📿 Leaning in, leaning out.

Kindred grief. What a week.

IMAGE ID: Standing in our front yard which is ballooning with mushrooms. They appear to be individuals, but theres a web of connectivity under the soil. One of nature’s cutest displays of interdependence.

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Hello! Adreanna here for this week’s dispatch of The Laundry —

This morning I read an article in The New York Times about how to talk to children about war. The headline grabbed me not because I’m looking for language to connect with my child (she’s just recently discovered that she has feet). War is a concept that’s far in her future — as opposed to the experience of her present, which I count as a blessing and not a guarantee.

The headline grabbed me, if I’m being honest, because I am the child who needs talking to; or at least I feel like a child when the world’s most violent tendencies fill our headlines and our screens. I’m finding myself looking for the grown-up in the room. I’m seeking the trusted adult, the person in charge, someone who can talk to me in simple terms and reassuring tones about why we destroy one another and what purpose cruelty serves. 

I had a recent session with a meditation student who has been clamped to his devices, flipping back and forth between news stations (as he described it) compulsively. Under the surface of this flipping back and forth between media outlets, he realized that he was seeking reassurance, the good news, the waterproof plan that would bring about ceasefire. Maybe there’s something about conflict or violence or instability that has us seeking comfort like children do. “Give it to me in a way that 7 year old would understand, Mr. Journalist. Make it all make sense.”