25 August 2026
Hard days do not have to be harder.
This past week has been an interesting one. I am continuing to recover from spinal fusion surgery. Slow and steady wins the race…just like snail mail. 😊
It has also been a heavy week for the people I love. There has been a loss, an illness, and a very old dog who will not be with us much longer. I will not say more than that, as those details belong to my friends and not to me. But it has been one of those stretches where the phone rings and you brace a little before you answer it.
Since everyone lives through weeks like this one, I thought I would write down a few reminders for myself. You are welcome to borrow them.
Hard Days Don’t Have to Be Harder
We all have difficult days, those uncomfortable, frustrating moments when everything seems to go wrong. As much as we might wish for a quick fix or a magic solution, there is not always one. And forcing yourself to “snap out of it” tends to stack a second problem right on top of the first.
So instead of fighting the way you feel, try meeting yourself with a little honesty and compassion.
Acknowledge how you really feel. I have spent a good many years around horses, and I have never met one that could pretend. A horse in a foul mood is simply in a foul mood, with no apology and no small talk about it. They are also uncannily good at catching a person doing the opposite. You can walk into a barn with a smile stapled on and that horse will know before you do! Being honest with yourself is really just extending yourself the same courtesy.
Give yourself permission to rest. I would love to tell you I learned this one gracefully. I did not. They fused my spine two months ago and rest simply stopped being optional. What has surprised me is how much of what I used to call laziness turns out to have been my body asking for something perfectly reasonable. Rest is not laziness. Apparently I needed surgery to believe it!
Talk to someone you trust. A phone call is a wonderful thing. But there is a reason I started writing letters. On the telephone you have to be ready…ready to talk, ready to be asked how you are, ready to have an answer. A letter asks none of that. You can say the hard thing slowly, in your own time, and the person on the other end gets to sit with it a while before answering you. So if picking up the phone feels like too much this week, write it down instead. A postcard counts!
You may not be able to change a hard day. But you can choose not to make it harder. Some weeks, slowing down and being kind to yourself is the whole of the job.
Peace and Love,Zuzu