The Collective Malaise
On what we're all feeling right now and how to find our way back to hope.
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All of my clients are reporting a feeling of malaise. A sense of depression. A lack of inspiration and motivation. I am experiencing this too.
What is happening in the world is affecting us— individually and collectively. Because what happens to any of us, happens to all of us. We are connected.
It is tempting to numb out. And while rest is essential, hiding and escaping robs us of hope. It prevents us from healing and finding our way back to living and to each other.
You haven’t heard from me in over a month. This has less to do with the shitstorm of what’s happening in the world and more to do with my own personal chaos.
In the span of four weeks, I had 50 Enneagram Typing calls with corporate team members in preparation for their Enneagram Team Workshops, facilitated those three workshops in Austin and Chicago, and then my husband, 11-month-old daughter, and 13-year-old dog packed up our life in Texas and moved to my hometown of Nashville, TN.
Over the past two weeks, we’ve been working tirelessly to turn our new house into a home. Getting fully moved in and organized takes five times as long when your tiny assistant insists on helping by repacking whatever you’ve just unpacked and redecorating whatever you’ve just decorated. But the Enneagram Seven in me reframes it this way: it’s also five times more fun and meaningful to create a sense of home with and for your child.
Anyway. Back to the collective malaise.
Everyone I know is struggling right now. The death, destruction, and disorder of the world is sitting atop the ordinary weight of our everyday lives.
To acknowledge that what is happening out there is affecting how you feel in here— that’s not crazy, and it’s not weak. It’s real. It’s true. And it’s an important first step toward caring for your heart, body, mind, and soul.
In a coaching call yesterday, my client and I started asking: what’s the ointment to this malaise?
The answer that came through was this: creativity.
We must engage in creative practices that ground us in the present moment— that open our hearts and remind us we are alive.
Writing does this for me. It’s why I write.
And since I haven’t written in nearly six weeks, perhaps that’s why I’ve been carrying an excruciating amount of anxiety, depression, and lifelessness.
This is also why I hike, snow ski, swim in the ocean, listen to music, take photos, lay in bed laughing with my daughter, hold my husband’s hand, play with flowers, take a road trip, and look up at the stars at night.
What creative practices help you remember you’re alive?
As you can see from my list, anything can be a creative practice. It’s whatever takes your breath away and in the same moment reminds you that you are a living, breathing being— part of a great, big, beautiful world.
I want you to write down at least three of your creative practices. Right now.
On a Post-it note, in your journal, on your hand, in your phone.
Hell, write down as many as you can.
And today— do just one of them.
Do it. Pause. Notice. Breathe. Put your hand over your heart and feel it beating.
We don’t find hope by avoiding pain. We find it by feeling our humanity in the midst of suffering. We find it by tapping into wonder in the face of weariness.
If we are collectively affected by the darkness of the world, then we are also collectively affected by the light.
Hit reply and tell me your creative practices. My heart needs your joy today too.
My journey hasn’t just led to healing—it’s led to a calling.
I’m building Naxos Health—a new kind of space for women’s healing that honors both data and intuition, root causes and soul work, evidence and the feminine. And I want you to help shape it. If this resonates, join the waitlist.
I’m brand new to Substack and just took at stab at my first article yesterday, it’s about a new thing that I have found brings me tremendous joy. I’ve been forming a relationship with a crow in my neighborhood. I’ve been too paralyzed to enjoy my usual Creative outlets - gardening and visual arts - partly due to anxiety paralysis as a highly sensitive person who feels all of the collective grief in the world right now, and partly because of a retinal detachment and subsequent loss of functional vision in my left eye… it’s unbelievable how much this one bird has given me. And I’m learning a new path to gratitude in trying to give back…
Creativity, in all its forms, is the balm of balms.