On Easter Sunday, I went to the beach. I took grief with me.

The day before, I had the privilege of attending a memorial—a kind of bullshit-free zone where people showed up raw and real. It was one of those rare spaces where love and grief exist side-by-side without pretense. Again and again, people said things like, “He was my best friend. He saved my life. I wouldn’t be here without him.”

In that circle of grief, I could feel the sacredness of what we were witnessing. People spoke without censure, honoring the life of their friend, listened with their hearts, with love, friendship, and mutual support.

We all carry our personal history. Even after decades of inner work, even when we’ve become a force for good in other people’s lives, even after deep insight—we may not be able to save ourselves. Who amongst us is immune from this truth?

We live in an age of socially engineered trauma. This isn’t just about our personal pasts. There is something larger, something insidious: the intentional spread of chaos and cruelty designed to destabilize us. It’s an assault on the nervous system that makes us more vulnerable, more likely to fall back into patterns we thought we had outgrown.

That’s why we need to pay attention to the signs.

If your go-to tools aren’t helping you find your center, it’s not because you failed. It’s a signal: you’re in over your head. That’s when we need to find our way to shallower waters. Sometimes we need life rafts.

Start with self-awareness. What are your early signs of dysregulation? Do you freeze or go numb? Maybe you feel the need to fight, flee, or disappear altogether. These are real responses. And when you’re outside your window of tolerance, the first thing to go offline is your memory of what helps.

Body awareness is essential. When the mind goes offline, the body still whispers. Can you notice the difference between flesh and something that feels like concrete? The sense of collapse, or the charge of fight in your limbs? Learning to listen to the body can give us a way back in when everything else feels scrambled.

Are there places that help you settle—somewhere that brings comfort or a sense of being more resourced? Sometimes, even when our thinking mind shuts down, the body remembers. A quiet pull to walk, to lie down, to be with a close friend or an animal you love, to go to the ocean—it can be a lifeline when words and thoughts aren’t available.

Community support matters. What are the feedback loops in your communities? Are there people who check in when you start going quiet? Do you have systems that reflect back when something seems off? We need more than individual resilience. We need networks of care.

To those in recovery, in helping professions, or simply committed to growth and awakening: this is our collective work now. Not just to heal ourselves, but to recognize the scale of what we’re up against and to create practices, feedback systems in our communities that help.

Grief walks with us. But so does love.

I say this with care, not to capitalize on a tragedy, but to offer support: Integrated Meditation is a 6-month program with tools, practices that may genuinely help at a time like this. If it feels resonant, I’d love to explore how to make this work accessible to you and your communities.

If we continue building the capacity we need to meet these challenging times—together, we honor the lives that have been dedicated to this pursuit, even when they no longer walk amongst us.

With care,

Amma Thanasanti