An Honest Report From Day 47 of Rebuilding My Life

I have quit alcohol, cigarettes, McDonald's, toxic relationships, and Netflix. I am currently eating children's cereal at 10pm. This is called progress.

Let me file the official report.

The wins:

I started walking every morning. I started reading actual books with paper pages. I started therapy. I started Tony Robbins at 6am while walking which means I have become the kind of person who listens to Tony Robbins at 6am while walking and I am still processing that information about myself.

I sold my apartment. I moved. I started building something real.

By any reasonable metric this is extraordinary progress.

The current situation:

Fluffy Kids are watching me with the particular expression they reserve for moments when they are deeply concerned but lack the language skills to intervene.

I have been sitting in the same position for approximately three hours. I started the day with a list of seven productive things to do. I did two of them. The other five watched me from the list with quiet disappointment.

I also, and I want to be fully transparent here, spent forty minutes looking at flights to Thailand. I am not going to Thailand. I am eating cereal. But I priced the flights and they are within range if I stopped buying silk pillowcases and the children's cereal for a combined period of approximately seven months which I will not be doing.

What healing actually looks like:

I had a vision of what rebuilding my life would look like. It involved linen. Morning pages. Green smoothies. A dignified relationship with my emotions.

The reality involves an oversized hoodie I have washed twice in three weeks, a Garmin watch telling me I need to move more, two cats who have completely restructured their sleep schedules around my chaos, and a level of comfort with silence that would have terrified me a year ago.

Also cereal. Frequently cereal.

Here is what I have learned: healing is not a performance. It is not a before and after photo. It is not a transformation reel set to the right music.

It is Tuesday at 10pm and you are still here. You did not drink. You did not call the wrong person. You did not go back to anything that hurt you. You walked 10,000 steps and you are now eating cereal for dinner because cooking felt like too much and you are allowed to let things feel like too much sometimes.

The understand something the wellness industry does not.

Showing up looks different every day. Some days it looks like courage. Some days it looks like cereal.

Both days count.

Tomorrow's ambitious plan:

Walk. Read something. Write something. Not eat cereal for dinner. Probably eat cereal for dinner.

We will see.

The cats have filed their notes. They are not sharing them. This is also called progress.

How is your rebuilding going? Tell me something honest in the comments. I will not judge you. I am eating cereal.

rise · believe · fly

From the Ashes She is for the woman in the middle of it. Not after. If this found you tonight — the cats say hi. 🪶