Election anxiety

Is anxiety all but incapacitating you too? How are you coping? What’s getting you through? Please share, friends. I mean it: how? We need each other, now and always. I haven’t slept well in days, am unable to focus, and can’t slow my racing heart, calm these jittery limbs, stomach anything or stop my mind from wandering to the darkest of dreadful places and terrifyingly real existential threats. I know full well that none of this is remotely productive, nor will it help elect Biden and Harris, flip the Senate or pass critical local legislation — and I’m still giving this election and our democracy everything it demands and deserves — but damn are these floods of negative emotion overwhelming for me and a startling number of people I hold dear from all walks of life and political persuasions across this country and around the world. Even barefoot walks in nature sans technology, the nearly full moon illuminating a clear night sky, and expansive coastal shorelines are doing little to center me; I know a situation is dire when my lifelong saving grace of the ocean doesn’t yield peace or clarity, failing to counterbalance the severity of this monumental moment and tomorrow, in particular. Voting, organizing and mobilizing matter when lives and livelihoods, people and planet, safety and sanity are on the line. And so does your health. So does your wellbeing. So do you. #VOTE and breathe and do whatever you need to do to make it through.