It is 11:10 PM and I am just now sitting down to write this, because that is exactly the kind of day it has been and honestly, it feels like the most fitting way to open an email about losing track of yourself.

The time just got away from me, which, as you're about to find out, has kind of been the theme lately.

Here's the honest version of what's been going on.

I know what I need to do. I've known for a while. The walks, the reading, the small daily things that keep me tethered to myself and out of survival mode... I know they work, I've lived the difference, and lately I just haven't been doing them consistently.

Not because something dramatic happened or life fell apart in some big visible way. Just because things got a little chaotic, and I let the basics slip, and then I kept telling myself I'd get back to it tomorrow.

Tomorrow has a funny way of becoming another today where it still doesn't happen.

I've been out on the road a lot doing deliveries, and somewhere in the blur of inconsistent schedules and days that don't look the same twice, I quietly stopped doing the things that keep me regulated.

And the tricky part is that I didn't notice it happening all at once, it's never like that. It's gradual. You skip the walk once because you're tired and that feels reasonable.

Then a few more days pass and it just becomes the new normal and then you're running a little low and you can't quite name why, just that something feels off in that low-hum kind of way that's easy to ignore until it isn't.

I've been uninspired lately. Flat. Not broken, not spiraling, just that grey kind of flat where you're functioning and showing up but the spark isn't there the way it usually is.

Here's what I know about that feeling now that I didn't know a few years ago:

I can trace it. I can follow the thread backwards and find exactly where I let go of the thing that was keeping me grounded.

That's not a small thing. For most of my life I didn't have that. I just lived in the FOG and assumed that was who I was.

I'm not writing this from the other side with a lesson all cleaned up and ready to deliver. I'm writing it from the middle, at 11 PM, a little tired, a little uninspired, and being honest with myself about it, which is, if I'm being real, exactly what I'd ask anyone I work with to do.

Because that's the actual work. Not the days when everything is flowing and you feel like the best version of yourself.

The work is being able to sit in a moment like this one and say:

That's the thing I come back to over and over again, with myself and with the people I walk alongside, awareness without judgment is everything.

You can't find your way back to something if you're too busy beating yourself up for leaving it.

So I'm going back to basics. Not with a whole new system or a perfectly structured plan, just a walk tomorrow and a few pages of something that feeds me.

The small things that remind me who I am when I'm not running on fumes.

And if you're in a flat stretch right now...

if you've been telling yourself you'll get back to it tomorrow, if the spark feels a little dim and you can't quite remember the last time you did the thing that fills you up...

I just want you to know that this is not evidence that you've failed.

This is just what it looks like to be a real person doing real work in the middle of a life that doesn't pause for your healing.

You don't have to earn your way back. You don't have to wait until you feel ready or inspired or like you have it together.

You just have to start, even if it's small, even if it's late, even if it's imperfect.

Even if it's 11 PM and you're writing an email you almost talked yourself out of sending.

PROUD OF YOU 💙

Walking with you,

Leasha