The Struggle to Show Up at All

People talk a lot about showing up authentically. About peeling back the layers and being “real.” But lately, I’ve found myself less concerned with how I show up and more with if I can show up at all.

My nature in hard seasons is to close ranks. When life gets heavy, I go inward. I stop responding to texts, I let emails stack up, I drift away from conversations that require more of me than I have to give. I keep the lights on for my kids and my partner, but beyond that - I shut down.

It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that everything in me is screaming to conserve energy.
I complete the tasks I have to, but rarely inside the timelines I set for myself. I show up for the people who depend on me, and then I collapse quietly afterward.

Even the things that fill me - writing, photography, creating - get shoved to the back burner in the mad dash to hold the essential pieces together. And in doing that, I lose the very things that remind me who I am outside of survival.

My nervous system has been in fight-or-flight for so long that I sometimes forget there’s another way to live. I’m constantly scanning for what might fall apart next, what fire might need putting out.

And I hate admitting this, but sometimes I catch myself wishing for an easy life. Not a perfect one - just a stretch of calm long enough to exhale. And even that wish feels indulgent, like a complaint when I should be grateful.

But maybe this is the truest kind of showing up: naming it. Saying out loud that functioning isn’t the same as flourishing. That sometimes survival is all you can offer - and that’s still a kind of faithfulness.

So if you’re in that season too - if showing up feels like slogging through mud—you’re not failing. You’re doing the quiet, holy work of staying.