Hello, all—I would like to share an old story with you today. I have been noticing in myself, my friends, my clients, that in the wake of crisis there are several normal, organismic responses that sometimes we judge ourselves for having. Three that the story explores are feeling a need to escape/get to safety, a need not to see the bad things but instead to experience only wonder, beauty, and helpfulness, and feelings of overwhelming grief and rage. In the story, all of these responses have their place.

I invite you to find inside of you where all of these things are happening, and to offer self-compassion to every aspect of these responses. If we can treat our normal responses with care, they don’t have to come out sideways in acts of aggression against others or internally as self-sabotage. When we work with things that happen imaginally, as within a story, we don’t have to suffer the heartbreak of actions we regret.

Had the ones who left not left, everyone would have starved. Had the sister not seen wonder, the brother would have been lost within himself. Had the brother not felt his anger, he and his sister would have been helpless and without resources—and the village would not have changed in the aftermath of this story, would not have learned anything, would not have deepened.

Once I heard Martin Shaw tell a story and conclude it with this sentence: “See what happens in your own heart when you trade growth for depth.”

I am feeling in my own heart these days what happens when I trade growth for depth. There are things that were “normal” a week ago that I do not wish to experience as normal again. There are relationships I have built and ways of being I have cultivated in the wake of this flood that I hope I can continue to nurture. There are things I need to learn, here, that may change the shape of the village.