Hanging In There — Together

Every now and then, something small and unexpected stops me in my tracks. Not a headline. Not a speech. Not some grand moment of inspiration. Just a simple image — like this row of sheep dangling from a clothesline — that somehow says more about the human condition than most of the noise we’re surrounded by.

I keep coming back to this drawing, and I’ve been trying to understand why it hits me the way it does. On the surface, it’s playful. Cute, even. But underneath that whimsy is a truth I’ve been feeling in my bones lately: most of us are just trying to hang in there.

And we’re doing it in our own ways.

Some of the sheep are plain. Some are patterned. Some carry the colors of communities that have had to fight to be seen, respected, and allowed to simply exist. Yet here they all are — side by side, gripping the same line, suspended in the same moment. No one is higher. No one is lower. No one is singled out or pushed aside. They’re just… together.

There’s something profoundly comforting about that.

Because the truth is, life hasn’t felt particularly steady lately. The world feels loud. People feel frayed. The air is thick with tension and exhaustion and the sense that we’re all being asked to hold on just a little longer than we’d like. And in the middle of all that, this image whispers a reminder I didn’t realize I needed:

You’re not the only one trying to stay on the line.

There’s a tenderness in that idea. A softness. A sense of shared humanity that’s easy to forget when everything feels polarized and sharp-edged. These sheep — mismatched, colorful, ordinary — are a tiny portrait of community. Not the polished, idealized kind, but the real kind. The kind where everyone is doing their best, even if their best looks a little wobbly.

And maybe that’s why this image feels so compelling to me right now. It doesn’t pretend that hanging on is easy. It doesn’t glamorize resilience or turn it into some heroic performance. It simply shows what it looks like when we do it together — imperfectly, awkwardly, and with a little humor.

It reminds me that belonging isn’t about being the strongest or the most put-together. It’s about being part of a line of people who refuse to let go of one another, even when the wind picks up.

And honestly, that’s the kind of hope I can believe in these days. Not the loud, sweeping kind. The quiet kind. The kind that looks like ten sheep gripping a clothesline, reminding each other — and me — that hanging in there is easier when we do it side by side.