You Don’t Have to Be Brave Today: Tiny Anchors and The Truth About Healing

Some days, getting out of bed feels like a win. Other days, it feels like a betrayal—to your body, to your grief, to the truth of how heavy things really are.

Lately, I’ve been doing that thing where you try to convince yourself everything’s fine.

You make a plan.

You believe the plan will fix it.

You look in the mirror and tell yourself, You’ve got this. 

You go through the motions.

You answer emails. You wash the dishes. You show up where you’re supposed to be.

And maybe you even start to believe your own optimism.

But underneath all that positivity, there’s a quiet kind of unraveling. A tension pulling at your insides. A version of you who knows—this is not okay.

I spent this past week doing everything I could to stay afloat. I tried to reframe things. I focused on what I could control. I stayed “strong.” I told myself this would all work out, maybe even better than before. And that kind of thinking got me through…until it didn’t.

Yesterday, I crashed.

No, nothing dramatic. There were no smashed plates on the floor or impulsive tattoos or late-night flights to a foreign country. It was quieter than that. It was that foggy, disoriented kind of low where everything just feels off, and you can’t figure out what happened—until you realize: Oh. I’ve been pretending I’m okay all week, and I’m really, really not.

I looked around and thought, What the hell am I doing? What the hell was I thinking?

That’s the thing about toxic positivity—it works like a sedative until it doesn’t. And when the effects wear off, you’re left staring down the full weight of your reality, all at once.

What Toxic Positivity Actually Is (and Why It’s Harmful)

Toxic positivity is the belief that no matter how difficult or painful something is, we should maintain a positive mindset. Think of it as optimism on steroids—so inflated and relentless that it becomes damaging. It’s that voice that whispers “it will all be okay” when your world is falling apart. It’s the smile you force when your chest feels like it’s caving in. It’s the unspoken rule that you should “look on the bright side” even when all you want to do is scream.

But here’s the thing: not all positivity is helpful. Not all hope is healing.

Toxic positivity isn’t the same as grounded optimism or learning to adapt. Those are built on acknowledging reality and holding space for complexity. Toxic positivity, on the other hand, skips over the hard stuff entirely. It demands that we feel good instead of feeling true. It often masquerades as strength.

You might hear it in phrases like:

• “It could be worse.”

• “At least you still have…”

• “Everything happens for a reason.”

• “Just focus on the good things.”

• “Don’t be so negative.”

  
  

When we say these things to others—or to ourselves—we’re not actually providing comfort. We’re avoiding discomfort. We’re shutting down grief, anger, fear, confusion—all of which are normal, healthy, human emotions. In doing so, we send the message: Your feelings are too much. Let’s move past them quickly.

But moving past emotions too quickly doesn’t make them go away. It only buries them. And buried emotions have a way of leaking out sideways—through anxiety, fatigue, irritability, numbness, or that creeping sense that something’s wrong but you can’t quite name it.

Toxic positivity is sneaky. It’s not always loud or obvious. Sometimes it shows up as silence. Sometimes it’s the well-meaning friend who changes the subject when things get heavy. Sometimes it’s you, standing in front of the mirror, telling yourself you’re okay because the alternative feels too terrifying.

But real healing doesn’t happen through denial. It happens through acknowledgment. And if we don’t give ourselves space to feel the hard things, we rob ourselves of the depth, growth, and clarity that come from actually facing them. We end up bypassing our own humanity in the name of “positivity.” And that’s not healing—that’s hiding.

The Problem with Forcing a Narrative

We all want our stories to make sense. It’s human nature. We crave meaning, resolution, clarity. We want the hard chapters to serve a purpose, to be neatly bookended by growth and wisdom. We want to believe that pain is temporary, that it leads somewhere better. That this—whatever this is—will be the thing that makes us stronger in the end.

So we start writing the ending too soon.

We start saying things like:

“This is probably for the best.”

“Maybe this is happening for a reason.”

“This will make me better/stronger/wiser eventually.”

“I’ll look back on this and be grateful.”

