Crow and Flame

Lately, I’ve been feeling discouraged.

Not broken.
Not hopeless.
Just… tired of having to keep adjusting my wings.

It seems like every time I find a rhythm, something comes along and knocks it sideways.

A rejection arrives without explanation.

A health issue interrupts a routine I had finally worked hard to establish.

The hours in the day disappear before I’ve had the chance to do half the things I wanted to do.

And work—just when it had finally found a rhythm—has become chaotic again.

It’s frustrating.

Because sometimes you don’t need another lesson.

You don’t need another reminder to be resilient.

You just want something to stay steady for a little while.

I think we romanticize resilience sometimes.

We talk about rising from the ashes.
Spreading our wings.
Finding our strength.

But what about the days when your wings are tired?

What about when you are still showing up, still trying, still creating, still caring—but you don’t feel particularly strong while you’re doing it?

I think those days matter, too.

Maybe resilience isn’t always soaring.

Maybe sometimes resilience is sitting on the branch.

Watching.

Breathing.

Resting your wings.

Letting the wind pass without feeling like you have to fight it.

The crow has always made me think about this.

Crows don’t pretend the world is beautiful all the time.

They notice things.

They remember.

They adapt.

They survive storms.

And when the weather changes, they don’t waste their energy wishing the sky were different.

They find another branch.

Maybe that’s what I’m learning right now.

I don’t have to understand every rejection.

I don’t have to make sense of every setback.

I don’t have to accomplish everything on my list today.

And I don’t have to turn every difficult season into some beautiful lesson immediately.

Sometimes a hard day is just a hard day.

Sometimes being discouraged is simply being human.

So I’m giving myself permission to say:

This is hard.

Without following it with but I’ll be fine.

Without forcing myself to find the silver lining.

Without pretending I’m not disappointed.

Because acknowledging that something hurts doesn’t make me weak.

It makes me honest.

And honesty is part of healing, too.

So if you’re feeling discouraged lately, maybe you don’t need to push harder.

Maybe you need to rest your wings.

Maybe you need to stop measuring your worth by how much you accomplished today.

Maybe you need to remember that a crow sitting quietly on a branch isn’t failing to fly.

It’s simply resting before the next flight.

And perhaps that’s where I am right now.

Not giving up.

Not falling apart.

Just resting.

Gathering myself.

Waiting for the wind to change.

One feather at a time.