A Hug in One Word: Sonder

May 1st is Beltane, the midpoint between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. We are at peak spring! And I imagine there are lots of things marking your calendar this spring – maybe some fun, some stressful, some everywhere in between. I hope it feels like the right mix for you! 

My own spring calendar has also had a little bit of everything – but the biggest, by far, has been heart surgery for my husband, Jack, a few weeks ago. Jack is doing so (so!) great. Thank you to everyone who has offered support and care!

My mind isn't great at holding on to dates and I'm guessing I won’t remember the surgery’s exact calendar date, but I’m equally sure I’ll remember the year and the season. It feels like one of those events that holds weight, marks time, shifts perspectives. I'm still figuring out all the things I learned, but one thing that time in a hospital definitely highlights is sonder:

“SONDER: (noun) The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.” (From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows)

Everybody in the waiting room, every staff person, everyone everywhere has their own epic story. (Maybe this is why The Pitt is so captivating? ) It is awe-inspiring to recognize the vast web of interconnected humanity, where I’m just one, small being. It doesn’t make my story any less special – but, like seeing the street from the top of the Empire State Building, it does help me expand my perspective and cling a little less tightly to my own stories. It’s an exhale. I find it comforting to imagine sonder’s web of connection, across “elaborate passageways,” like an invisible net of support – like a cosmic hug. I’m sharing in case you find sonder to be a hug, an exhale, or anything else helpful!

5 more resources related to sonder:

✨ A 3-minute video from author and researcher Damon Centola on the power that comes from our interconnection – and how we can use it for social change.

✨ Common humanity is one of the three components of self-compassion. Try Kristin Neff’s 5-minute “general self-compassion break” to see how it works.

✨ Katherine K. Wilkinson, author of Climate Wayfinding and co-editor of All We Can Save, on a 34-minute podcast talking about using our place in our network for positive social change.

✨ Rosemary Wahtola Trommer’s poem: “Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart is Not Breaking”

✨ Thank you to my friend, Frazer McGlinchey for introducing me to the word “sonder.” In addition to cool words, he shares wonderful meditations and poems. 

+ Community Highlight  

On the subject of networks + connection, I'm excited for the first Community Member Highlight with Amy Circosta: Women leaders often carry disproportionate weight at work: delivering extraordinary results while absorbing outsized costs. Amy Circosta names this dissonance Imposter Conditioning™, and she founded Re:visionary Leadership to help women expand their perspective, decide what's theirs to carry, and lead from a more grounded, calibrated place. Amy welcomes connections on LinkedIn!

Amy Circosta