And while those things might be true someday, they don’t have to be true right now.

When we force a narrative we aren't ready for, we skip the most important part of the story—the part where we actually feel it. Where we sit in the mess of it and let the truth be ugly or raw or unfinished. Where we admit that we don’t know what the lesson is yet, or if there even is one.

Forcing a narrative is another form of control. It’s an attempt to tidy up the chaos, to impose a structure on something that feels unpleasant, sometimes even unbearable. When we rush to label our pain—this was a growth opportunity, this will make me stronger—what we’re often really doing is trying to skip ahead to the part where we don’t hurt anymore.

It’s comforting, in a way, to believe we’re on a clear path with some redemptive arc. That if we just reframe it hard enough, we’ll unlock the wisdom and fast-track the healing. But healing doesn’t follow a script. It doesn’t arrive with a big fancy bow. And life doesn’t always offer us the closure we’re craving. Not every pain transforms into purpose. Not every wound has a reason. Sometimes things just hurt because they hurt.

And that doesn’t make the hurt any less valid. In fact, it makes it even more human.

Sometimes, the “lesson” we’re searching for isn’t ready to be revealed. Sometimes there is no lesson—only loss. Only the reality of what is. And sometimes the best thing we can do is stop trying to explain our pain and just let ourselves feel it. Let it exist without justifying it. Let it take up space.

Because here's the truth: you don’t have to be brave while you’re still bleeding. You don’t have to turn your heartbreak into a TED Talk. You don’t have to tell a beautiful story about something that’s still actively breaking you apart.

There’s a difference between storytelling and survival. Storytelling often comes later—after the dust has settled, when your voice doesn’t shake as much. But when you’re in survival mode, the only thing that matters is making it to the next moment. And that doesn’t require a narrative. It just requires breath.

You don’t have to make this moment make sense yet. You don’t have to frame it beautifully. You don’t have to extract a quote-worthy insight. If all you can do today is say, “This hurts, and I don’t know what to do with it,” that’s enough.

There is deep integrity in telling the truth without trying to dress it up. In speaking plainly. In naming what is real. That’s not weakness. That’s honesty. And honesty is where healing begins.

The Truth About How Healing Works

There’s a version of healing we’ve been sold that looks suspiciously like perfection. It’s tidy. It’s goal-oriented. It follows a clear upward trajectory: struggle, breakthrough, clarity, recovery. Cue the inspirational soundtrack. Cue the glowing testimonial.

But real healing? It’s rarely like that.

Real healing is not linear. It’s not always forward-moving. It doesn’t come with a timeline or progress markers. It’s not something you “complete.” More often, it’s a loop. A spiral. A slow, staggered crawl toward something that feels slightly less painful than the day before.

Some days, healing means insight. Other days, it just means eating something. Or taking a shower. Or deciding not to quit your job or text that person or scream into the void (even though screaming into the void is sometimes allowed too).

Healing can look like anything—like falling asleep with the lights still on, or bursting into tears in the car, or having a random good hour in the middle of a terrible week. It can be soft and sacred, but it can also be boring, exhausting, or totally unremarkable.

And sometimes, it’s not even visible to you until much later.

It’s like watching grass grow. You don’t see it in real time, but then one day you notice it’s taller, greener, stronger. You realize you’ve started to speak a little more kindly to yourself. Or that you don’t spiral quite as hard when something goes wrong. Or that you made it through a hard day and didn’t numb yourself out. And that’s when you realize—oh… maybe I am healing.

We tend to think healing has to feel good. But sometimes healing feels worse before it feels better. Sometimes it requires sitting in truths we’ve avoided for years. Sometimes it demands grief, or rage, or admitting we didn’t deserve what happened to us. Sometimes it’s less about learning to “let go” and more about learning to live with the thing that will never be the same again.

And none of that means you’re doing it wrong.

You are not behind. You are not broken. You are not weak for still struggling. You are not a failure because you haven’t figured it all out yet. You are living a very human experience, and healing is happening—even if it’s happening slowly, even if it doesn’t look the way you expected, even if you can’t feel it today.

