I tried to call someone on my calculator this week.

The call could not be completed as dialed. In case you were wondering.

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I spend a lot of time considering what women need to survive and thrive. It’s a fluid endeavor because we’re a mysterious crowd and quite responsive to our context. As the climate around us changes, what we need to flourish in it also shifts.

Take social media, for instance. It has undeniably changed the landscape of association and interaction. How do we handle the bombardment of opinions and images of hundreds of people in a healthy way when our insides are so given to comparison and insecurity?

Consider the barrage of discord and violence we’ve invited into our hearts and brains when their nurturing nature is bent towards worry and fear. What does it take to bloom bravely in a garden of bad news?

Amid a national epidemic of high profile sexual harassment and abuse scandals, how do we retain our sense of value when it is often so tied to how others treat us? How do we assimilate the entrenched victimization of women, as revealed by the #MeToo movement, without accepting the jaded, angry heart pervasive abuse conjures?

In a body-obsessed culture, how do we make peace with our genetics without swinging into unhealthy territory on either end of the spectrum?

In the age of accessibility, where we can be reached by text, email, call, LinkedIn, Facebook, GroupMe, Instagram, Snapchat, and FaceTime (not our calculators yet), how do we protect a quiet that is vital to our peace? How do we maintain ownership over our time and thoughts when our devices have given them away to everyone?

Sometimes I pause to realize I’m disappointed with the whole world. All of it. All of its trinkets and corners. And, consequently, that makes me sullen and skeptical and guarded and pointy. Then, in the next breath, I recognize I am the common denominator in that 360° blast of disillusionment. I have to fight for my own heart and perspective. I am in a battle to retain the gentleness and hope, constancy and faith our society wars against. You are too.

What does it take to bloom bravely in a garden of bad news?

It requires counterintuitive honesty. More than just about anything, we want to hear, “You are not in this woman thing alone.” We want to know we aren’t the only ones dialing whole phone numbers on the calculator app on our phones.

We want to know that you yell at your kids, that you don’t wash your sheets as often as you think you should, that you are pasting a smile over a hurt you don’t know how to fix. Not because it’s any of our business……it’s not, but because it cheers us on in our own struggles, freeing both of us from fake rules about how to be women.

#MeToo is a primal collective cry against sexual violence (thank God!), but we want to hear it in other arenas as well.

You are panic-stricken over the safety of your children at school? Me too.

You take medication for anxiety and depression and can’t function without it? I have too.

You have a gaping, silent hurt that you ignore until an innocuous trigger causes it to boil over into your day; I have known that life.

You continue in a busyness that is shredding your soul even though you know you can’t go on like that indefinitely? Me too.

You bully yourself with a refrain of not enough…not pretty enough, not strong enough, not good enough. I’ve done that too.

Sometimes you rely on coffee more than you do God. Same.

You self-medicate with This Is Us and ice cream; we are connected souls.

You lie awake at night thinking every twinge indicates cancer? Me too.

You hate how your legs look in shorts? Ditto, friend. All of it…..

Me too.

 It requires living beyond ourselves. In a world decorated with drivel, the antidote is purpose. Without intentionality, it’s easy to allow the world to paint our days with noise. A steady diet of which leaves us feeling hollowed out. Empty. An inner yuck similar to the physical aftermath of an over-indulgence of fried food. Ick. There is something in us that has to believe there is more to life than self-driving cars, instant pots, Matcha, and Whole 30.

We have an innate desire to be a part of something larger than ourselves, a work that will outlive us. There is a substance-hungry drive in us that must plug in to a giant good. This satiates something timeless in us while feeding hope and optimism (I know of an organization working to help formerly incarcerated women write new stories upon release, if you’re interested ;-).

It requires a recalcitrant faith. We are in constant sensory overload. All of the messaging and imagery screams, “Seeing is believing.” But the words in the messages and the stories in the images aren’t necessarily true. Today necessitates a critical eye for truth and a shrewdness for detecting the false. The need for definitive Truth has never been greater, and from it we boldly assert, “What I believe informs what I see. Believing is seeing.”

Circumstances say, “Look at her mug shot, the list of her charges, the number of times she’s been arrested. It’s an age-old cycle impossible to break.” Seeing is believing.

Grace says, “I was lost but now I’m not. I see my own story in her eyes. Me too, sister.” Believing is seeing.

This is not a sissy faith. It is a tender revolution of belief.

Want to bloom bravely in a garden of bad news?

Ditto, friend. Me too.