Chapter 1 | Entry Nine

"Sometimes the kindest thing you can do is let yourself be quiet for a while. Not shrinking, simply resting."

This morning I made coffee slowly.

Not rushing through it to get to the next thing, but actually standing there in my kitchen, barefoot on the cool tile, watching the steam rise from my cup.

The way it curled and disappeared.

The warmth of the mug in my hands.

I didn't think about him.

I didn't think about being met or being alone or any of it.

I just stood there and felt the warmth.

And it was enough.

There was something about that moment, the stillness of it, the simplicity, that felt like tending to something precious and tired. My body. My heart. This ache I've been carrying.

I wasn't trying to fix anything. I wasn't trying to be okay or move on or find the lesson.

I was just...there.

Present with the heat of the coffee, the morning light coming through the window, the quiet hum of my own aliveness that doesn't need anything from anyone to exist.

After all the intensity, all that remembering, all that vast feeling...this is what my body needed.

Softness.

Stillness.

Permission to just be, without holding anything but herself.

And I noticed something in that quiet moment.

I'm still here.

After all the grief and the anger and the longing and the remembering, I'm still here.

My body still knows how to feel warmth. My heart still knows how to soften. My soul still knows how to notice beauty in the smallest things.

I haven't been destroyed by this.

I've been cracked open, yes. I've been undone and remade and left aching in ways I didn't know were possible.

But I'm still here.

And there's something quietly powerful in that.

I don't know what comes next.

I don't know if I'll ever find someone who can meet me the way he did. I don't know if this longing will ever fully ease or if I'll carry it with me like a scar that aches when the weather changes.

But right now, in this moment, standing in my kitchen with warmth in my hands and light on my skin, I'm okay.

Not healed. Not resolved. Not done grieving.

But okay.

Soft. Present. Here.

And maybe that's enough for today.

—Still tender