In early April of 2020, I held my first Virtual Coffee. I had recently lost my job because of COVID, and I felt alone and isolated. I didn’t imagine that I’d still be doing Virtual Coffee today. I didn’t imagine that I’d make some of the closest friends that I’d ever had. I didn’t imagine that I’d experience the greatest losses of my entire life with them. Nothing in life could have prepared me for this.

I have watched two women go through miscarriages. I have cried along with them. I have heard the devastation of our community as they feel stuck in toxic and abusive jobs and relationships and families. I have heard the mental health and neurodiverse journeys that have impacted our decisions, our ability to be excited, to find joy, to understand ourselves the the world around us. I have seen the burnout. I have heard the silence. I have felt the desperate grasp to stay afloat. To provide for a family. To go through another job interview after all of the others that made us feel empty, unworthy, like we can’t do this one more time without damaging the core of our being.

I have felt this deeply with every person who has shared in our community. And I have spent nights crying for them, crying with them.

I have felt the loss of a friend, a community member.

And nothing, and no one, can possibly prepare you for that. For any of this. It’s not logical. It doesn’t make sense. There is an emptiness in the world that wasn’t there before. There is a person whose smile you used to see, whose laugh you used to hear that isn’t there anymore.

And no one can prepare you for that. For how to support a community of people as you all experience it in different parts of the world, in spaces where you can’t hug each other, where you can online cry together on zoom and hope that you are doing enough and making the right decisions and telling people in the right way.

No one prepares you for that. And it’s hard. And it’s deep.

No one can prepare you to meet your closest friends and mentors. No one can prepare you for what happens when you care so much about every person you meet in that community. You are certainly fortunate to have that depth and support, but it hurts so badly sometimes. And in those moments, you do your best to love the people around you, to reach out to the people who aren’t, and to accept that crying together is sometimes the best you can do.