You don’t have to earn your healing by pushing through or staying positive. You don’t have to have a five-step plan. You just have to keep showing up for your life. One breath at a time. One tiny act of compassion at a time. One small decision that says: I’m still here, and I’m not giving up on myself.

That counts. That’s healing, too.

Tiny Anchors: How to Survive the Hardest Moments

When you’re in the thick of something—when the weight of it feels like it could crush you—the idea of “healing” or “coping” can feel impossible. There’s nothing simple about those moments. You’re not trying to make meaning. You’re not trying to grow. You’re just trying to make it through.

And that’s where tiny anchors come in.

Anchors aren’t big, grand gestures. They’re small, often quiet things that tether you to the present when you feel like you're drifting. They don’t solve the problem. They don’t erase the pain. They just keep you from floating too far from yourself.

A tiny anchor could be:

• The weight of a blanket pulled up over your shoulders.

• A song that feels like it understands you.

• A glass of cold water.

• A bite of something nourishing—even if it’s just toast.

• A text to a friend that says, “I don’t want to talk, I just want you to know I’m struggling.”

• The feel of your dog’s fur under your hand.

• The sound of a mourning dove outside the window.

  
  

That last one was mine, just yesterday. I was standing in my kitchen—tired, feeling hollowed out—when I heard the familiar coo of a mourning dove. It’s a sound I’ve loved since I was a kid. Soft. A little bit lazy. Peaceful in that almost nostalgic way. For a moment, it brought me back to myself. Not all the way, not permanently. But just enough. Just enough to breathe. Just enough to notice the sun through the window. Just enough to remember that maybe, even in this, I could still feel something gentle.

Sometimes the anchor is just that—a moment of gentleness. Something that reminds you there’s still softness in the world, even if everything feels hard.

You don’t need to overhaul your life. You don’t need a perfect morning routine. You don’t need to meditate or journal or problem-solve your way out of the dark. You just need a thread to hold onto. Something small. Something real. Something that says, You are still here. You are still in this. And this moment matters.

And the beauty of tiny anchors is this: you don’t have to feel like doing them for them to help. You don’t have to want to eat in order for food to support your body. You don’t have to feel hopeful in order to be soothed by the sound of the rain. These small things still work, even when you don’t believe they will.

So if you’re in it right now—if everything feels too big, too heavy, too much—don’t think about what comes next. Don’t try to fix it or make sense of it or force yourself into action.

Just find one anchor.

And then another.

And then another.

That’s how you make it through.

Closing Reflection

We’ve been taught to believe that emotions are singular. That we should move through them one at a time. Sad, then happy. Hurt, then healed. But real life doesn’t work like that. Real life is layered. Full of contradictions.

You can grieve and laugh in the same afternoon. You can feel hollow and still appreciate the way the light moves across the room. You can miss someone with your whole being and still be present with the people right in front of you. You can love the sunshine and still feel the weight of your sadness.

You are allowed to feel more than one thing at once. You are allowed to feel everything at once.

Somewhere along the way, we were taught to choose—between strength or softness, grief or gratitude, hope or despair. But healing lives in the space between. It lives in the and.

"I’m grieving and I’m still here."

"I’m scared and I’m showing up."

"I’m not okay and I just felt a moment of peace."

You don’t have to pretend you’re fine. You don’t have to say “I’m okay” if you’re not. You don’t have to package your pain into something inspirational. All you have to do is be honest—with yourself, with the people you trust, with the world you’re moving through.

There is room for all of it.

There is room for the part of you that’s still hurting, and the part of you that notices birdsong. There is room for the one who wants to give up and the one who’s still quietly rooting for you.

So no, this post isn’t going to end with a pep talk. It’s going to end with this:

You’re doing it. Right now.

Not because you feel brave.

Not because you’ve figured it out.

But because you woke up this morning and decided to keep going.

This isn’t about staying positive.

This is about staying human.

And that, more than anything else, is enough.