Seasons of Change

The past couple of months in Ensenada have been... weird.

The hottest it’s ever been, followed by wild weather, rain, wind, days without electricity or water. And then opening social media to see people who have lost their homes, people navigating so much change and loss, people just trying to figure out what comes next, and then AI making things look worse just for fun.

There’s everything happening because of the weather, and then there’s everything happening in people’s lives outside of it, and sometimes it feels like a lot to take in all at once.

I process things deeply and mostly internally. I turn things over in my head a million times, and I feel other people’s experiences like actually physically.

I love the way Joan Halifax writes about the difference between empathy and compassion. Feeling someone’s pain isn’t always the same as knowing how to respond to it. Empathy can leave us overwhelmed by suffering, while compassion is an invitation to stay connected and find ways to care.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week. Monday was a rough day. I’m kinda laughing now thinking about how bad I felt for myself. I’d had a night of terrrrrible nightmares. The electricity and water had been out for a few days. My phone died overnight. I was literally crying as I drove to get coffee and charge up, and my phone just wouldn’t turn on.

In hindsight, not that big of a deal AND there was something in it I almost missed: the deep feeling that my needs weren’t being met. It wasn’t going to be forever AND it sucked in that moment and underneath that it brought back so many moments in my life where I felt alone in figuring out how to stay alive.

That’s the feeling I get when I see someone’s lost home, or grief, or illness, or just trying to get through a tough day,. It’s not abstract for me. I know that aloneness in my body, and that’s why it lands so hard.

Here’s what I’m learning: empathy was feeling it. Compassion was what I needed in that car. Someone to say “of course you’re crying, you’ve been without power and water for days, you’re not okay right now,” instead of my own voice trying to fight over the emotion with “come on, people have it worse.”

I’ve definitely been having this internal war with myself where I get frustrated that I can’t push through my own discomfort to see the bigger picture. Then I wonder if I’m making it harder by thinking that way. Maybe the “someone has it worse” mentality doesn’t actuallllly help as much as it’s pushed. It tells us our own hard stuff doesn’t count, and compassion that leaves us out isn’t compassion. Maybeeee it can all be true at the same time: their loss is real, and so is my overwhelm. One doesn’t cancel the other.

Over the weekend and throughout this week I’ve been reminded that fall is a season of change. Change can definitely be uncomfortable. It disrupts things, and we’ve seen that here in Ensenada lately.

AND change also holds possibility.

Not in an “everything happens for a reason” kind of way. I don’t think we need to make difficult things meaningful or pretend every change is good. It’s more that even when we can’t control what’s happening around us, we still have choices about how we move through it. We can close our doors and protect ourselves. Sometimes we need to. We need rest, space, and time to figure out what we have to give.

AND sometimes we can lean into community through the change.

We can pick up trash on the beach even when there isn’t an organized cleanup, even when it isn’t our responsibility, even when people aren’t watching or caring. Bring someone a coffee just because, check in on a neighbor, charge a stranger’s phone, ask for help when we’re the ones struggling, take a nap so we have the energy to show up tomorrow.

It’s so easy to look at all the needs around us and feel like whatever we have to offer isn’t enough, or to feel so overwhelmed that we don’t know where to start. Maybe caring for our community doesn’t have to mean pushing through every uncomfortable feeling or constantly finding more ways to give. Maybe it also means learning how to care for ourselves, letting people care for us, and recognizing that we’re part of the community we’re trying to show up for.

None of us can do everything, and thank gooooodnessss we don’t have to.

For now I’m just trying to remind myself, and invite others into, the many ways to care for ourselves, each other, and the world around us. This was the little thought I shared with the Ensenada community that I thought might be applicable to you too.