Almost as soon as 2025 began, so did national tragedy and trauma. In these last several weeks, I’ve heard the word “fire” more than ever before. There’s the incomprehensible destruction in Southern California, the recent, terrifying plane crashes, the dismissal of federal employees across countless agencies.

This year, America as we’ve known it is burning — figuratively and literally. I’m not confident we’ll be able to stop the flames.

Yet we keep going, even if it’s half-heartedly or hopelessly. No matter how much we endure, time continues to pass with its ordinary demands and everyday struggles. A few years ago, as back-to-back upheavals irreparably changed my life, I balked at the fact that I had to simultaneously adapt to this unwanted reality while also meeting my regular responsibilities.

It’s when I learned the hard-earned lesson that sometimes, we can only get through the day if we self-soothe our way through.

For me, this means reading, writing, and exercising. Going to therapy. Seeing loved ones and eating chocolate. Meditating and asking for hugs. My methods to self-soothe are abundant, but in 2025, they haven’t been enough. I still can’t sleep through the night, or follow through with the things I want, or need, to do — no matter how much they matter to me.

Because I know the cost of not taking proactive care of myself during the worst of times, I’ve promised myself never to let that happen again. I’m now relentless in my self-soothing; if what I’m doing isn’t working, I adapt.

The biggest example of this this year has been how, and what, I read. Since my earliest days, I’ve found refuge in reading. Throughout childhood and adolescence, I read for countless hours on car rides, during family functions, and even while I walked. I’ve taken more international flights than I can count, and have loaded up my suitcase with books on each one. Books kept me company during the isolation of quarantine, and in general, help me think straighter and breathe easier.

But because my concentration has been so feeble the last several weeks, I haven’t been able to read the way I usually do: with my eyes, book in hand. Instead, every book I’ve read this year — nine in January and four so far in February — has been an audiobook.

I’ve only been listening to audiobooks for a little over a year; until January, I generally preferred to read with my eyes, but found there were times I preferred to read with my ears. (I’m privileged to have both options.)

When an author’s prose moves me, I’ll read their book(s) with my eyes. Recently, I started listening to Colson Whitehead’s “Crook Manifesto”; it took me only a few minutes before I realized: Listening to this wouldn’t allow me to luxuriate in his language, so I stopped.

But sometimes, audiobooks are the better choice. When the narrator has an accent, I more fully appreciate the setting, and books become entertaining in a way they aren’t when reading with my eyes. If it’s a book I’ve been curious to read but don’t necessarily want to devote all of my attention to, I’ll read the audiobook, cleaning or grocery shopping while I listen.

Several weeks ago, as L.A. began to burn, I read a thriller about a sinister security company. During the middle of January, when grief weighs especially heavy on me, I read a romance in which the couple gets together because their exes left them for each other. And ever since Trump has been back in office, I’ve been reading Laura Lippman’s Tess Monaghan series, the familiarity of her Baltimore setting and the nostalgia for the late ’90s helping me get through.

The comfort audiobooks have brought me makes sense. Some of my first moments of feeling safe — specifically, calm, comfortable, and cared for — were when my parents read to me as a little girl. Some of my most tender memories with my lovelies, the high schoolers to whom I taught English for over a decade, were when I read aloud to them. Being read to gifts us a few moments of reprieve from the fires raging, both near and far. I will allow myself this pleasure as often as possible — this year and beyond.