(Above is an audio version you can use for a walking meditation)
Thanksgiving didn’t unfold the way I hoped. Everything seemed to compound: the elevators were broken at my father’s memory care facility, my mother needed help that felt endless, and small irritations hit with the force of a lightning strike. A stranger recoiled at my dogs; my mom asked for one more absurd favor; my brother tried to be helpful and I bit his head off.
It all built into this overwhelming feeling of being trapped—physically in malfunctioning hallways and stairwells, emotionally in a family system that’s slowly unraveling, spiritually in a story I can’t control.
By the time I drove home, I was shaking with rage, exhausted, and stunned by my own reactions. My stress tracker confirmed what I already felt in my bones: I was maxed out, overstimulated, and emotionally hungover the next morning.
Seeing what’s beneath the outburst
After some rest—and after listening back to the emotional meditation I’d recorded—I realized the truth beneath the anger: I’m scared.
My mother can no longer keep track of simple things. She can’t hold a schedule in her mind. I know another level of care is coming. I’ve already been grieving the loss of my father’s mind for years. Now I’m quietly (ok, maybe not-so-quietly) grieving my mother’s too.
Of course my body was sounding alarms.
My blood pressure was the highest it’s ever been.
My readiness score was down.
Everything in me was saying: This is too much for me to bear.
And yet I kept pushing, kept trying to make sense of it, kept trying to argue my case to myself, to God, to the world. I wanted to be right, to justify my reactions, to insist that everything and everyone else was wrong.
But as Eckhart Tolle gently warns, the ego loves that game of being right. And pain loves an audience.
Stepping back before stepping forward
It wasn’t until late the next day that something softened. I finally acknowledged the deeper truth:
I wasn’t just angry. I was heartbroken.
I wasn’t just reactive. I was overwhelmed.
I wasn’t just irritated. I was grieving.
So I called my mother and apologized—not because she was right but because I finally recognized the place inside me that was raw and frightened. I saw how quickly we mistake a temporary emotional surge for our entire identity. How quickly we rehearse and repeat the story of our pain before it has had a chance to settle.
Walking helped.
Breathing helped.
Stepping away helped.
These small practices don’t erase the hard realities, but they create a buffer between the initial emotional eruption and the part of us capable of clarity.
Making space for reality…and grace
So much of social media thrives on the opposite: instant outrage, rants that go viral, quick conclusions, emotional performances rewarded with likes. It teaches us to escalate, not to integrate. Don’t think, just react.
But contemplative practice invites another way:
Pause.
Breathe.
Let the emotion crest without clinging to it.
Let the meaning come later—not in the moment of eruption but in the moment of honesty that follows.
Sometimes that honesty arrives on a quiet walk. Sometimes in a journal. Sometimes in tears. Sometimes in recognizing that no one else can fix the imbalance inside us—not our parents, not our therapists, not even God in the way we imagine.
What we can do is create a little space for grace to move.
A practice for you
If you’re participating in the Holiday Sanity Challenge with me this season, I invite you during one of your walks to consider a situation that makes you feel trapped or reactive. Notice how your body contracts. Notice the heat or tightness or restlessness that rises.
As your body continues to move, ask yourself, What is really going on here?
Don’t demand an answer.
Don’t force clarity.
Just invite it.
Let it come on its own time.
Often, that’s the beginning of wisdom: the willingness to breathe, wait, and allow meaning to surface rather than wrestle it to the ground.
Walking doesn’t solve everything. But it softens the edges enough that we can finally hear the truth beneath the noise.
