The Sacredness of Showing Up
On grief, healing and the small actions of self-trust.
Welcome to un/becoming.
I’m starting over at 35, and writing is my anchor. This is the second of many posts as I begin unraveling who I am after the wreckage. I’m so glad you’re here.
Feel free to share - tag me @BooksOfNotes on Instagram or Substack.
There are times in our lives when more will be asked of us than we think we are able to give.
This has been the truth of my own life for the past 12 months.
It is only through repeated actions, tiny and then bigger, that I have managed to remain somewhat vertical (though often not). These actions build on one another - they become bigger than the sum of their parts. And then (longingly, achingly, not soon at all) you are writing 1500 words a day as a habit, having been floored by your life completely falling apart only 5 months ago.
These small actions are what I am calling ‘showing up’.
Showing up again and again when life disintegrated and everything I knew fell away has been the hardest part of this process of beginning again. It used to be the hardest part of having depression. It was the hardest part of having a chronic illness. Doing something, anything, that isn’t lying in bed crying at the ceiling can feel impossible in the moment.
Because the only guarantee is that you will wake up once more and have to do the same thing all over again. The actions are often so small that it really feels like you are making no progress whatsoever, and that in fact, perhaps you are going backwards (sometimes you are: that is okay).
Before life fell apart, back when I was dealing with the intricacies and indignities of being housebound by chronic illness, I had support at least. Someone to encourage me gently, coax me out of my fog and take over if things got too much.
But still, I remind myself, still I was the one showing up too. Even with help, I was the one who kept going ‘despite it all’.
And then my life imploded. Help was no longer there in the same way and I was alone. Felt alone. Genuinely thought that this was it, that now I would really crash out, that I was back on my way to relapse, to depression creeping in, to me once again spending my days trapped by pain on the sofa having had only the tiniest glimpse of how a fuller life might look.
I was barely out of the wreckage, only just taking the first (literal) steps after a decade housebound. I felt weak and alone, with no idea how to exist as a vaguely regular human. I fully expected to be flattened by this new development in my life.
I fully expected to vanish.
But somehow, that isn’t what happened.
Instead, I took those skills I’d learned during the hardest depression of my life, during all those times I was wildly sick, and I used them.
It wasn’t glamorous. It was messy, and snotty, and often didn’t look or feel like any kind of progress at all.
Really, it looked like the tiniest of decisions rather than the big ones - making peanut butter on toast for dinner, instead of nothing. Switching off dissociation-by-TikTok and going to sleep at 1am rather than 2am.
Actually changing my knickers.
It felt, in all honesty, very much like looking after depressed me, except I wasn’t depressed. Depression often feels like a complete absence of emotion - an empty, bottomless well of absolute apathy punctuated with occasional despair. This was another beast entirely, pummelling me with every emotion at once, all day, every day. An endless cycle of processing and grieving at full intensity with rarely a pause for breath.
Somewhere deep down, I knew that this was absolutely a Tower card moment, watching everything I had known crumble, knowing there was more to come. But some part of me knew it was also my chance to build myself all over again, in exactly the way I needed. To peel off all the masks and layers of protection and step out of the other side (I am still, now, waiting for the other side to appear) as a truer version of myself.
And that hope, that person stood ahead of me in my future was what kept me moving. Is what keeps me moving still. She is what kept me driving forward even when all I wanted to do was eat chocolate in the bath.
(Okay, but I did also eat an entire box of chocolates in the bath and I can absolutely recommend it.)
At the beginning, it really was a kind of blind faith as I took my shaking steps towards the unknown. The path ahead of me was entirely unlit and, quite frankly, made me want to crawl back into bed with fear and overwhelm.
And then one day I’m standing in Sainsbury’s, attempting to pick up a couple of items for dinner but actually finding myself rooted to the spot in the seasonal aisle.
I’m losing it, I think.
The lights are too loud and the sound is too bright and people are talking right behind me and there is an announcement on the tannoy and music is playing and I can feel static on my arms and my teeth feel like tin foil and survival kicks in and I quickly retreat to my usual haven, the stationery aisle (I am on brand, even in crisis).
There’s no one here: Quiet. No people or trolleys or pushchairs.
I pause. I breathe. Slowly feel intensity pass, but as I do the clarity of panic rises in my chest. Fewer people means a sudden awareness of my own inner world.
My breathing quickens and I think, word for word: “I’m going to have a panic attack.”
This though, as you can imagine, does nothing to soothe the building chaos and I immediately feel more panic.
I realise I’m alone. There is no longer anyone to call.
And then out of nowhere, clear as a bell, a voice in my head that doesn’t sound like me because it’s too clear, too calm, too sure of itself:
“You are going to be fine.”
It takes all of me not to whip my head round to see who is speaking, she’s that clear. The clarity of a struck bell, solid enough to clear out all the thoughts of worry reverberating around my brain.
In that clarity, I understand, she is me. This is my own self, finally giving me what I’ve needed for 35 years - self-trust. The knowledge that I can take care of myself, even in crisis.
And I believe her.
That voice has got me through the hardest period of my life. It kept showing up, often when least expected and, with practice, when called upon.
She kept showing up, and I kept listening.
Because that first time, my breathing slowed and I knew I had myself.
I’ve never known anything with such certainty in my life but I think it was the first time I truly understood that it is possible for me to trust myself.
So I took a breath, made a mental note of the items I needed, made a quick dash to aisles 7 (oat milk) and 10 (soy sauce), raced through the self checkout and made it outside. In one piece.
Then, of course, sat in the car to calm myself, wondering what just happened. How I staved off a meltdown in the middle of a packed supermarket during one moment of the biggest crisis of my life.
That was when I realised: showing up for myself, even in the small ways, could change everything. Could rewire ancient stories. It had allowed the foundation of self-trust to be laid so that this voice, this me, could start to be heard. And for me to start to believe it.
It offered me solidity in a way I’d never been able to give it to myself before.
It didn’t need me to roar in triumph: I just needed to not vanish.
Each time you show up for yourself, you let yourself know that you have your own back. That you can trust yourself to remain safe.
And I know – it can be so hard to learn to trust yourself. It’s taken me 35 years to really begin.
It starts with the small things – asking yourself what you feel like eating, and eating that.
Getting out of bed when the world feels too big and all you want to do is cry.
And then crying while making breakfast, but still you are eating. Crying while moving your body, but still you are moving.
Because it builds, every time.
Each tiny act of self-trust, of showing up, is a declaration to yourself - I will not leave you, even when it is hard. Especially then. I am here, with you. I will always be here.
It builds, bit by bit, into trusting yourself that you can handle the hard thing alone and knowing it’s okay if you cry after.
It’s also trusting yourself that the hard thing actually is too much, and then eating chips on the sofa instead.
It’s looking someone in the eye and telling them your version of events, because you trust that your version matters just as much as theirs.
It’s holding yourself, even as you scream-cry on the kitchen floor for an hour.
And then it’s getting up and making noodles anyway.
Each breath becomes a step, becomes a leap. Every act of trust is you saying, “I will not leave you”.
You are the most important person to learn to trust. You are the only person who will be with you for your entire life.
Start in the way you let others earn your trust – in the small ways.
Let yourself be there for yourself, even when no one else can.
Let yourself offer yourself safety, even when the world feels terrifying.
You are gracious, and whole, and you deserve to have your own trust.
And if you are here, reading this, breathing, then you are already doing it. That is enough. That is you, trusting, and not vanishing.