Everyone has a story.
A moment.
A period of time where something shifted.
A bad relationship.
Abuse.
Loss.
Health issues.
Financial stress.
Single-parent pressure.

And then there’s the everyday…

A bill to pay.
A car that breaks down.
Work pressure is creeping in.
And it just keeps going.

There’s always something.

I’ve had my share.

From teenage abuse…
to a partner who almost took my life…
to another who didn’t use hands, but words.

And then everything in between.

The kind of things that don’t sound dramatic on their own… but when you stack them together over years…they shape you.

Somewhere along the way, I became the “high-functioning” one.
The one who keeps going.
Keeps pushing.
Keeps showing up.
No matter what.
I didn’t stop.
I didn’t slow down.
And I never really stopped to look at
who I had become because of it all.

But even after everything…There was always something. Something that kept me going.
Something that kept the fire alive.

You notice it most in the silence.
When everything slows down.
When you finally have space to think…And things start becoming clearer.

You start seeing things you didn’t before.
How work pressure built slowly over time.
How someone’s tone began to change.
How the small comments weren’t so small.
How you started shrinking.
How you started feeling alone…
even when you weren’t.

There’s a moment where everything just… stops.

Where it feels easier to stay in bed.
Where the sun can be out,
but the day still feels grey.

That’s the moment….Not the breakdown… The awareness.

And this is what I learned…
I didn’t disappear.
I didn’t lose myself.
I adapted.

I adapted to survive.

At times, it weakened me.
It made me question myself.
It made me tolerate things I shouldn’t have.

But within that…….There was strength.

It showed me:

What I was willing to accept.
Where I was trying to please others.
Where I was still chasing something I never received. (I remember a therapist telling me to start to recognise what was missing from my childhood, and how I show up for others.)

And slowly…..I started sitting with myself again.

Instead of reacting…

I observed.

My thoughts.
My triggers.
My patterns.

Just noticing.

And then something shifted.

The more I wrote about the lowest moments… the more curious I became.

Why did that affect me so deeply?
Why did I react that way?
Where did that come from?

That curiosity changed everything. Because it created space.

Space between the feeling….and the reaction.

And in that space… There were moments of calm.

Clarity.

A quiet understanding that I feel more like myself when I’m not trying to hold everything together for everyone else.

Life didn’t suddenly become easy.

There were still responsibilities.
Still days where I had to get up and move, even when I didn’t feel like it.

But even then…Even after everything… There was always something pulling me forward.

Not loudly….Not dramatically…. Just quietly… Consistently…

Something I felt… even after everything, there’s still something

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