Hello friends,

This has felt like a hard week, globally. Even as I watch events unfold from our comfortable home, I feel the psychic and emotional pressure. People are in danger, including in my home communities. Despite my relative privilege, I’m in danger, too.

I wanted to name this pressure, in case you also feel it. But, here’s the thing, unless we need to actively get loved ones to safety right now, we need to choose to feel these emotions, and then regulate ourselves as best we can. Why? Because it is incumbent upon each of us to help out, however we can.

Inhale… Pause… Exhale… Pause…Inhale…

I can do nothing about bombs being dropped, but I can do other things. All I have to do is pick the first two or three issues that arise at the crossroads of urgent and simple. We can all do this—and people are doing this, over and over. It takes paying attention. It takes regulating ourselves toward a state of courage.

In times when fear is being purposefully ramped up to try and shut masses of people down, we can remember: Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is acting anyway.

Courage is linked with heart. In magical terms, it is the space of daring. We know. We will. We dare. We hold the mystery. We move.

In daring to defend our neighbors, in daring to stand up to bullies, in daring to choose kindness instead of xenophobia and hatred, we invoke courage.

Once courage is called in, our choices broaden, and there is so much more that we can do. The main thing about courage? The smallest individual amounts can topple empires, if enough of us come together and insist, “We are here.”

Best wishes — Thorn