Crying in the Tub on Sunday: A Message for the Burning World

Mentally, I’m Here is a peek into my world.
Free gets you glimpses. Paid gets you the whole story.
Your support helps me keep creating and tells me
you believe in this dream as much as I do.

I don’t know how many of you will read this, but I know for a fact that some of you do because you’ve shared that with me, so if only a few pairs of eyes see this today, that is enough. As such, I’m making this one open and available to all because I believe this is a message everyone needs to hear right now. (*If you prefer to listen and follow along, you can do so now.)

I don’t typically send Substacks on Sunday; maybe because I know most people are going about their lives, enjoying the weekend and hopefully a day off from work, or maybe because “they” advise that Sundays aren’t the best for content (whoever “they” even are), but the way of a writer knows no rules and certainly no “right” time.

When something claws at us to be said, we speak.

This morning I was in the bathtub having my breakfast (yes, this is a thing I do. I love taking meals in the tub, and morning soaks are far superior to their evening variety. I will die on this hill.) Mornings are sacred to me. They offer stillness and reflection before the day has had its chance to burrow into our minds and get its claws in our precious energy. We’re fresher in the morning. As such, big thoughts can more easily find their way into our hearts. Add some Epsom salts, known for drawing toxins from the body, and the magic of water for its cleansing properties, and you have a recipe for release.

After I finished my breakfast (ok, and watched about 15 minutes of an adorably cheesy Netflix romcom), I paused the movie because I started crying.

I thought about freedom—what that means on an individual level and for the collective. I thought about how I have spent the whole of my life freeing myself from one cage after another: mental, emotional, physical. I thought about what it would mean for me to finally make it to Paris one day, to fulfill a promise to my sixteen year old self who hungered for freedom in every sense of the word, to be someone who has the confidence and independence to see the world, yes, but it means I’ve become the person I always dreamed of being: free. I thought about how travel is a kind of “final boss” for me in terms of freedom—that the external world is no longer off limits because my internal has expanded so much, through love and inner work.

That brought soft tears, but it was when I began thinking about freedom in the context of the collective that brought the heavy waves of grief. I thought about the state of our country, the “No Kings” protests, the way both this country and the world in which it exists are so heavy with pain and grief; how families are being torn apart, how divided we have become, how callous and cold many have gotten, how this country can no longer recognize itself.

I sobbed in the tub, whole body-shaking grief flowing from my body, given back to the very water that was holding me. The images and videos I’ve seen on social media flooded my mind as my tears poured into the tub. “I want freedom for the world. For everyone,” I thought. “What can I do? As a single person, what can I even do?”

And then I noticed—the shape of the bubbles parting and coming back together in the tub, the candle flickering on my bathroom counter, the quiet whispering in my head:

“You can feel. You can hold space. You can speak hope into a dark place that often feels devoid of it.”

I stared at the bubbles in the bath, noticing how a single bubble is delicate and fragile. I noticed how the bubbles could be so easily divided in the water when I ran my hands through them, as if I were parting the red sea. I thought about how if the sea itself were to be divided into two opposing waves, how much more powerful they would become once they rush back together as one. They would be a great and incredible force when joined in unison, and I saw this in the bubbles as I palmed them, moving my fingers this way and that, noticing how they moved fluidly as one entity. Together, they are strong, flexible, able to withstand any “division” because they can always reconverge. I thought about the candle flickering on my counter and how an attempt to extinguish it is nothing more than an empty threat. I thought about the sunlight pouring into my bedroom broke apart into beautiful fractals throwing itself onto my ceiling from the disco ball hanging in my window, spreading its light.

This is hope. This is what hope does. It speaks. It believes. It does not give up, no matter the circumstances.

I grieved this morning and I have no doubt I will keep grieving and I encourage each of you reading this to lean into your feelings right now. Do not keep them inside you, whatever they are. Anger, rage, grief, exasperation, despair. All of them are valid. Express them consciously. Your internal world is just as important as the external and we are the visionaries holding the blueprint for a better world. You must be willing to feel it, to see it, to notice it, to name it—and then to release it. That is how the candle stays lit, how the light finds its way. That is how hope is replenished in a burning world.

Free yourself first. Resist fear. Resist darkness. Resist cynicism. The fight is just as much within as it is without. Keep the light on, as much as possible.

And when you feel you are stumbling alone through darkness, remember so many of us are with you, offering you a torch.

With love & hope always,