Safety often arrives dressed in stillness, but it stifles just the same.
Today, I find myself standing at the trembling edge of a life I’ve long imagined but seldom believed I could live. There is a strange tenderness in recognizing how long I have lingered in the familiar, not because it served me, but because it asked nothing of me. Safety often arrives dressed in stillness, but it stifles just the same.
Yesterday, I did something I’ve rarely allowed myself to do. I reached out. I asked for help, not out of weakness, but with the fragile strength of someone learning that being held does not mean being broken. For a woman who has carried the unspoken rule that she must always know, always manage, always endure alone… this was no small step. It was a reckoning.
And in return, the world met me with unexpected grace. She appeared… this woman with a gaze that felt like it could read between the folds of my hesitation. She did not flinch from the truth, nor did she wield it like a weapon. There was care in her candor. And though her words pressed against parts of me I prefer to keep hidden, I found myself nodding through the discomfort. Because deep down, I recognized her voice as one that echoed what I already knew but had long ignored.
It is strange how certain people enter our lives without warning, like the turning of a page we didn’t know we were ready to read. I do not know if she is a chapter or a sentence, but I know her presence has left a mark… and that mark feels permanent.
These small steps I am taking, they are reshaping me. Gently. Firmly. I am learning to move without demanding perfection from myself, to grow without apology. Yesterday did not just offer me a hand. It revealed a horizon. One I had convinced myself was too far, too fine, too far-fetched.
But now, I see it. And I will keep walking toward it. Not rushed. Not afraid. Just open.
