When the World Moves Slower Than You Need
I saw a video this week that’s been circulating everywhere, the one of the woman in Dallas, sitting in a hospital waiting room in active labor, gripping a wheelchair, breathing through contractions, while a staff member asked her to finish intake paperwork. She gave birth twelve minutes later.
The internet did what it does: immediate outrage, opinions, debate, everyone choosing a side in seconds. But the part that stayed with me wasn’t the noise. It was her face: the horrible mix of pain, fear, bracing, and a very human question that didn’t need words:
“Can someone please see me right now?”
And because I’m wired the way I am — part nurse, part people-watcher, part “read the whole room in 2.5 seconds” — I couldn’t stop thinking about everyone in that moment. The staff trying to follow the rules as they’ve been taught. Her mom filming because she didn’t know what else to do with her fear and her hands. The people nearby unsure if stepping in would help or overwhelm. A whole room full of humans moving at different speeds, none of them matching the urgency of her body.
What struck me wasn’t the drama. It was the gap.
Her body was moving fast.
The environment around her was moving slow.
And she was stuck in the space between the two, trying to bridge an impossible difference with nothing but her writhing pain.
It reminded me of that uncomfortable emotional space we all end up in sometimes, where what we’re feeling internally and what the world is offering externally are completely out of sync. When you’re ready for the next thing but the moment you’re in hasn’t caught up yet. When you know what you need, but you’re still waiting for someone else to catch on.
And watching her, I kept thinking about how many of us live out quieter versions of that all the time; not dramatic, but real. Moments where our inside world and outside world are speaking two different languages. Moments where we’re holding ourselves together in places that weren’t designed to hold us.
It wasn’t the shock of the video that stayed with me.
It was the truth in her expression, that very human moment when everything inside you asks to be met.
And honestly, I think we’ve all been in a moment where what we needed moved a lot faster than the world around us.
