There are days I still question everything.
Days where anxiety hits like it’s been waiting around the corner all along — hiding in the darkest pockets of the shadows, veiled just enough to make you believe you’d left it behind. That it will never be able to catch you.
It always knows when to show up — right when you’ve started to feel normal again.
Right when the air feels still enough to exhale.
I used to think calm was supposed to feel safe.
Now I’m not so sure.
Maybe that’s what calm is supposed to feel like — foreign. Uncertain.
Like a promise you’ve made that you never intended to keep.
There’s this movie I saw years ago — The Life of Pi.
He spends most of it stranded in the middle of the ocean, fighting to survive, never sure when the next storm will hit or the next challenge that will present itself to him that he’ll need to miraculously overcome.
The water stretches endlessly around him — vast, merciless, indifferent.
Every gust of wind, every nightfall, every move of the ocean… could be the one that ends him.
And then one day, he stumbles on an island.
It looks safe — solid ground, fruit hanging heavy from the trees, clean water glinting under the sun.
After drifting for so long, you can almost feel the relief in his body echoing off the screen, just to be able to finally stand still.
The kind of relief that makes even the densest of bones go soft. That restores the hope he thought he’d lost long before he had ground under his feet again.
But then night falls.
The island changes.
The fruit turns sour; the soil begins to move beneath him.
The place that felt like salvation reveals itself as something else entirely — a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
That scene stuck with me because it feels like this part of healing — the calm after chaos.
When you finally get a break from the storm and your first instinct is to collapse into it.
You think, finally. I’m safe. I can rest. I can close my eyes and finally surrender to the kind of sleep that’s long overdue. The kind that doesn’t require you keep one eye open.
But that’s when the ground starts to shift again.
Because the calm doesn’t just hold you — it mirrors you.
It shows you the things you couldn’t see when you were too busy surviving:
the habits, the triggers, the cycles that feel like revolving doors that will never stop turning. The reflexes that once kept you safe but now keep you small.
It’s not punishment.
It’s the unmasking.
And if you’re not careful, you start mistaking stillness for danger again.
You start waiting for the other shoe, the other wave, the next invisible thing that will take your peace and chew through it.
Sometimes I catch myself doing it in small ways.
At the food store when I used to say “sorry” when someone’s cart blocked my path — as if my existence required permission.
With intention and practice, it slowly shifted from, “I’m sorry” to, “excuse me.”
And it sounds like such a small, insignificant shift. But it’s the shift that changes everything.
Sorry says I shouldn’t be here.
Excuse me says I have somewhere to go.
That’s what healing looks like most days — remembering I belong here.
Not as an idea.
As a practice.
It’s in the moment I hit “send” on a text without rereading it ten times, trusting that my intention is enough.
It’s in the way I remind myself that being wrong doesn’t mean I’m worthless or unintelligent — it just means I’m learning.
It’s in catching the thought before it spirals into the stories I’ve gotten so used to telling myself — stories so familiar they’ve become scripture — that they must hate me, that I’m bothering them — and turning it into, they’re probably just busy. I’ve done nothing to warrant rejection.
Once, I tried to explain what I was thinking about, and what slipped out wasn’t even a real word.
“Everythink,” I said.
What I thought was a mistake was simultaneously the embodiment of my mind and its capacity to analyze. To reflect. To rewire.
Because that’s what my brain does: everythink.
It doesn’t stop. It processes, replays, anticipates, forecasts…
It prepares for the worst and hopes for the best.
And maybe that’s what healing really is — learning to live with everythink without drowning in it. Without drifting so far from reality that you can no longer discern between dreams and consciousness.
Learning to let the noise exist without giving it the power to hold a gun to your head, forcing you to drive somewhere you don’t even want to go — while fearing what may happen along the way before you even reach its chosen destination.
Healing isn’t the end of overthinking or anxiety.
It’s the quiet recognition that both are trying, in their own twisted way, to keep you safe.
I don’t think belonging is something you find anymore.
I think it’s something you do —
a muscle you build in the small, deliberate ways you decide to stay.
Choices you make to align yourself with whatever brings your life purpose.
The practice of saying “excuse me” instead of “sorry.”
The practice of sending the message without apologizing for it.
The practice of standing still on the island, even after you’ve seen what it becomes when the lights go out.
I think one of the most profound lessons healing has taught me is that there’s a difference between reacting to the anxiety — the fear — versus responding to it.
Maybe that’s what peace is: not the absence of fear, but the decision to stop reacting to it.
To stop running from it.
It’s the moment you realize that the gun being held to your temple isn’t even loaded —
and what you perceived as danger all this time was just an illusion created to control your narrative,
to grab the pen from your hand and write your story for you.
And me?
I have too many blank pages to hand over that kind of power.
I have too much life ahead of me to let something other than myself decide where my next destination will be.
And maybe that’s the point…
Maybe healing isn’t about escaping the island at all.
Maybe it’s learning to sleep through the night while it shifts beneath you —
Learning to rest on unsteady ground,
to stay when it feels right,
and to trust yourself enough to walk away when it doesn’t.
Copyright © 2025 Kimberly Beth Thomas. All rights reserved.
💬 Join the Conversation
What does belonging look like for you?
Is it the moment you stop apologizing—or the moment you finally exhale without waiting for the next storm?
I’d love to hear how you’re learning to stay, rest, or walk away in your own season of calm.
2-Part Series: Wiring of Mirrors & Minds Archives: Part 2