My dear reader.

As the holiday season (and all that that entails in an industrial consumer society) picks up speed, I find myself feeling extra sensitive. I’m quieter than usual, more quickly exhausted by noise and stimulus, and definitely more aware of my most tender emotions.

Part of it is that I miss my dad. Death sure can interrupt the cheery, normative, “family togetherness” vibe that permeates holiday messaging, huh? It’s one of many reasons that this time of year might feel painful for folks like me. I’m thinking as well of all the people who are estranged from family, or misunderstood and disrespected by family. The folks who don’t feel safe to be their full self, their real self. Those who are lonely, isolated, heartbroken. Or even those who unabashedly love this time of year and are navigating their own personal delight amidst collective pain — an experience I bet we’ve all at some point this year, and every year, because delight and pain have never not existed at the same time.

So yes, the sensitivity and tenderness I’m feeling is partly from grief, but it’s also due to how much (and I cannot overstate this) I viscerally loathe being bombarded by the non-stop ads and heightened consumerism that have come to define November and December here in the US (and elsewhere too, of course). All the corporate messages of “buy buy buy” are hitting me as especially bleak right now, set against the backdrop of a mounting number of people who do not have enough access to even the most basic necessities (and complicated by the fact that some families need to wait literally all year for Black Friday sales in order to be able to afford things that they’ve been priced out of the other 364 days).

It’s all just… a lot, and I honestly do not know a single person who is looking around at the world right now and thinking, you know what, this is fine.

So hi, hello, if you too are feeling crazed by the task of continually unsubscribing from shopping newsletters this week while also trying desperately to hold your boundaries with certain family members while also absorbing headlines about the increased strain on food pantries and new measures to criminalize homelessness, I promise that you are not alone.

I feel it as well, deeply, and one thing that is currently helping is to remember (and then actually try to practice) the African saying that I first heard from philosopher, writer, and activist Bayo Akomolafe: “The times are urgent; let us slow down.”