What Am I Training For?

Inside Voice: No 06

There are days when I struggle to do the things that I say matter to me.

Drinking enough water. Moving my body. Taking a break from my phone. Trying something new. Sticking to the rhythm I mapped out when life felt a bit clearer.

Discipline (in theory) sounds like something I should have by now, right? I’ve been alive long enough. I’ve built things. Birthed a daughter. Started businesses. Grown through seasons of intense grief, palpable joy, and deep soul-searching. But discipline, at least in the way I imagined it would look (rigid, predictable, almost military-esque) feels much more like this foreign concept when the inner world is super tender, or the outer world is loud.

And lately, it’s been both.

Sometimes the challenge is sitting right there within me: a foggy mind, a swollen heart, a soul that just wants to lie still and feel it all before omitting. Sometimes the challenge is right here in my home in the form of piled up dishes, logistical overwhelm, or my own unmet need for some alone time. And sometimes the challenge is a headline: the inhumane attack on immigrants, a mother’s grief in a reel I wasn’t prepared to see.. and suddenly I’m lost inside someone else’s pain, unsure what it even means to sit down and write an essay, create a reel, make dinner or send that email I’ve neglected.

I don’t always know what to do when these waves roll in. But I do know that doing nothing tends to leave me feeling worse.