Y’all. Things are hard right now. Quarantine is real. Jobs have been lost. People have been sick, people have died. We have lost pretty much any semblance of normal life, and there’s no telling when and if things will go back to the way they used to be.

Other people – essential workers – are struggling as well. They feel singled out in a world of shifting routines, feel lost and left out that their experience is so vastly different than everyone else’s. They are scared, they feel exposed, they want to serve, but they don’t know if they are safe.

And, it’s Mother’s Day. A touchy-feely Hallmark holiday, but salt in the wound for so many people whose dearest wish of motherhood has not come to pass. A day of loneliness for mothers with children grown and far away. A day of painful reminders for children whose family relationships have been severed through pain and dysfunction.

Things are hard right now. And it’s OK to not know what to do to make them better. It’s OK to feel sad, angry, lost, hopeless. But if those thoughts and emotions stay trapped in the echo chamber of your own mind, they amplify. They get louder than they actually are, until we are deafened to the sounds of love and hope that exist around us all the time. 

If you are feeling hopeless, if you are feeling overwhelmed, if you are feeling desperately sad, or even just lonely… Reach out. Be the person to make the call. Check on someone else, or even just call to let someone else know you are not OK. Give them that gift of trust and vulnerability, and allow yourself to receive the gift of their love in return. And if you have no one to call, reach out to us. You have a few thousand of your dear friends right here, ready to listen…