Chicken Little and Coffee Streams

I’ve been feeling all the feelings lately (as usual)- anxiety, excruciating joy, awkwardness, sadness, fear. Opening up the world is almost scarier than the virus for someone with anxiety. I listened to Glennon Doyle’s first podcast episode yesterday (“We Can Do Hard Things” if you want to look it up). She describes to her sister the way that people with anxiety are always thinking about the sky falling, and when the sky fell (pandemic happened) we anxious people were all like: “I told you the sky was gonna fall!” and we were calmer than the rest because we are so used to still showing up in the face of scary things- we do it all day every day.

I HIGHLY recommend that episode if you’ve ever been or loved anyone with anxiety. Her advice for loved ones and for those of us dealing with it ourselves was just so lovely and supportive and I almost cried like 10 times during the episode. THEN her 15 year old daughter wrote a song and they premiered it at the end and I was just floored.

I am SO thankful for people like Glennon who openly talk about their struggles, especially with mental health, because there is this idea out there that it is something to hide, or mine isn’t as bad as that person’s so it’s nothing, that it makes us less than, and that we shouldn’t put a big sign up that says “I have a mental illness” because it’s not who we are. But in most cases, it is kind of a part of who we are and it informs a lot about how we walk through the world.

I never realized how much I needed to share my struggles in order to feel whole and to feel validated. I hope that you can do that as well, if at least to one trustworthy person, and who hopefully is trained to listen in a safe, supportive and constructive way- that is to say it may not be your mom or your best friend. If you’re not ready yet, I hope you can tell yourself, and if you can’t yet then let me tell you: You are not wrong, you are not too much, you are enough and you are wonderful.

I had SUCH a great time playing a couple livestreams this weekend. If you weren’t able to tune in to the Maui Coffee Roasters Livestream, you can watch it back here. Leave me a comment and let me know which song was your favorite!

I was also a part of Friday Night Live Jams (watch here) with some great guys from O‘ahu and Big Island. Such fun! Thanks to Wayne Kim for ‘recruiting’ me!

Now I’m ready for some down time to finish some courses I’m taking and to write more songs.