I went to bed last night at eight o’clock.

When I went upstairs to tuck in our five year-old son, I found him in our bed.

“Mom, can we lay in here, instead?”

I was full from Sunday supper.  My teeth were brushed, my pajamas were on and how many nights do I have left when he wants to fall asleep in our bed?

I snuggled in with the intention of moving him to his own bed once he was out…then I woke up at 4:15 when I heard the alarm on my phone going off in the living room.

While the rest of my family lay a-snooze, I came downstairs to stop the noise and decide what to do.

I’d just spent a little more than eight hours in a complete state of solid, safe sleep – no dreams or disruptions to remember.  Just rejuventating stillness next to my favorite people on the planet – and still, moments after rising my thoughts were off:

I should go to the gym.  I’ll never lose this weight if I don’t.  I’m tired.  I made it there six days last week.  I’m still sore from that intense yoga class yesterday.  I’m tired.  I can do a workout later today.  I’m not swimming this morning.  I could start working.  I’ll never get through what I have to do today.  I’m so behind.  Before six might be too early to start firing off emails.  I could write.  I want to write about how good it was to fall asleep next to Briggs.  There’s something there.  Is he coughing again?  Did I bring my power cord home?  Fuck it.

I stayed on the couch, pulled my favorite super soft blanket over my head and bullied myself back to sleep.

In the span of two hours I woke up in three seperate panics.

The first from losing my job in the most shameful and public way.  Completely unbelievable, and yet it still felt real.

The second from our neighborhood being under siege and our neighbors being dragged from their home.

And finally, from finding a very put together woman in her seventies peering into our windows because she said that our home was hers.  It was stolen from her family years ago and wrongly sold to us.

I felt the loss of my livelihood, my community, and my home all in a fraction of the blissful sleep I’d experienced just hours before.

I’m sitting at my kitchen island now grateful for the feels.

There are too many mothers huddled with their babies trying to get in a few precious moments of sleep, not because they are trying to savor the times when their children want them close, but because they are using every inch of their beings to quell the constant threat of being ripped apart.

We all deserve the peace of being held together.

And now (more than ever) is the time to be reaching out and holding on – not building walls, or banning contact, or denying our privilege and abandoning our humanity.