When you’re too heavy to write, you write.

I’m sitting here, supposed to be writing the intro to a new blog series I’m rolling out this week in honor of being featured on the amazing Manifest Collab Podcast by Kari Sowers. The kids are in bed, the wine is poured, the husband is at work and the low hum of classical music is the perfect companion to this coveted quiet time. 

But I just can’t make the words form. I can’t make the ideas in my head translate to my fingers to type them on this screen. 

It isn’t writers block. I don’t really believe in it. I wake up each day with new words in my head and the process of transcribing is always just a few quiet minutes away. 

But tonight? I can’t. I’m too heavy. I feel myself flirting with tears too often these days as Twitter headlines ding my phone. More violence. More unrest. More hate. More more more. 

It feels like there is no good left. It feels like I should hunker down and hide my own and simply hover at neutral with no throttle to full speed because full speed renders me exposed, vulnerable, raw. 

But I simply cannot settle for relinquishing my dreams, my goals, my purpose at the feet of those who seek to kill, steal and destroy. 

Because if I don’t seek to do good, who will? Oh, this question is easy to answer: others will seek good. Others will do good. Others are doing good. 

But if I choose to stay quiet, stay away, stay home, I will not simply survive on the good of others. I need, I must, do good myself, for others, for me. 

In this season as a mom who works with two under two, my time is not my own. I do not have the time capacity to do good in person as I am used to doing. Rather, I have these quiet moments, around 10pm most nights, to write the words I feel put in my heart that may do a little good in this world. 

But what if I don’t write? What if I don’t give life to the truths that set me free? 

It’s a haunting question to ask, the idea that I may forgo my opportunity to offer the world my gifts. Odds are good nothing will change either way, whether I write or not. How’s that for humble pie?

But when you’re feeling too heavy, you write. You show up in whatever fashion is available to you in that moment. There is too much at stake to stay quiet, stay away, stay home. You join the fight. You look your brothers and sisters of all colors, all situations, all beliefs in the eye and you say “I’m here, too.”

Because, as the saying goes, the world needs people who have come alive.