Most of us didn’t plan any of it, didn’t ask for it, and certainly didn’t create it. And yet here we are, living inside it.

We each have our own names for the political turmoil, the economic uncertainty, AI changing work, and other events occupying our minds. But underneath all those labels, they are simply circumstances.

And we wrestle with them.
We argue with them.
We wish they weren’t there.

But we are all on this ride. And even if things get harder—and they might—they will still just be circumstances.

Yet they drain our energy. They make us feel helpless. They take up hours of our mental space.

I can’t offer anything in this letter that will make the circumstances disappear.

But I can offer this: while it may seem that circumstances make us feel powerless, we sometimes forget that we can still choose how we want to think about them.

If I look at the world I live in as an assignment—as part of my development as a human, as part of my journey, and exactly what I am meant to experience at this time (because I am experiencing it)—something changes. Suddenly I have agency. I have a choice in how I think about what is happening.

Instead of wrestling with the circumstances, I can ask a different question:

How do I, as a human being, want to meet this situation?
What way of thinking about it asks the highest part of me to come forward?

Feeling the heaviness of the moment is part of being human. Some days we may want to stay under the covers or complain all day because we feel discouraged, worried, or simply tired of everything that seems out of our control.

But we still get to decide: is that where we want to stay?

Or can we take what life has placed in front of us and learn from it—grow from it—and become more of who we are because of it, not in spite of it.

Writing is one way to sit with questions like these. When we put our thoughts on paper, what feels tangled in our heads often begins to soften. Laura and I have now been hosting our monthly journaling sessions for almost a year. This month’s theme is “Anything Goes.” Because the world feels heavy, we’re keeping things light and playful—creative prompts designed to spark imagination and remind us how easy writing can be when we stop trying to do it “right.” Please consider joining us.

Warmly,
Janine