Sitting With What Is
Preface: It's been a rough week. My sweet 20-month-old cat, Inky, passed very suddenly after this was written. This letter holds what I was sitting with and learning while she was still here: presence, tenderness, and staying close even when things feel uncertain. Thank you for holding space for that with me.
My sweet kitty, Inky
Yesterday I took my usually friendly, playful, cuddly kitty, Inky, to the ER vet.
I could tell she hadn't been feeling well for a few days. She was more guarded, more withdrawn, sluggish. Her eyes just didn't look right.
Cats are tricky when something is wrong. A dog might whimper or become clingier, but cats are often stoic. It's almost as if they don't want to bother anyone with their pain. They pull inward. They suffer quietly. And often, by the time you can clearly see something is wrong, it's already urgent.
Which made me realize something uncomfortable and true:
I am a cat too.
When something is unsettling me, especially when I don't know how to fix it, I tend to get quieter, not louder. I withdraw. I wait. I don't shout about it online. I don't initiate long phone calls. I don't write long missives. I'm very good at minimizing what hurts by telling myself, āThis is going to be okay,ā or distracting myself in some other way.
And right now, the world, especially here in the U.S., is a heartbreaking place to be.
The lack of empathy is loud. Dehumanization is loud. Violence in both word and deed is loud. The absence of justice or accountability feels overwhelming. And yet, unless you really looked into my eyes, you might never know.
Having a tender moral center is not an easy thing to carry right now.
I feel a real tension living in me
I don't want to be silent. I don't want to perform outrage online. I am focused on building something beautiful and life-giving rather than reacting. And some days, that doesn't feel like enough.
What I am doing (creating, tending, teaching, walking, painting, holding space for emergence) is not escapism. It is countercultural care.
It quietly insists that:
life matters
beauty matters
bodies matter
listening matters
patience matters
boundaries matter
That doesn't replace speaking out. But it does stand in contrast to dehumanization in a way that actually nourishes others, and myself.
Still, I'm also learning that it's okay to feel the incompleteness of that.
Some days, the grief has to be felt before it can be metabolized into action, prayer, art, or rest.
Guarded Proximity
As Inky and I were navigating those uncertain days together, it felt like we were doing something very similar in response to our discomfort. We were practicing what I call Guarded Proximity.
Not hiding completely, even though we didn't know what we could do to help. Not ready for contact, but staying in the same room. Sitting with the tension of confusion braided tightly with grief.
That's not nothing.
That's how trust rebuilds: in cats, in people, and maybe even in a world that feels harsh and unforgiving.
Which brings me back to an image that presented itself last week as my symbol for 2026: the oyster and the pearl.
An oyster holding a pearl, Lori Poff Kellogg's symbol for 2026
When that symbol presented itself, it felt odd. I'm not one naturally drawn to the ocean. I crave the mountains and trees. I usually draw inspiration from forests and mythology.
But it occurred to me that the oyster and pearl symbol was something like the lotus flower. They both symbolize the theme of beauty from muck.
With one important difference: the lotus strives to create beauty from the mud, whereas the oyster isn't working at all. It's protecting, waiting, sitting with it.
The oyster doesn't eject the irritant. It stays with it. Layer by layer, something beautiful is formed.
Another example of guarded proximity. Another reminder that transformation doesn't always look like action first.
Sometimes it looks like sitting with it for a while.
We're In This Together
These days, I notice a lot of uncertainty, not just about the world, but about how to be in it. What to say. What not to say. When to act. When to wait.
I don't have answers, but I do believe this: we're allowed to be learners here. We're allowed to sit with the discomfort instead of rushing past it, to stay curious, to tend what is good and life-giving right where we are.
We don't have to know everything yet. We just have to sit with it and let our pearls become.