Teammate Kelly ❤🌍🕉

Is anyone else completely exhausted by the onslaught of breaking news? We need to figure out how to connect away from the cycle. Avoiding long-term problems—for which there are viable solutions—leaves us feeling isolated and apart from each other. I’ve been realizing, more forcefully over the last few weeks, how much gets forgotten or pushed to the side when we’re constantly dealing with the latest outrage or trauma. It feels like we’re so at the mercy of current events that we can’t give our attention to the far-reaching consequences of some of the legislative and judicial decisions that are upending so many lives. This country has never dealt properly with its mental health crisis and, in the wake of COVID, the incidence and severity of psychiatric disorders will only increase. Failing to protect our children from gun violence, putting the health of pregnant people in the hands of those who do not value life, and leaving victims of rape and incest—even young girls—to the mercy of men in power who do not care about them is to exacerbate an already critically misunderstood and poorly-funded problem.