What We Miss When We Brace for the End: Reclaiming Presence in a World Worth Saving

A few years ago, I lived an entire year in quiet dread. Two of my senior dogs were declining at the same time, and I shifted into full caretaker mode—watching their bodies change, tracking every breath. I was consumed by anxiety. Every moment felt like a countdown, like I had to stay one step ahead of the inevitable. I didn’t just grieve their coming deaths—I lived inside that grief, day after day.

I thought I was doing the right thing, preparing myself for the loss. But what I didn’t see at the time was that I was slowly dying too—inside, in my spirit, in my heart. The way I was living—braced, clenched, hyper-vigilant—was hollowing me out.

And the worst part? I missed them.

Not their passing. Their living. That final year, they still had joy. They still rolled in the grass and followed me room to room. They were still alive—but I wasn’t present. I was wrapped so tightly in my fear of losing them that I couldn’t see what was right in front of me.

After they were gone, I didn’t just mourn them—I mourned the year I lost with them. I had been there, physically. But emotionally, I was already gone.

And now, I see this pattern everywhere—in myself, in conservation, in how we relate to the natural world.

We’re trained to look for threats. We scan for harm, brace for extinction, read every headline as a warning. And there’s truth in that—there is loss. But if we only focus on what’s dying, we forget to witness what’s still living.

Right now, rivers are being restored. Bison are walking again on tribal land. Western Monarchs are returning. A red-tailed hawk is circling over an open field. A coastal forest is regrowing. There’s beauty still moving through the world, but we have to be willing to lift our eyes and see it.

We can’t save what we refuse to look at with love. Not just urgency—love.

And here’s the thing about presence: it’s not easy. Not when you’re bracing for loss. Not when you’ve been taught to anticipate pain as a form of preparation. Presence sounds soft—but it’s not. It’s a discipline. A kind of internal rewiring. It asks you to stop scanning for what might break and instead notice what’s still whole.

Presence means letting yourself sit in the sun with a dog who still lifts her head when you walk in the room. It means noticing the way the wind moves through trees you’re afraid will be cut down. It means hearing the birdsong over the worry, even if only for a breath. It’s not denial. It’s attention.

It’s a return to what’s real—what’s right here.

Being present doesn’t mean we stop fighting. It means we remember why we’re fighting. It means we refuse to let the pain of what we fear eclipse the beauty of what remains. Presence roots us in the living world—not the abstract one we analyze or the tragic one we anticipate, but the real, breathing, messy, miraculous one that still exists all around us.

Alive in this moment. Not bracing, not grieving—just here. (Oregon Coast, captured during a time I vowed to stop missing what’s right in front of me.)

I missed so much by living only in the shadow of death. But what I’ve learned since is that being present isn’t passive. It’s powerful. It’s the courage to stay open. To witness not just the harm, but the wholeness. Not just decline, but vitality. Not just grief, but love.

That year of anticipatory grief nearly broke me. And I’m not willing to live that way again—not with my animals, and not with the earth. I want to see what’s alive. I want to stand beside it while it still breathes, and I want to remember that this—this—is the reason we fight.