The other day my partner was emanating a kind of nuclear winter after we'd fought about some dumb thing, my toddler had a fever and had been cry-whining and pulling at me for hours, I was on the phone with the elder relatives who were telling me some kind of paranoid story about things disappearing from their house and asking me to call a lawyer for them, my older child kept asking when I was gonna make him coooooookies because he was huuuuungry and wanted cooooookies, and I kept getting calls from work from people who really should have been able to make their own decisions but felt they needed my input 3-4 times per hour on the weekend.

I thought I was going to lose it in some very intense way either blowing up in anger, dissolving into tears or some combination of the two. But the situation really called for me to summon my best self and keep it together. I had this image of a deep well that I could draw from, this source of inner okay that could weather this storm. And I accepted that none of it would be perfect and all of it would get done in due course and of all the demands none was pressing except for the sick baby.

It was weird. It was like all the calm, accepting, gentle "you're okay" messages that my therapist had been giving for years (and was often met with an eye roll) suddenly took. And I felt like I was okay and I would still be standing when the dust settled.