Showing Up for Myself

Last night, panic wrapped itself around my throat and reminded me how easily my body forgets the difference between now and then. My breath shortened. My vision blurred. The room slipped out of focus, and the voices around me became distant, unreachable. Every instinct told me to leave. To run. To apologize for taking up space. To say, I can’t do this.

I’ve listened to that voice before.

It tells me that leaving is safer. That shrinking is easier. That disappearing is kindness—to others and to myself.

But last night, I stayed.

Not because I wasn’t afraid. Not because I suddenly felt strong. I stayed because I recognized the familiar fork in the road: self-protection or self-abandonment. And I’ve learned, slowly and painfully, that they are not the same thing.

Showing up for myself didn’t look heroic. It didn’t look calm or graceful. It looked like shaky breaths and grounding my feet against the floor. It looked like reminding my nervous system, again and again, that I was safe enough. That I was capable enough. That this moment did not get to rewrite my story.

There’s a quiet kind of bravery in staying when everything inside you is begging to flee. In choosing presence over escape. In trusting yourself to endure discomfort without betraying your own worth.

Healing doesn’t mean panic never shows up. It means that when it does, I no longer disappear to appease it. I don’t punish myself for struggling. I don’t hand my power back to fear.

I show up.

Sometimes that means asking for help. Sometimes it means sitting with the discomfort and letting it pass. Sometimes it means whispering, I’ve got you, to the parts of myself that learned long ago that survival meant silence.

Showing up for myself is choosing to believe that I am not fragile—I am learning. That I am not failing—I am practicing. That I am allowed to take up space even when my hands are shaking.

Last night, I didn’t run.

And that mattered.

Because every time I stay, I build trust with myself. Every time I choose presence over panic, I remind my nervous system that I am no longer alone inside my own body.

This is what healing looks like for me.

Not the absence of fear—but the refusal to abandon myself when it appears.