The River Between Us

On the fragility of connection, the beauty of disagreement, and remembering we are all made of the same stuff.

Earlier this week, I had a rare moment to myself on our brown leather sofa. The house was quiet. The afternoon sun poured through the living room windows, painting long shadows across the rug and warming the cushions beneath me. Outside, the neighbor’s cat perched on the corner of our yard with the casual confidence of a creature who believes the world belongs to her. She was clearly considering peeing on our rosemary bush. I watched her tail twitch in indecision. Oh life.

I sat there, held in the warmth of a house that had been full all day, and let my eyes wander from the garden to my phone. I opened Facebook, that peculiar museum of past lives. Birthdays and baby announcements. Old teammates and teachers. Fragments of friendships that once held me close. There is a sweetness there, a tender tug at the threads that have carried me through different seasons.

And among them, someone I care deeply about. A woman whose presence is stitched into the fabric of one of the most fragile days of my life.

I was seventeen. It was late afternoon. I was driving home along a dusty country road, thinking about everything I still had to do before my parent-teacher council meeting. I was president of the student council that year. I remember wondering if I had time to stop for gas.

I don’t remember the accident itself. It happened in a matter of seconds. What I do remember is the stillness that followed, thick and unreal. The metallic taste in my mouth. The way the world had flipped upside down. The mix of dust and blood. And then she was there. One of the first to stop. She held a kind of quiet steadiness, the presence of someone who had lived more life than I had. A mother, witnessing a teenager still in the throes of becoming. She stayed with me until help arrived, anchoring me with the gentleness of someone who knows how to hold crisis without flinching.

Years passed. Life carried us in different directions. And yet I have always held that moment close.

So when I saw her post, something about vaccines that cut against the grain of everything I had spent over a decade learning and living in public health, I paused. I sat with it. I wondered if I should respond. I wasn’t sure. Not because I doubted what I knew, but because I wanted to speak without breaking something precious.

Eventually, I wrote back. Not to correct, but to add. I tried to offer my perspective gently, without erasing hers. I did everything I could to name the connection, to keep us tethered even as our views diverged. I hoped it might open something. A space for conversation. For curiosity. For care.

But the thread never blossomed the way I imagined. Another joined in and it began to feel like speaking into a room where everyone is talking but no one is listening. This happens so often now. One response, a few likes, then silence. We have grown wary of entering these conversations, not only on social media, but around dinner tables, in classrooms, in cafés, in the intimate hum of daily life. There is a kind of collective resignation that has settled into our bones, a quiet retreat from the discomfort of disagreement. And the silence does not soothe. It festers. The distance grows bulbous and tender, like a mythic blister swelling on the skin of a giant, pulsing with the ache of what we are no longer willing to say aloud. What once may have been a small difference calcifies into estrangement. And still, we scroll. Still, we look away.

And still, I want to believe. I want to believe that even here, amidst the curated squares and algorithmic noise, we can find ways to reach for one another. To remember what binds us. To speak our truths not as declarations of war, but as invitations. To stay human inside the complexity.

Because this is not just about one conversation. This is what it feels like almost every time. These encounters are tender and terrifying. Our voices quiver as we discover not just who the other is, but who we ourselves might be becoming. We swallow the lump of grief rising in our throats. We gasp for breath after life has knocked the wind from our lungs. And still, we press on.

Because we are going to disagree. And some of those disagreements will cut deep. Into memory, into trust, into identity. But that does not mean we are lost to each other.

I want to live in a world where we can hold paradox. Where gratitude and grief can live side by side. Where I can remember her kindness on that summer road and still say what I know now. Where our disagreements don’t dissolve the tenderness of what once was, or what still might be.

That’s what startles me most. How quickly we forget that we hold the same vision for the future. We were both speaking from the same desire. To protect. To understand. To build a life for our children that is safe, whole, and well. But the conversation snagged, as these things often do. One small rock in the current. A word misread. A fear unacknowledged. And suddenly the river we were both swimming in became a border. A dividing line.

But we are not on opposite shores. We are in the same river. And the current is strong.

I keep thinking about this. The way we get caught on the smallest things. A twig in the water. A glance. A sentence taken out of context. A single question asked too directly. We trip. We stop moving. We harden. We point fingers. We forget to look around and notice all that still flows. The wide water. The sky above. The hush of wind on our skin. The flower pushing its way through the thawing soil. The shared hope pulsing beneath the disagreement.

It is so easy to forget.

And yet, what if we didn’t? What if we stayed still for a moment and felt the water that connects us? What if, even in the sharpness of our fear, we dared to look up? To see not just the one word that hurt or the belief that startled us, but the vast, breathing world we both long for? What if we could hold our questions without throwing them like stones? What if we could speak not to convince, but to be seen?

Because here’s the truth. We will disagree. About vaccines, yes. And gender roles. And politics. And parenting. And the shape of a good life. We come from different stories, different wounds, different teachings. But the goal is not to erase the difference. The goal is to remain human to each other inside it.

To keep holding hands, even when our hands shake.

And they will shake. Because we are afraid. Because we are tender. Because sometimes, the truth is that being human is almost too much to bear.

We are the ones who liquify with joy when a friend shares her exciting news. Who feel the swell of tears at the corner of our eyes for someone else’s happiness. Who laugh until our spines curl and we fold into each other like origami made of breath. Who ache and ache and keep showing up anyway.

We are the descendants of stargazers and firekeepers. Of birth-bringers and bone-menders. Of storytellers and stubborn hope.

We are all, each of us, made from the same delicious stardust.

We are all in this river.

Changing all the time.

But also, all the same.

Let us remember. Let us reach. Let us refuse to let the twigs and the rocks and the old swollen silences keep us from the water that carries us forward.

Let us hold each other close. Let us let the river move us.

Together.