I make myself tea several times a day. While the water boils, thoughts wander off. A tiny pocket of time holds me still.

Sensitivity is often treated as a liability, yet it may be what allows us to endure, to notice beauty, and to remain in dialogue with a world larger than our pain. Wonder is the small opening that reminds us of this.

Sometimes the most human thing we can offer is presence - a steady willingness to sit beside someone as they learn to meet a world that has been permanently changed.

If breath begins every phrase I play, then perhaps this beginning also starts with one steady breath, set down in writing.