We’ve all experienced this phenomenon in large and small parts of our lives. We know it’s unreasonable, but we expect things to keep getting better. We want the stock market to keep trending up. We want to keep earning interest on our bank account. We want to keep getting better at our jobs. We want to improve our weaknesses, hone our parenting skills. We want to stay connected to friends. We want them to stay connected to us. We want our romantic relationships to flourish. We want our spiritual lives to be rich and rewarding.

Yet sometimes we won’t be measuring up in a category or two. And the people who care about us will ask, “How are you doing?” But what it feels like they want to hear is that you are doing great, things are getting better, everything is OK.

Except you’ve never felt more alone.

You can’t remember the last time you felt so exposed, or detached, or bereft.

You find yourself oversharing with friends when you get a chance to talk because you don’t even know where to start.

You end another day feeling like you didn’t keep all the spinning plates of parenting balanced the way you wanted.

You have to trust that the thing you said to your spouse isn’t going to wreck everything again.

Everything can feel so fragile.

And you feel the pressure to keep giving a good report.

Sometimes, we aren’t doing great. Sometimes we are just struggling to feel normal on a given day, even when we’re going full throttle with self care, taking a breath and staying present every time we are aware enough to think of it.

One of my favorite grounding activities these days is breathing deeply over my peppermint essential oil.

It brings me back, gently back to the ground so I can start treading on earth again.

Or tonight, it’s Afrobeats on Pandora so I can just move and be present with my body, but get lost in the music.

I’m not getting an A in everything. In fact, I’m pretty sure I got a C- in gong bath last week. And we won’t talk about the more serious subjects, because you’d rather just have a positive report anyway, if we’re being honest?

This post is an invitation, to let your friends and family be in a trough, a downturn in the market, so to speak. Don’t be afraid to let them be vulnerable with you. They aren’t going to be in the valley forever, and it’s so much harder to be in the valley if you have to pretend you aren’t.

This is an invitation, if it’s you in the valley – it’s OK to stop for a moment and just scrape your sores with a broken piece of pottery for a little bit. Just sit there and feel miserable and be OK with it. Then, get up and keep walking forward, even if it feels like you aren’t doing it right, even if you can’t see the way.

Eventually, something will give. You can’t stay at the bottom forever.