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I've been journaling with the Isolation Journals since its beginnings a little over a year ago. The prompts never cease to move me.

But when I was in Vermont last week, I did reach out to Liz. I said, “My brain is a bad neighborhood today.” She replied with two astonishingly helpful pieces of advice. (She always has such astonishingly helpful advice.) The first was mercy—to bring tenderness and compassion to the inherent dilemma of how hard it is to be a human being. The second was related: Take care of the animal—to tend to myself the way I would a recently rescued shelter pup, with care, soft rooms, and gentleness.

We have not protected each other from pain or loss (an impossible and futile goal). Rather we have committed to the wholeness of ourselves: to the people we were before our losses, the people we are during the worst, and the people we will be in whatever form our “after” takes.

As we have learned to trust these bright spots, we have begun to find guardians in the most unexpected places, like a hot shower and a change of clothes. In a spot of sunlight lighting up a hospital stairwell. In art, in pets, in the changing of seasons. In the barista who offers a free cup of coffee, the stranger who lets us take the elevator first, the nurse who brings a glass of water without being asked.