The Middle Soil

I’ve uprooted so much of my life.

Torn through beliefs, identities, and ways of being that no longer served me.

Walked away from versions of myself that were built on survival.

But this—

This is the layer I didn’t even realize I was avoiding.

The one that stayed tucked just beneath the surface, holding the weight of it all.

It’s not the loud traumas.

Not the obvious wounds.

It’s the grief that never had words.

The habits I didn’t consciously choose but found myself living in, over and over again.

The way I flinched at softness, even when I craved it.

This is the layer where tenderness lives—

Where memories don’t always speak in full sentences

but in the quiet clench of my jaw, the tired ache in my shoulders,

the way I sometimes forget to breathe all the way in.

It’s easy to think healing is a straight line.

That once you name something, or leave something, or grow beyond something—

you’re done.

But healing is circular. Spiral-shaped. Rooted.

And sometimes, we come back to old ground,

not because we’ve failed,

but because we’re ready to meet it differently.

More resourced.

More whole.

More honest.

This is what I’ve found in the middle soil.

The place beneath survival.

The quiet hum of becoming.

It’s not glamorous.

There are no finish lines.

Just the steady rhythm of turning toward myself again and again.

Of touching the parts I once believed were too tender to hold.

Of noticing what lives inside me now—not just what I’ve lost.

This is the part of me that’s finally ready to breathe.

To soften.

To witness.

And to write—not just about the pain, but the life that pulses beneath it.

I hold what was buried,

and I write what is living.

—The Story Witness