Under All of It

This morning I sat still

Not because I had answers. Not because I had peace. Just because I needed to hear nothing for a while.

The world is so loud—voices, demands, old wounds peeling open, questions that don’t have answers.

My mind was no quieter. Thoughts circled like vultures—grief, anger, loneliness, the ache of feeling powerless

But I didn’t swat them away. I let them land. One by one, they curled up in my lap like tired animals. I breathed with them until they stopped clawing into me.

It didn’t fix me. The knots in my chest are still there. The hollow spaces in my heart didn’t suddenly fill. But I remembered something—there’s a me under all of it. I’m not just the hurt. I can still make room for myself, even if all I have is quiet.

So today, I’m walking forward with that. That still place inside me that’s mine, even when life tries to drown it out.

Sometimes peace it just slips through the cracks, soft enough that you have to lean in to hear it.