“Submit Grades” — black, pixelated, sans serif font on a light grey button reminiscent of Windows 98 (I recognize the irony that this OS is older than my students). I click the button, hoping for some sort of confetti-free celebration to erupt from the overhead speakers, or at least across my computer screen.

No such outburst appears. I don’t even feel exuberant. I just feel….survival. A sense of “getting by”, rather than accomplishment.

I had planned on submitting grades the day before. But a morning therapy appointment boasting some hard processing followed immediately by a meeting about how to serve customers with a smile felt dichotomous and inauthentic. No one in that customer service meeting could see the salt on my cheeks, sticky and itchy from the quick recomposure swipe in my car moments before. Two hours of smiling through a salty facade was enough to wear me out. I dragged myself to my office and stared at my computer screen for 20 minutes before finally admitting defeat and going home for the afternoon.

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I’ve been relatively silent on my blog in recent months. I realize now it’s because I’ve historically chosen to share only what feels tidy and understood — not what’s messy and still unraveling. And I have been navigating a chapter that could turn a sweater into a skein.

Early this fall, I installed a piece of scrap paper over the window in my office door so that I could have privacy to change into my running clothes after work. But this semester that privacy screen has been used almost exclusively as a professor’s hiding place. In this challenging season the margin between “I’m okay” and “I’m unraveling” is the thickness of that sheet of paper. As a professor of anatomy, I’m supposed to tell you how your body is put together; I can’t let you see me fall apart.

It turns out that my sense of self was not strong enough to weather everything that’s happened since May: changing careers, selling my home, moving away from my people, choosing and subsequently losing a new community, training for a half marathon while sustaining and running through an injury (don’t tell my PT), settling into a new home space, seeking a new church family, and failing desperately at establishing a new routine. The past 7 months have been a series of just getting through the next thing: living one day at a time — one week at a time if I’m lucky.

I join reading groups and singing choirs in a bid for connection. I attend services at churches boasting being “A Home for Families” and feel the all-too-familiar pang of showing up solo. I attend communion and don’t feel community: foot washing services are one of the most vulnerable and uncomfortable activities for a newcomer, even a seasoned soloist like myself. So I just conveniently slip into the restroom and take a bit longer than normal behind the closed partition; if I’m going to be alone, I will at least make it on my terms.

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I’m not seeking pity or sympathy.

I am seeking authenticity. I am making a gamble that there are others who wonder if they’re the only ones who cry in their closet or silently sob behind a closed office door. I’m betting that someone else might think, “It’s not just me?” when they read of days and weeks and months that didn’t live up to expectations, and recognize a resonance with the rumination on what’s broken: the expectations, the environment, or me?

I’m here to tell you what I’m learning to tell the face in the mirror: You are enough. You are a delight. You are set with a purpose. You are given opportunities to exercise resilience and adaptability, which will ultimately serve you much better than the perfection you’ve been chasing. You are capable of loving and receiving love; begin with yourself. Perhaps simply existing is sometimes better than excelling.

Just because the salt on your cheeks is unseen doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. You are the salt of the earth; don’t lose your saltiness. Feel that stickiness as a reminder that someone else you encounter is wearing salt, too. Let your brokenness be a reminder to treat the world with gentleness. Be kind to people; and don’t forget that you’re people, too. Look that face in the mirror in the eye and say with sincerity, “I like you just the way you are.” That eye looking back might fill with brine that spills over onto cheeks that were just washed. But don’t lose your saltiness for the lie that is you need to be unbroken in a broken world.

Be broken. Be salty. And let those things make you gentle, not hard.

❤️‍🩹