life quietly began again

✦ LIFE — Coming Home

There are injuries that take more than your body. They take your hobbies, your outlets, your sense of self — all at once, quietly, until you look up one day and don’t recognize the life you’re living.

Thirteen months ago, I was in a wheelchair. I couldn’t walk without pain, couldn’t stand for too long. Everything I loved — the gym, traveling, dancing alone in my room, hiking — suddenly out of reach. My doctors weren’t helpful. The stress compounded. I entered a cycle of anxiety, depression, and health issues feeding each other relentlessly.

And then there was my eye doctor. Mid-checkup, he noticed my blood pressure was high and joked that I needed a holiday. I said jokingly, “Maybe I should quit my job and go travel the world” We both laughed. A few months later, I wasn’t joking.

I quit my job, left my life in the States, and chose myself instead.

Five months into that choice, I walked back into a gym.

My ankle still swells sometimes. I’m still conscious of every step, every twist. Healing and trusting are two very different things. But I went in anyway — leg day of all things — and for the first time in over a year, I felt something I hadn’t realized I’d been missing.

I came home to my body.

✦ GROWTH — Stress Is a Habit

Something nobody tells you about burnout is that you can remove every source of stress from your life — quit the job, leave the city, book the flight — and still wake up anxious about what to have for breakfast.

That’s when I realized. Stress isn’t just a response to circumstances. It becomes a habit. A default setting your nervous system returns to because it’s familiar, because it kept you safe once, because fight-flight-freeze doesn’t know the danger is gone.

The injury had broken something deeper than my ankle. It had broken my self-trust.

And you can’t think your way back to trust. You have to practice it in small, quiet, daily ways until your nervous system believes the world won’t end if you simply rest.

So I built what I called The Calm Project. Four rules only:

Sleep. A lot, without guilt.
Eat without labelling food good or bad — but cook for yourself when you can.
Move your body for one hour — a walk counts, slow yoga counts, any movement counts.
Just be. Read, write, make art, watch something you love.

✦ ACTION — Strip the Weight

This week, I want you to try something small.

Pick one decision you’ve been circling — something you’ve been weighing, overthinking, labelling as right or wrong, good or bad. It doesn’t have to be big. In fact, the smaller the better. Here are a few to get you started:

The new hobby you’ve been thinking about trying — just book it.
The gym class you’ve been debating — just sign up.
The message you’ve been drafting in your head for weeks — just send it.

Not because it’s perfect. Not because you’re certain. The heaviness you feel around it isn’t wisdom. It’s habit.

No strategizing. No optimizing. No right or wrong choices — because a choice is just a choice. It can be changed, improved upon, made again.

I’d love to hear about what you tried. I’d love to hear from you — leave a comment below or reach out. — what was the decision, and how did it feel to just choose?