The World Is Heavy. Here's How I'm Coping.

It’s been… a lot to simply be human in the United States of America.

United? We’ve never been further from that.

Lately, I’ve found myself bursting into tears in the most mundane moments—folding laundry, answering an email, unloading the dishwasher. The tears come not because of anything happening in that moment, but because of the constant drumbeat of uncertainty, cruelty, and division that has become the backdrop of our lives.

How am I supposed to function as a wife, a mother, and a full-time employee when every headline feels like another wound? When every scroll through social media feels like I’m inhaling secondhand fear and rage? What am I supposed to do with all of this—with my grief, my confusion, my anger? What am I supposed to tell my kids?

What the hell is going on—and how do we make it stop?

We all know about fight or flight, but we often forget there’s a third response: freeze.

Freeze happens when our minds and bodies are so overloaded with fear and stress that they simply shut down. It’s the paralysis of feeling like there are too many fires to fight, too many battles to choose between, and no safe way forward.

Right now, the modern world is built to keep us frozen. Notifications ping at all hours, delivering a never-ending stream of bad news directly to our hands. Social media algorithms are designed to show us the most inflammatory, terrifying content because fear holds our attention.

“Be afraid!” the headlines scream.

“Be angry at the other side!” the comments demand.

“Conform—or else!” the subtext whispers.

The result? A constant state of unsettledness.

That’s the word that keeps circling in my mind lately: unsettled.

We are unsettled in our homes, unsettled in our politics, unsettled in our spirits. As a mother, it feels like we’re collectively laboring to birth something good into the world, but instead of the miracle of new life, we are stuck in a never-ending nightmare, exhausted and raw, with no relief in sight. That’s a hell if I ever named a hell, right?

The constant “othering” we see online and in the news—the endless division of us vs. them—is tearing at the very fabric of our communities. And the truth is terrifying: if we don’t find our way back to one another, we don’t make it out of this intact.

I knew I must unfreeze, so I did something.

A dear friend of mine invited me to a night of meditation and community at his workplace. This friend radiates peace in a coregulatory way, and I knew I needed to be around that energy.

That evening, I walked into a candlelit room where soft scents filled the air and strangers breathed in rhythm together. For the first time in a long time, I felt safe. Just for a moment, the noise of the world faded. My muscles relaxed. I metaphorically touched grass.

He handed me a book at the end of the evening that he was so excited to give me: The Law of Light by Lars Muhl. The book explored the hidden teachings of Jesus—not as a set of rules, but as an invitation to live from love.

Muhl writes that “Light is not something outside of us to be sought, but a reality within us to be remembered.” For me as a Christian, I value the teachings of Jesus for what he really stood for— radical love – and not what many others claim in his name. When I rest in that love, I am reminded that fear divides, but love unites. Fear paralyzes, but love mobilizes. Fear feeds the algorithms, but love creates real change. I sat there with tears in my eyes, realizing: this is how we fight the fear. Not by consuming more fear, but by cultivating love, first within ourselves, then rippling outward.

But here’s the hard part: we can’t cast love into the world if our minds are filled with nothing but fear and anger.

So I made a choice: 15 minutes max on social media each day.

Not because I want to be naive or turn a blind eye to what’s happening, but because I can’t fight for good, I can’t let laundry bury me alive and miss out on the many neat things I can offer to myself, my family, my friends, my community, if I’m drowning in despair. I want to be informed, yes. But I also want to dance in my kitchen with my kids, laugh with my husband, and savor the fleeting moments of life.

The dance doesn’t erase the darkness—it defies it.

Staying in the dance is an act of rebellion. It’s saying: You cannot steal my joy. You cannot freeze me into silence. I will stay awake, but I will not live afraid.

The world is loud and dark right now. But darkness isn’t the end of the story.

And so now, every morning, I take a deep breath and ask myself: How can I be a light-bearer today? How can I embody compassion, forgiveness, and curiosity in a way that brings safety to those around me?

The world doesn’t need more noise. It needs more light. And that light is already within us. We cannot control the chaos, but we can choose what we carry. I am choosing love. I am choosing light. And maybe, just maybe, that’s how we melt the freeze and find our way back to one another.

Meg Raby is a mom, children's author of the My Brother Otto series, and Autistic residing in Salt Lake City where you can find her playing and working with neurodivergent children as a Speech Language Pathologist and friend, or writing and planning big things in the second booth at her local coffee shop that overlooks the Wasatch Mountains while sipping on her Americano. Meg believes the essence of life is to understand, love and welcome others (aka, to give a damn about humans).