# Falling Toward Each Other
There’s a particular kind of groundlessness that can strike at any point in life—when the path you thought you were walking suddenly disappears. I know this feeling intimately right now. It’s not about aging skin or empty nests or even mortality—it’s the sudden, disorienting realization that the path you thought you were walking has disappeared. I’ve had my share of wins and devastating losses, built things and watched them crumble, loved deeply and grieved profoundly. Hard-won wisdom earned through all that living. And yet here I am, having to make peace with something difficult: the way I thought life would play out—traditionally, safely, with clear signposts—is not the way for me or for any of us. And I suspect you’re in this freefall too.
And here’s what I’m realizing: I’m not alone in this. None of us are.
Look around. The world itself is in freefall. Protests in the streets. Shootings that shatter communities. Systems we thought were solid revealing themselves as fragile, failing, fundamentally broken. Everyone is trying to make sense of it, clinging to old certainties, searching for the familiar path. But what if the old maps are obsolete? What if this moment—personal and collective—is asking something entirely different of us?
Bruce Springsteen just released a protest song, “Streets of Minneapolis,” about what’s happening in Minnesota. When I heard it, something in me exhaled. Finally. Someone with a platform using their voice, speaking truth into the chaos. We had Bob Dylan back in the day, giving voice to a generation’s upheaval. Some of us were part of that generation—we lived through Vietnam, Kent State (do our young people even know about Kent State?), a time when “The Times They Are A-Changin’” wasn’t just a song but a rallying cry for justice in the face of deep injustice.
We know what generational shift feels like. We’ve lived through it before. And now here we are again, in a different moment but with the same stakes. Who’s going to answer the call this time? Who’s going to help us create a new world from the rubble of the old one?
What if it’s a partnership? Our youth keep us moving forward with their energy, their urgency, their refusal to accept the unacceptable. And we share our experience, our wisdom—the kind you can’t learn from books or podcasts but only from living through upheaval and coming out the other side. Both generations need each other. The young remind us not to become complacent. We remind them they’re not alone, that change is possible because we’ve seen it happen.
And then I realized: maybe the question isn’t “who” but “how.” How do we stop retreating into our private grief and fear and instead join together—not through dependency or performance or looking to others to save us, but through solidarity, courage, and the willingness to witness each other fully?
We can’t do this alone. But we also can’t do it the old way—losing ourselves in others, waiting for one leader to save us, seeking oneness that erases our individual voices and identities. We’re being called into something different: **solidarity**. Standing together while remaining whole. Each of us fully ourselves, choosing to show up for one another.
Look at what’s happening in Minnesota—people are putting their bodies on the line, risking everything, not because they’ve merged into one mass but because they’ve chosen solidarity. They’re standing alongside each other, distinct voices unified in purpose. That’s the model. That’s what we need now—not fusion, but solidarity. Not dependence, but interdependence. Not performing for each other, but witnessing each other.
That’s the freefall. The groundlessness. The terror of discovering that all the scaffolding we built our lives on—the roles, the relationships, the familiar patterns—can’t hold us in the same way anymore. But maybe the fear is misplaced. Maybe we’re not falling into the abyss—we’re falling toward each other. Maybe solidarity—people choosing to show up for one another, risking something, standing together even when it’s hard—is actually the most solid ground there is. More reliable than any individual path we thought we were walking. More enduring than the old maps that promised safety but led us here, to this moment of collective reckoning.
This is what it means to be a wise warrior at midlife. Not the warrior who fights battles for glory or recognition. But the one who has lived enough, lost enough, loved enough to know: the real courage is showing up fully as yourself, in solidarity with others.
So here’s the question: What are you waiting for? The old maps are gone. The familiar ground has crumbled. But we’re not falling alone—we’re falling toward each other. And that’s exactly what we need to build something new.
This is our moment. Not to retreat into private grief or fear. But to rise, together, and use every bit of wisdom we’ve earned to help create the world we need.
