Audio version:
There is a particular kind of courage that doesn’t announce itself with trumpets or a warrior’s cry. It’s quieter than that. It’s the courage that lives in the pause between fear and action, in the breath you take before you press “publish,” in the small, steady voice that says yes, and do it anyway.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, about the most powerful, positive thing I’ve done to strengthen my life and preserve my creative fire. It isn’t a morning routine or a productivity hack. It’s simpler and harder than any of that. It’s the practice of moving toward the thing that scares me most.
I’m talking about the critical voice. The shaming voice. The one that lives in my own mind and sometimes, unexpectedly, arrives in the voice of another.
A few days ago, I was talking with a friend about a program I’ve been creating, recording meditations, going live on video, speaking openly about the love I feel for my life when I’m in the flow of making something. Her head tilted slightly, and she asked, “Don’t you get scared of recording yourself?”
I paused. Took a few extra breaths. And told her the truth: Yes. And I do it anyway.
This week, I posted new videos on Instagram. It felt important to show up that way, to let people hear my voice, see my eyes, make their own real assessment of whether my message was for them. We live in a world so layered with deception and curated half-truths. I wanted to offer something different. Clarity. Honesty. My actual face in the actual light of my actual life.
The next morning, I woke to a comment that stopped me cold.
It was a shaming comment. About the way I looked. The way I spoke. What I was wearing. And while it didn’t crush me, my mind, ever resourceful in its fear, grabbed hold of it and ran. Don’t ever post again. Stop writing. Stop creating. You don’t need this pain. Who do you think you are?
I sat with it all day. Let myself feel the sting of it, because pretending it didn’t hurt would have been its own small dishonesty. But I also held the other weight — what it would mean to stop. What the world loses when any of us goes quiet out of fear of being judged. What I would lose: the connection, the meaning, the deep satisfaction of believing in something good and saying so out loud.
By evening, something in me had settled into a quiet, clear answer.
No. Do it anyway.
Here’s what I know about the shaming voice, whether it rises from within or arrives from somewhere outside us: it is not the truth of who we are. It is fear dressed up as feedback. It is smallness masquerading as wisdom. And the most subversive, radical, life-giving thing we can do in the face of it is to keep creating anyway, not in defiance, exactly, but in devotion. Devotion to the part of ourselves that knows our gifts are meant to be given. That our voice, however imperfect, carries something worth sharing.
Moving toward what scares us doesn’t mean the fear disappears. I pressed record while scared. I posted while scared. And on the morning after a stranger tried to diminish what I’d offered, I am still here, still writing to you, still believing that the work matters.
The brave thing is rarely the loudest thing. Sometimes it’s just showing up again, quietly, and doing it anyway.
This corner by the sea teaches me that every day, the tide goes out, the cold comes, the storms roll in. And then the light returns, and everything begins again.
May you find your own “anyway” this week. Whatever it is you’ve been holding back, the email you haven’t sent, the class you’re afraid to teach, the truth you haven’t spoken, I’m rooting for you to take a breath and move toward it.
With love from my corner,
Sarah
If this landed somewhere tender for you, I’d love to hear. And if you’re ready to explore the kind of deep rest that makes brave living possible, the doors to my 40-day Brave Rest journey are open. Come find me there.
