Metabolizing what we witness
On Bearing Witness
Yesterday, I turned on my air conditioner because it was 90 degrees outside. Today, as I write this, big fat fluffy snowflakes are spiraling from the sky and landing with a plop on my windowpane.
Yep — I’m still in Richmond.
It’s been quite the week.
Personally, this week has been great. I landed a big strategic branding project, had several meaningful sessions with my 1:1 coaching clients, soft-launched (and already half sold out) this New Orleans retreat, and am in the process of exploring something very BIG for my business — and a few other businesses, too. (Stay tuned)
But all week, I’ve also been sitting with a feeling… not quite grief and not quite rage, but a particular kind of disorientation that isn’t quite exhaustion, though that’s in there too.
It feels like whiplash. Everytime I log into some platform or another, there it is. And whatever the news is, there’s never enough time to fully feel one thing before the next thing hits.
Our nervous systems are perpetually mid-response to something that has already been replaced by something else, and we're left to react to a world that has already moved on by the time we've registered what just happened.
Over time, that whiplash has created something else within me, and within others I’ve talked to: fragmentation. We scroll on, while feeling split apart.
How do we hold onto our lives that are unfolding day-to-day in front of us, paying attention to our work, our people, our communities, and the things that are in front of us right now, while another part of us is perpetually scanning the horizon for what’s next?
A client told me recently that she keeps “waiting for the other shoe to drop;” she echoes similar sentiments I’ve heard in all of my circles recently.
What accumulates underneath this fragmentation?
What happens when we have deep grief that has nowhere to land?
Collectively, I think many of us can relate. There isn’t one specific loss… but a slew of them, collectively and steadily in rapid succession.
There’s no funeral to be had, though many of my friend and colleague gatherings lately have felt like a celebration of life: stories told with sharp humor and deep sadness intertwined. Grief and exhaustion with no end in sight, with little room to restore and rest.
I’m hearing this in my client calls, too.
The Fortune 100 leader laying off part of her team who hasn’t slept well in months.
The business owner who opens her laptop and gets distracted every few minutes because work seems pointless.
The leader who “feels guilty” thinking about her goals and her life.
These are not weak people; they are some of the most clear-eyed, values-driven humans I know.
They are tired. They are stressed. They are holding up the world right now. And that world feels like it's on fire.
None of these scenarios denotes a failure of resilience.
All of these big feelings and consequences are signs that we’re paying attention to our inner knowing.
Some of the hardest work we’re all doing right now is witnessing. Witnessing requires presence and costs us the ease that illusion often brings.
We have been asked to witness a lot. And absorbing it all is fucking exhausting.
So here’s where I insert a mention for practicing peace and give you some tools to do so because we’re all fucking exhausted.
Of course, I also have to say that as we incorporate these peace practices, the world will move on and ask us to bear witness.
What would it look like to metabolize what we see — instead of just absorbing it?
I think there’s a distinction to explore here that was helpful to me, and maybe it will be helpful to you, too.
Absorbing what we witness means we’re accumulating and piling up crisis upon crisis, “wtf” on top of “wtf.”
When we absorb each scenario, it’s easy to see how our own reactions are calcified into helplessness or hardened into a kind of protective numbness that keeps us from feeling anything, including the things worth feeling.
Metabolizing what we witness means we process it and let it move through us.
This isn’t feasible when we’re inundated, but we can let what we witness inform our choices, actions, and conversations.
The most politically meaningful thing many of us can do right now is stay intact so we can live, make meaning, and show up for ourselves and our communities.
While we can’t always metabolize everything, we can put some practices in place to help ourselves. Please note this isn’t a bypassing or glib recommendation to “try harder,” more like gentle reminders to practice reclaiming agency if you’re experiencing the shitshow right now.
Here's what metabolizing can look like in practice:
It looks like pausing before you scroll again and asking: what do I actually need right now?
It looks like letting yourself feel the grief — the specific or unnamed collective grief — instead of cycling back to consume more information about the thing that caused it.
It looks like creating something, saying something, doing something small and real in your actual sphere of influence, and letting that be enough for today.
It looks like rest that isn't earned — rest as a form of resistance, not a reward for productivity.
It looks like being in the room with other humans, telling stories and recognizing that we’ve always done this together.
Sadly, the world is still going to be on fire tomorrow. And probably the next day, too. It always has been; we’re just the people who are experiencing it right now.
You, my dear — the clear-eyed, values-driven, still-showing-up version of you — are needed in it. Which means you have to be here for your own life, too.
What are you absorbing right now that needs to move through you instead of settling in you?
What would it look like to witness the world without becoming it?
What small act of metabolizing is available to you today?
The work hasn't changed. Neither have you, underneath it all.
How we practice is how we change. And how we change is how the world changes.
Pledging allegiance to humanity,
Michelle
P.S. If you're in that exhausted-but-still-trying place and want a thought partner who won't tell you to just meditate it away, I’d love to talk.
Find your communities. Witness together. Act from there.
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Seek yourself. Be more you.
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How we practice is how we change. And how we change is how the world changes. Practice being more you.
