What does a post about sadness look like? Not heart-wrenching, deep sadness, just the kind that tugs at you, the kind you can fold up and keep at bay for minutes and hours with some distraction or another, the kind you try to ignore, the kind you don’t want to write about at all.

Maybe a post about sadness is really about loneliness, about spending all your time with two little creatures who pull and shout and call and ask and don’t leave you a moment to think, and still feeling lonely. About lying on the couch and literally struggling to breathe because both of your children have climbed on top of you, because you have an elbow in the neck and a knee in the ribs and a foot pulling your hair out of its roots, and still longing for company. About feeling guilty that you can long for company in the company of small people, who are so selfish but they can’t help it because that’s what they are, who they are, and no more can be expected of them. About counting down to bed time and getting through bed time and then sitting there alone in the quiet and feeling sadness and dread at being alone to surf twitter or read a book, instead of the relief and freedom you hoped you’d feel, you wanted to feel. About stopping mid-post once, twice, four times to deal with a food emergency, a bathroom emergency, a toy emergency. About hoping for a real conversation. About guilt, about self-judgement, about exhaustion.

Yes. The sadness is only the symptom. The post is today’s available medicine. There are years of this to go, and we all feel it, and we all take a deep breath and we all plough ahead and we all end up with tears in our eyes when we think no one’s looking. And then we breathe again. And then we pray. And then we stand.