Gabrielle Feather on Substack: “What if the invitation is to practise enoughness?”

“There are particular common qualities I notice in those who cannot look away.

Collapse-aware people are not ordinary in their sensitivities. We are porous, often painfully so. We notice the small shifts in tone, temperature, atmosphere. The eerie silence where there was once a dawn chorus, the lack of life on a rocky beach shore, the weight in a child’s question. We practice compassion like a sacred vow, though it often feels more like a burden. We are intuitive, sensing patterns before they become visible. And yes, many of us are perfectionists, or perhaps better said, we feel the ache of what could be, and hold ourselves accountable when life falls short.

These are exquisite traits. They are also exhausting.

Because what makes us tender also makes us vulnerable. Sensitivity becomes overwhelm. Intuition morphs into anxiety. Compassion turns to self-neglect. High standards collapse into paralysis. We end up blaming ourselves, for not doing enough, not being enough, not carrying the weight of the world with more grace.

Yesterday I took my children to a little park on the water where brand new ducklings were making their home. It reminded me so much of my childhood on the North Island of New Zealand, with its mudflats and estuaries, everything quaint, mild, a little unremarkable. Nothing like the towering forests and wild rivers of Tasmania that I’ve come to see as more “real” or soul-stirring. And yet standing there with my kids, I felt a pang of nostalgia. I was face to face with my own striving, this lifelong push to make things bigger, deeper, more extraordinary. And I wondered: how simple would life be if I were only here to replicate what I once knew, instead of always trying to outgrow myself? And then another thought came: on my deathbed, what will matter more, the hours I spent thinking about collapse, or the hours I spent simply present with my children by the water’s edge?…”