Spill The Beans

When I was young, there was a game called, Spill the Beans. Players would take turns adding one more bean to a pot, hoping their bean wasn’t the one to topple the pot full of beans. Kind of like the game, Jinga, yet with little plastic beans. If your bean was “that” bean, you lost the game.

Metaphorically speaking; we humans often do not know how full our ‘pot’ is until that one extra stressor comes along, or that one additional bit of bad news hits your psyche.

Yesterday was such a day for me. I felt ‘off’ the entire day, had a hummingbird take it’s last breath in my hand, and received news last night that one of the fox kits in our neighborhood was killed by a car. So sad, of course, yet this news about the sweet, little fox turned out to be my bean. It broke me wide open, somehow. I realized I had no where to put this news. I didn’t have room for it…and it kept coming back out in tears. I have been crying all day. They just keep coming, these wet things from my eyes. I am truly sad for the wee fox, yet I am also realizing that this deep grief cannot all be about the fox.

Years of Covid stress, the war in Ukraine, mass shootings every other day, political division, selfish humans, and the wildfires burning in our beautiful New Mexico (just to name a few), have packed my personal ‘pot’ full of beans to the hilt.

I just didn’t realize how much so until yesterday.

I reckon it is time to figure out a way to release the grief and sorrow, a new way to replenish the space needed for sad news, for I am not necessarily optimistic these days.

I know there will be more beans.