My emotions are close to the surface. I feel raw, vulnerable, and unsettled.

There’s been a lot of life and death happening around me. A complex mixture of grief and love, gratitude and fear, frustration and wonder.

Yet there’s more underneath.

As we slowly yet noticeably enter autumn, I feel echoes of last year. Last fall, unvaccinated, I faced (we faced!) a long, lonely, heartbreaking road. A pandemic winter.

Post vaccination, I have more capacity to feel. I’m able to feel those dark, difficult places I experienced last year.

Last fall, I entered protection mode: let’s get through this. This fall, I’m both processing new information (Delta variant) and feeling loss, heaviness, and anxiety that I pushed down last year.

Interestingly, I did engage (wholeheartedly!) with my emotional and mental states during the pre-vaccination pandemic. Daily, I practiced self-care, meditation, and connection wherever I could.

Still, our human mind and body can take only so much trauma. At some point, we shut down. It’s an amazing part of our evolutionary survival mechanism.

And when we have capacity again, it comes back. It asks to be seen, heard, felt, and healed. I’m trying to listen. I’m trying to feel (all the feels, even the uncomfortable ones). I’m trying to be real.

I find hope in unlikely places. I find beauty daily. I find gratitude in ordinary moments.

I also feel tender, vulnerable, and exposed; like my insides are on my outsides.

This is what it means to be human in our complex, uncertain, and wondrous world.