We All Need Soft Things In Hard Times 🧸
Let’s just name it.
The world is a lot right now. Not in one clean, dramatic way that’s easy to point at, but in that slow, accumulated, background-hum way that’s harder to shake. The cost of everything keeps climbing. The news doesn’t stop. The distance between what we earn and what we need seems to narrow every time we stop to look. And somehow, in the middle of all of it, we’re still expected to show up for work, for family, for the hundred small obligations that make up a functioning adult life.
It’s a lot. And I think more of us are quietly carrying more of it than we let on.
The First Thing We Put Down Is Ourselves 🤕
There’s a pattern I’ve noticed, in myself and in conversations across this community, where the things that actually restore us become the first casualties of a difficult season.
Attending the munch goes on the maybe list. The new onesie stays in the wishlist. Even the simple act of padding up, settling in, and letting the week go for a few hours starts to carry a faint undercurrent of should I really, right now?
When money is tight and anxiety is loud, anything that looks like indulgence gets quietly deprioritised. We tell ourselves we’ll enjoy it properly when things ease up. When we’ve earned it. When it feels less complicated.
The problem is that day has a habit of not arriving. And in the meantime, we’ve spent months rationing the very things that actually help.
Comfort Isn’t a Reward. It’s a Resource. 💗
The diaper, the plushie, the familiar onesie, the warm drink in the favourite sippy cup. These aren’t treats we earn at the end of a hard stretch. They’re part of how we get through it.
When the world is asking more of us than usual, the answer isn’t to put down the things that hold us. It’s to reach for them more deliberately, and with less guilt attached.
This community has always understood something the wider world doesn’t quite have language for. That ordinary objects, used with intention and without shame, can carry extraordinary weight. A specific crinkle. A familiar print. The particular comfort of something that is entirely, unapologetically yours. These things aren’t small. Especially not right now.
You don’t need to justify reaching for them. You just need to actually do it.
On Gratitude — Without the Toxic Positivity 💖
I want to tread carefully here, because there’s a version of gratitude that papers over real difficulty. The relentlessly cheerful count-your-blessings response to genuine hardship that mostly makes people feel worse for not feeling better. That’s not what I’m pointing at.
What I mean is something quieter.
In seasons where new things feel out of reach, there’s something genuinely restorative about turning toward what’s already there. The diaper that’s been in your drawer. The plushie that’s been on the shelf for a bit. The community that exists whether or not you can afford to travel to an event or add something new to your collection. The Friday ritual that costs nothing except the decision to slow down and take it.
We don’t always need the next thing. Sometimes the thing that already works is sitting right there, waiting for us to stop saving it for a better day.
You’re Allowed to Need This More, Not Less 👐
If the last few years have had you reaching for your comfort more often, good. That’s not weakness. That’s knowing what you need and giving it to yourself, which is quietly one of the harder things to learn.
ABU has been part of this community for eleven years. What that time tells me is that people keep showing up for the things that matter to them, even through uncertainty. They keep making space, however small, for the part of their lives that feels most like themselves.
That space is worth protecting. Particularly when everything else is pressing in.
So if you’ve been waiting for permission, here it is.
Go put on a diaper
– Miles // Tigger
