A few days ago, I saw a post from an acquaintance on Facebook. “I am so tired of all this nonsense,” she wrote. “The protests, the constant vigilance, the never ending horrible stories, when does it all stop? I am so tired.”

I paused when I saw that post, by a white, middle-aged, cis-gendered woman who is middle class, and thought, you are lucky to be able to walk away. Because my colleagues, friends and family members who are black, indigenous, hispanic, Asian, LGBTQ+, non-Christian, immigrants and disabled don’t have that choice. They don’t get to walk away. They don’t get to hide their heads in the sand, decide it’s all too much and I’m just going to ignore it all. Because this is what they have lived with in this country for decades. As my husband said, if John Lewis gave up when he was tired, he would have quit in 1969. And, yes, it’s exhausting. It’s hard to keep up with everything. It’s stressful to wonder if lawfully expressing your outrage will result in you being harassed, targeted or worse. But how do we keep this up?

We stagger our breathing.

When I was in high school, I was in my school’s choir and band. And one thing I learned during that time was that choirs and bands, they can hold out notes for impossibly long periods of time. How do they do that? By staggering their breathing. When a group of musicians are holding out a note, you are told, breath when you need to, but not when the person next to you is breathing. By doing that, the sound continues even though each individual person is taking a short break when they need it. This is what we need to do now. We need to stagger our breathing.

This is our time to work together to make sure everyone is coordinated. Maybe we don’t all go to that protest, but most of us do and the handful that stay home go next time. We take turns, we find other ways to spell each other. We find other ways to protest. Maybe some of us do letter writing campaigns, some do text messages, some march on the streets. And we take a break periodically to rest, recharge and then start again.

Last month Rev. Megan Foley told us we have been training for this and this is one way we get through. This is why we create partnerships to support each other in this work. By taking time to support each other, coordinate our efforts and keep pushing forward. Because when we stagger our breathing, we all get that quick break that helps us keep going to create the music we want to share.