The dread is real. The grief is valid. And there are ways to carry it without being crushed. There is a particular kind of dread that arrives quietly — not with a headline or a disaster alert, but with the first heat of May that feels wrong, or a childhood river you return to and find smaller than memory. You don't need a psychology degree to name what settles in your chest: it is grief, and fear, and the specific weight of caring about something vast and seemingly unstoppabl