💔 When the world is heavy and staying motivated feels impossible

Shaking up the newsletter order to share some thoughts 💛

What's happening: This past week has been devastating for our community, and I've been questioning whether personal goals even matter when the world feels this heavy.

What you'll find here: How I'm learning to hold both grief and joy, why choosing to keep going isn't tone-deaf, and what actually helps when motivation feels impossible.

The real talk: Sometimes the most radical thing we can do is refuse to let fear and cruelty take away our capacity for purpose and connection.

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Hey {{first_name}},

This past week has been heavy.

If you're a Latina like me, you've probably been carrying the weight of what happened in Minnesota—deaths and child arrests at the hands of ICE enforcement. Another reminder that our community isn't safe. That the people we love could be next. That the world we're navigating is becoming increasingly hostile to our very existence.

I've been sitting with this grief all week. The anger. The fear. The exhaustion of constantly having to prove our humanity while watching our community be dehumanized.

And honestly? I've been asking myself: What's the point of showing up to anything right now? How do we focus on work, on personal goals, on daily routines when children are being arrested? When families are being torn apart? When our people are dying?

It feels almost... wrong to think about anything else.

But then I opened the "warm fuzzies" folder in my inbox.

Every time a subscriber replies to a newsletter, I save it. There aren't hundreds of these emails—honestly, there aren't even dozens. But they're there.

Just recently, I heard from a subscriber about how something I wrote connected with them. And that small moment of connection? It brought me so much joy.

When our community is hurting—when children are being arrested, when families are being torn apart, when the world feels unsafe and cruel—it's easy to think personal goals and joy don't matter. That staying motivated is somehow selfish or tone-deaf. That we should put everything on hold until things get better.

But here's what my therapist reminds me, and what I'm slowly learning to believe: Joy is a powerful form of resistance.

Choosing to keep going with the things that matter to me—this newsletter, my health goals, my creative projects—isn't ignoring what's happening. It's refusing to let cruelty and fear completely define my existence.

It's not about pretending everything is fine or bypassing the grief. It's about holding both truths at once: Yes, this world is heavy and our community needs us. And yes, I still deserve to pursue things that bring me purpose and connection.

Because when I give up on the things that bring me joy and meaning, when I let fear shut down my capacity for creativity and connection, when I stop showing up for the work that matters to me—that's when they win.

So how do I actually find motivation when everything feels impossible? I lean hard into my community.

This week I texted friends just to say "this is heavy and I'm struggling." I showed up to our group chat not with solutions, but with acknowledgment: Life stinks right now. Can we just hold each other?

Because motivation doesn't always come from within—sometimes it comes from the people who remind you that you're not alone. That your goals matter because you matter. That joy—even in small pockets, even when it feels impossible—is something we owe ourselves. Especially when the world tries to take it away.

I won't lie to you and say I have this figured out. Some days, staying motivated feels easy. Other days, it feels like moving a mountain with a spoon (a freaking plastic spork, at that).

But I'm learning that motivation isn't about waiting for the perfect emotional state or ideal circumstances. It's not about pushing through alone with sheer willpower.

It's about giving yourself permission to struggle and to keep going. To question and to trust. To grieve and to create.

It's about remembering that you're not alone and that you can lean on others to get through.

It's about choosing joy—not because everything is fine, but because joy is one of the few things they can't take from us if we refuse to let them.