By Kelsey Geiger 
Somewhere along the way, I became so focused on surviving my life that I forgot to fully live it.
I have spent years waiting for things to settle down enough to finally have the chance to enjoy it.
After the surgery.
After the diagnosis.
After the divorce.
After I hit my income goals.
After the next hard thing.
But the thing about life is that it keeps happening even while you’re waiting.
That’s the strangest thing about survival mode. The world doesn’t stop when your life does. You still have to answer emails and buy the groceries. You’re still folding towels while silently carrying the weight of your dad’s chemo schedule. Somehow, the world keeps asking normal things of you while your inner world is falling apart.
And maybe that’s what nobody really talks about. The way hard things don’t arrive one at a time, neatly spaced apart with enough room to recover in between. They overlap. They stack. One season bleeds into the next, and before you know it, years have passed in survival mode.
You become efficient at functioning. You learn how to compartmentalize. How to keep showing up. How to smile through school events, respond to texts, and make dinner, while carrying fear in your chest like a second heartbeat.
You become the person everyone describes as “so strong.”
Meanwhile, your body forgets what peace feels like.
And then one day, something small cracks you open in the best possible way. It happened quietly, unexpectedly, in the ordinary moments that somehow made me feel alive again.
Coffee in bed.
Slow mornings.
A casual stroll through downtown Stillwater
The scenery. The stillness. The laughter. The absence of urgency.
And somewhere in the middle of it, I realized how long it had been since I’d actually felt present in my own life.
Not productive
Not managing
Not surviving
Present.
That realization hit me harder than I expected.
Not because suddenly all of my problems disappeared, but because for a minute I remembered what it felt like to be a person again instead of just a woman carrying everything. I remembered that my life is still happening around me, even in the middle of hard things.
Not after them.
During them.
The coffee still tastes good. The scenery is still beautiful. Your favorite song still comes on in the car. There are still moments of connection, softness, and peace available to you, even in seasons that are messy and uncertain.
And maybe healing doesn’t always arrive as some massive breakthrough. Maybe sometimes it looks like realizing you don’t want to spend your whole life waiting for permission to enjoy it.
Because the truth is, there will probably always be something. Another stressor. Another bill. Another diagnosis. Another season of uncertainty. You’re always going to find another reason to say, “I’ll breathe after this.”
But life keeps happening while we’re waiting. And maybe the point isn’t to wait for the chaos to disappear. Maybe the point is being brave enough to live in the middle of it.
by Her View From Home 
by Kelsey Scism 
by Danielle Helzer 
