back porch kittens
sometimes it is too hard for me that we cannot save the whole world by tomorrow. total empath dilemma; I know. we still haven’t figured out suicide and there are kids being torn from their families at the border, and the oceans are in trouble, too. it can be so hard here.
in my overwhelm, I decided to turn my brain off and nap on my couch last night, with Cricket, my big fluffy doodle curled up by my side. She is such a love; a big-hearted, boundless, and unapologetic Enneagram 7, either in the middle of chaos, eyes wide, or needing to hold my hand with her paw when she is at rest.
Lemon, though, has straight, sleep hair and an even bigger heart. She’s an Enneagram 2. Every night, she lays on the couch where she can see out the back door to see if the kittens she found last week are less afraid, and have popped out from under the steps. As I tried to doze off, she whined and sang, whined and sang, to let me know that they were back, they were out there, searching around. She could see them. She could see that they needed help.
Next thing I know, I have 20 cans of soft kitten food in a grocery cart in the middle of my neighborhood Ingles, along with some bacon treats for my big-hearted black dogs. I went straight to the backyard to make sure the wide-eyed kittens who wander there had something to eat. If I can’t go to the tent cities in Texas and run trauma therapy, I could at least feed the kittens.
“One step at a time,” my friend Jason reminded me today. Last week, I ordered stainless steel straws and started recycling my La Croix cans, as I cannot sit with the thought that my sparkling water habit could help take down an ecosystem. Tomorrow, I’m teaching a cycle class that will raise money for Alzheimer's Association. I had a call with some brilliant minds this past week who I’m consulting with on a project that very well could make a global dent in mental health stigma AND relationship abuse. I sent money to ACLU last night because they DO have people who can go fight for the kids in the Texas tent cities.
Our hearts beat for things, for reasons. Listen to them. If you can’t save the whole world, save a little piece of it where you are today, and I swear — we really will make it to the whole thing, eventually.
