Just Trying To Get Through This

Written By Stacy Carleton

Anyone else been flailing around in a storm of overwhelm?

For me, it began with a stomach bug on our way home from a big family trip abroad.

Then my husband Micah caught it.

Our kids started school four days later, with no school supplies because we’d had no time to buy them.

Afterschool activities, backlogged appointments, and unpaid bills immediately clogged the calendar.

Jet lag still plagued me, weeks after our return. 

I’ve been doubting my decision to try life without caffeine as I dragged through the days, while also contending with erratic perimenopausal hormones and autoimmune fatigue.

Friends are grappling with hard diagnoses.

Micah returned to work and learned that a family in his community lost their young son.

Stories of heartbreak continue unfolding: genocide and gun violence in the news, deportation and eviction in our community.

Everything’s been a struggle–getting out of bed, helping the kids get ready for school, completing basic work tasks, making meals, just showing up day after day.

I keep asking myself:

How will I get through this?

How will I get through these endless transitions, these demands, these uncertainties?

How will I get through this chaos, this heaviness, this suffering?

Then, one night after dinner last week, Micah told me and the kids that he’d been clearing up storage space on his phone and found some old footage of our lives.

He played us video after video, starting around 2019 and ending a couple years into the pandemic.

Our kids were two and four when lockdown began.

My heart ached as I watched their little bodies bouncing up and down with joy, dancing to Elton John, the Ghostbusters theme song, and the Madagascar movie soundtrack. My throat tightened through a video of them playing in the sprinkler, splashing their tiny feet in the puddles that formed. My chest swelled when I saw us making yet another project from the High Five magazine: a layer cake built out of old boxes, a fashion show featuring bubble-wrap skirts.

I saw myself stirring a pot at the stove, cooking another dinner from scratch because we had nowhere else to go. In the next video, I was on our front porch at exactly 7:00 pm, banging on the same (now clean and empty) pot with a ladle to thank healthcare workers at their shift change.

The videos did not capture so many other moments.

Me lying awake at night, unable to stop thinking about the military occupation downtown, then a couple months later, the wildfire evacuations near the homes of my parents and older sister in southern Oregon.

The daily, superhuman energy required to hold back a tsunami of unrelenting terrible news I didn’t want crashing over my kids and drowning their innocence.

The times I cried in the shower where my kids couldn’t see me.

The months when I got sick, then sicker, not knowing when or if I would ever recover.

I remembered thinking every day, How will I get through this?

Poet Andrea Gibson taught me that “getting” through this isn’t our only option.

The brilliant Andrea Gibson, 1975-2025

They taught me that every moment contains more possibilities than we can ever know.

And that the storm is our transformation.

The last video we watched was recorded for Mother’s Day, in which my daughter says in her two-year-old voice, “Thank you. I love you. Thank you.”

I remembered how we got through it.

We got through it when we said and showed with our actions, “Thank you. I love you. Thank you.”

We couldn’t stop the chaos, the demands, and the uncertainties.

So we danced through it.

We created through it.

We cooked through it.

We cried through it.

We doubted through it.

We waited through it.

We let ourselves be changed through it.

Together.

So, here we are, in another storm season, getting through it.

I’m still struggling. I know the challenges of this moment are not going away.

And unlike five years ago, I’m practicing with others through it.

We practice somatic embodiment, in community, to repurpose our energy so we can use it to take meaningful action.

We practice experiencing what safety and stability feel like. We remember that it is available from moment to moment, even as the storm rages on.

We practice curiosity and being with what is in our bodies, minds, hearts, and spirits, bringing acceptance and love to places of depletion and pain.

We practice agency and choice in our physical movements, experimenting with rhythmicity and slowness. This helps us remember the agency and choice we always have, in a world that doesn’t ask for our consent before it yanks us into rhythms and realities we would never choose.

We practice saying, “Thank you. I love you. Thank you.”

Knowing we are not alone, we say this to ourselves, our bodies, our communities, and all the miracles in this world still here in the storm.

I invite you to practice learning, opening, and growing through it all with me at my upcoming community sessions. (Including a new workshop!)

NEW FALL OFFERINGS!

NEW WORKSHOP!

As always, please contact me with any questions, suggestions, or ideas.

When we rest together, we heal and we thrive,

Stacy

Stacy Carleton
Next

You Choose How to Meet the Moment