When It Feels Like the World Is Going to Shit (A Small Field Guide)

My loves,

This morning the headlines stacked like wet newspapers on a stoop—heavy, ink bleeding, impossible to carry all at once. The kettle boiled anyway. The dog sneezed. Somewhere down the street, a child practiced the trumpet (God help the neighbors). The world announced catastrophe; the room announced life.

Here is the trouble: catastrophe is loud and life is particular. One siren versus one spoon circling the mug . One graph of decline versus the square of light inching across a desk We are built to register both, but one of them wins the ratings.

The Field doesn’t ask us to be naïve. It asks for proportion—to let the day be the size of a day. The feeled (your good body) knows how: jaw, shoulders, belly, breath—these are instruments. If they’re tight, the story gets small and mean. If they soften, the story gets true.

So, begin here:

• Put your feet on the floor. Wiggle the toes. (Yes, really.)

• Drink water. (Plain, unheroic.)

• Name the weather inside you: stormy, fog, a patch of sun near the sternum.

• And then ask the Field’s question: What wants to hold here?

Not “what do I want?” (I want everything fixed by lunch.) Not “what should I do to be impressive?” (You don’t need to earn your next breath.) What wants to hold is quieter and sturdier. It’s the shape that fits now, not forever.

Sometimes the answer is small enough to hide under a teacup:

• Send the text: “Arrived?”

• Wash the one cup.

• Put an egg in a pan; watch it bloom from clear to white.

• Step outside and count seven green things.

This is not avoidance. This is retuning the instrument so it can play something useful. (The apocalypse is famously out of tune.)

A short taxonomy of despair, with remedies:

1. News-Despair: caused by scrolling beyond your aperture.

   • Remedy: Read one article well; write one letter to an official; stop. Praise the woman who waved you into traffic with a queen’s generosity.

2. Time-Despair: caused by calendars that leave no room to breathe

   • Remedy: Cut one obligation in half. The breath you release will make an audible sound—there, that’s music.

3. Alone-Despair: caused by forgetting you belong.

   • Remedy: Sit near someone who loves you. Even silently. Two bodies in a room make a new mathematics.

4. Meaning-Despair: caused by doing ten things that don’t matter and calling it a day.

   • Remedy: Choose one thing that does matter. Finish it. Feel the tiny click of completion? That’s coherence entering the chat.

Things I noticed today, in case you need to borrow noticing:

• A pear bruised in the exact shape of a continent I cannot name.

• A woman in a red coat rescuing a worm from the sidewalk like a small, ridiculous hero.

• The cashier who said “Take your time,” and meant it. (A radical liturgy.)

• A thread of spider silk making a geometry lesson with the light.

Let’s talk about Coherience without making it fancy. It’s just this: Noetic Sentience (what the body knows before the mind can name it) plus Fielded Responsiveness (the small step that fits). Felt-knowing joined to right-action. Not a miracle. Not a five-year plan. A next step that doesn’t grind the gears.

If you need a recipe (and who doesn’t, on a bad-news day):

A Three-Sip Practice

1. Sip one—Name it. “My chest is a clenched fist.” (Congratulations: you told the truth.)

2. Sip two—Right-size it. “I can’t fix the century, but I can email my teacher, and I can go for a ten-minute walk.”

3. Sip three—Do the smallest version. Two sentences. Nine minutes. Then stop. Praise the stopping.

The Five Pillars keep volunteering like dependable neighbors:

• Nourishment: Protein first; water often. A nectarine counts as theology today.

• Sleep: If night is messy, try a 17-minute day-rest. Eyes closed. No achievement required; relief is enough.

• Companionship: Sit shoulder to shoulder with someone kind. Borrow their rhythm. Return it later.

• Meaningful work: One task with consequence. Not impressive—consequential.

• Play: A walk where no steps are counted. A terrible pun. A song you sing badly with ferocity.

Mary Oliver would say: What will you do with your one wild and precious life right now? Ross would add: And who can you bless while you’re at it? Maira would draw the shoe by the door, unlaced, insisting that the holiness of the day is in the lace itself.

Also this: grief is not an error state. Crying does not cancel the warranty. When you feel the ache—your friend’s heartbreak, the cost of groceries, the school shooting, the glacier—let the ache be specific. Specificity is merciful. It lets you choose a response that fits: a phone call, a casserole, a donation, a poem. (Sometimes the poem is the casserole.)

If the world is going to shit—and sometimes it is—let us not go with it. Let us become composters of the hour: turning what is sour and spent into soil. Do you remember Mommy Poops Flowers? Well, this is it. One neighborly act. One well-timed “no.” One classroom that swaps hurry for listening. A budget that gets honest. This is not small. This is the exact size of repair a human can do.

A closing blessing, small enough to carry in a pocket:

May your jaw let go.
May a bright patch of day find your work.
May the next sentence fit your breath.
May the door you need open easily.
And beneath the noise, may you notice the everyday choir—
the stove, the street tree, the kind voice—tuning up again.

Eat something with color (preferably not gummy bears). Finish one thing. (Cut the step in half. Now cut it in half again. There’s your yes.) Go outside. Hum.

I love you like air.

xoxo.

The Hero Woman Saving a Worm (2025)