Us, In Our Places
“This is the dark time, my love.” — Martin Carter
Building Mindset Breath requires capacity and organisation. In 2026, I aimed to be more organised. I’ve been being organised. I have plans, article drafts, a sense of direction.
And, Bombs over Baghdad, embargoes around Cuba, radar in Tobago and and and…
I look around, and I’m seeing people struggling. The way people drive. The way they move past one another. The lack of bandwidth, the overwhelm, the frustration. Some people are really only just holding on right now.
What’s my plan in a world that feels like it has lost the plot?
I feel like throwing up my hands, waiting until a clearing appears. But I remember something Toni Morrison once said, or rather, something a friend shouted at her:
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work, not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. That’s our job!”
This is me, at work. Offering what I can: holding space, writing and helping us tend to our systems. Our systems - our nervous systems, our mindbody systems, need tending. Especially now. For us, and so we are able and ready to do what we can where we are with what we have.
One of the things we practice in trauma healing is slowing down to the speed of our nervous systems. Before we do anything else, noticing. Paying attention.
Today I’ll share an exercise. An invitation, really, to notice, to be present.
It can feel like we’re insignificant. And when you look at the earth from space, we are literally a dot. A marble, hanging in the vastness of one galaxy, which is itself a dot among galaxies scattered like sand across an ocean of infinity.
So in one way, yes, we are absolutely insignificant.
But your smile might be the thing that helps a cashier make it through their shift.
Holding a door for someone might make their eyes light up. A guy in a hardware store makes a comment about the box you’re carrying and you both laugh. You’re driving down the road and you see a little girl, all elbows and knees and hair flying, arms outstretched, running full pelt toward a teenage boy, also elbows and knees, coming home from school. She leaps into his arms and he swings her around.
There are moments that make this thing possible. Sometimes it’s only the moments that do.
“It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world.” — Mary Oliver
So maybe today you sing off-key, loudly and badly. Maybe you pick up a pencil and draw something. Write a poem. Do an interprative dance. Send someone a message. Or maybe you just sit for a while and breathe.
There are moments that remind us we’re all here, in our places. And part of what we do, some of our practice, is simply to be in our places.
I’m building, writing, holding space and reading - this week I think I’m going back to Octavia Butler and I have a neuroscience text open. On Monday, I’ll hold an in-person breathwork session at ARC in Tunapuna, Trinidad.
For today, if you’d like to make a little space, you can attend to your breath. Click the link. Let’s breathe like our lives depend on it.