The Long Unwinding (Part 1)

Navigating change when the future is unwritten

Recently, I felt an intuitive nudge to rewatch Titanic. I’ve seen it before, way too many times, but I’ve learned to trust these quiet sparks of intuition. When the credits rolled, I found myself making new connections that felt eerily close to what it’s like to live in the United States right now.

Growing up, the U.S. always seemed “unsinkable.” There was this collective faith in our resilience, in the story of American exceptionalism, our technology, our democratic institutions. It was unthinkable that something could truly bring us down—at least, until 9/11. That day, the illusion cracked. For the first time in my lifetime, I understood the U.S. was not infallible. But even then, there was still a sense that, no matter what happened, the country would somehow hold together. It’s only recently that the reality has started to seep in.

It’s tempting to call this a collapse, but it doesn’t really feel like one big, dramatic moment. It’s more like a long unwinding, a slow unraveling of systems and stories that once seemed unshakable. These days, there’s no pretending. Most of the time, there’s this low-grade anxiety—a sense that something foundational is off. We’re watching agencies dismantled in real time, leadership shifting in and out, tariffs imposed, and the markets tanking. The unraveling isn’t hidden or theoretical. It’s happening out loud, with consequences that ripple through every part of daily life. There’s no one left playing soothing music: the ship is going down, and nobody’s really trying to keep up appearances. It feels a lot like being on the Titanic after it’s already hit the iceberg, and realizing the damage is mostly below the surface.

But unlike what happened on the Titanic, the unraveling we’re living through isn’t one big, dramatic event. It’s slower, stranger, and much less clear. Some days it looks like systems quietly coming apart. Other days, it’s more subtle. A collective fatigue, a shift in the way people relate, or a sense that the glue that once held us together is losing its grip.

Maybe it’s not collapse in the way we were taught to imagine it. Maybe it’s more like an unwinding—a gradual loosening, thread by thread, of the old patterns, expectations, and certainties that shaped our lives.

I notice it in myself and in those around me: a heightened sensitivity, a questioning of what’s real, a deep ache for something more honest or alive. It’s as if the old story can’t hold us anymore, and we’re left hovering between what was and what might be. It’s uncomfortable, sometimes disorienting, but not always tragic. There’s also a strange aliveness, a possibility, emerging in the cracks.

Photo by @zimbarus on Unsplash

As a Craniosacral therapist and somatic practitioner, I see this same pattern in the body. When a person comes in carrying tension or trauma, release can occur through an unwinding process, which doesn’t happen through force or explanation. It’s a lot like a tightly wound rubber band slowly letting go of its tension when it’s finally set free. It begins in deep relaxation and stillness, when the system feels safe enough to let go. Sometimes what’s held is ready to surface, without words, without needing to be understood or named. There’s a softening, a subtle release, a new pattern emerging beneath the old. The process moves like a spiral, often happening below conscious awareness.

What if our collective moment is moving through something similar? Maybe what looks like chaos or collapse on the surface is, at least in part, an invitation to slow down, feel more deeply, and let what needs to unwind come to light?

But presence alone isn’t the whole story. If unwinding in the body creates space for new organization, then maybe our work now is both to witness what’s dissolving and also to consciously take part in what comes next.

That means making room for resistance and repair. It means organizing, sometimes fiercely, sometimes quietly, alongside others who aren’t willing to give up as things fall apart. It means creating new networks, building alternatives, experimenting with different ways of relating, supporting, and governing. I see it happening already: in online communities forming outside the mainstream, grassroots movements, collective projects, new connections forming amid all the uncertainty.

Rebuilding isn’t about returning to what was, but daring to imagine what could be. It’s slow work, and sometimes frustrating, but it’s also alive. Just as the body, after a release, doesn’t revert to its old shape but finds a new pattern, so too are we invited to remake the fabric of our lives and communities in ways that are more just, more flexible, more deeply connected.

Maybe the invitation of this moment is to hold both: the unwinding and the re-weaving. The pause and the action. The discomfort of not knowing, and the courage to begin anyway, together.

I don’t know exactly what comes next. No one does. But I do know that when we allow ourselves to notice what’s unwinding, and also gather our energy for what wants to be rebuilt, something shifts. This is not a time for passive waiting, nor for frantic fixing. It’s a time for deep noticing, for collective imagination, and for tending to the threads that connect us.

There’s no single roadmap for how to move through this, but there are questions worth sitting with:

• Where can I slow down, listen more closely, and trust what my body is telling me in this moment?

• How can I show up for the work of repair, for the courage of organizing and resisting what diminishes us?

• Who might I discover beside me when I dare to reach out? When I step out of isolation and begin to build something new?

The old story might be unraveling, but that’s not the end. There is space, here and now, for a different kind of presence. For the careful, sometimes messy, often beautiful work of becoming a community. Not after the storm, but right in the middle of it.

Whatever shape this unwinding takes, we’re not meant to do it alone. May we find each other in the stillness and the action, in the endings and the beginnings, and remember: even now, there is something worth tending.

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*This is Part 1 of a series exploring how we navigate profound change—individually and collectively. Read Part 2 here.

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