almost.

A reflection on sitting with becoming, before the world tells you to move on.

Learning to hold myself with care. Original concept, photography, and digital artistry by Yurani.

I am almost done. And before I do anything else with this, before I answer anyone’s questions about what comes next, I want to stop here for a second and look back at where I started.

Four months ago, I enrolled in a death doula certification course. I had a feeling I was supposed to. I didn’t have a clean reason beyond that. I had no idea who I was going to be when I came out the other side.

Lately, the question I get most is some version of: "So what are you going to do with this? How are you going to monetize it? What’s the plan?”

And I get it. I do. We are wired for the next step. We are a go-go-go kind of people, always moving toward the thing, always turning experience into product, always asking how we can make something useful out of something we just lived through.

But I’m not there yet. And honestly? I don’t want to be.

Just breathe. Just be here. Original concept, photography, and digital artistry by Yurani.

Because here’s what I’ve learned from four months of sitting with death. Rushing past the feeling is exactly how we end up empty. It’s how we end up achieving a lot and living a little. And I refuse to do that with this.

So right now, I am sitting with it.

I am sitting with who I was when I started,  someone who showed up willing but didn’t know yet what willing would cost her. I am sitting with how much has shifted in me in ways I didn’t expect and can’t fully explain. I am sitting with the conversations I’ve had, the connections I’ve made, and the things people trusted me with that I will carry carefully.

I have learned how to hold space, not just for the dying, not just for the grieving, but for people who are fully, messily alive and still need someone to slow down with them. I have learned how to show up present. Actually present. Not nodding along while my mind races ahead to what I’m going to say next, but actually here, in the room, with whatever is happening. And maybe more than anything, I have learned how to do that for myself.

There is so much we were never given space to say. Original concept, photography, and digital artistry by Yurani

I hold myself more gently now. I move through hard moments differently. When something comes up with a friend or a family member, I notice I have more capacity to stay, to not fix, not rush, not redirect, just stay. I have navigated situations these past four months that would have unraveled me before, and instead I just thought things through. I stayed present. Didn’t abandon myself in the middle of it. That is what this work has given me. And I’m not ready to turn it into a product yet. I’m still living inside it.

We don’t want to feel. That’s the thing. We want the life but not the weight of it. We want growth without the breaking, healing without the sitting in it, connection without the vulnerability of actually being known. We are so busy checking lists and chasing the next thing and reminding each other, sometimes out loud, sometimes just with our energy, that we’re not doing enough, not moving fast enough, not becoming fast enough.

We put people we don’t even know on pedestals they never asked for and then feel genuinely betrayed when they turn out to be human. Just human. Messy and boundary-crossing and wrong sometimes, and figuring it out like the rest of us.

And I think about how that pressure to move on, to have a plan, to turn pain into productivity, falls on some people so much heavier than others. This month, I am thinking especially about survivors of sexual assault, people who never got to choose whether to sit with their experience or not. People who stayed in motion because motion was the only thing keeping them safe. People who the world asked to heal quickly, quietly, and without making anyone uncomfortable. Sitting with yourself is not always available to everyone. Sometimes, survival doesn’t leave room for reflection. And the world rushing you along after is its own kind of violence.

So when I talk about choosing to sit with this, I know that is a privilege. And I don’t take it lightly.

Death doesn’t let you skip any of it. Death says: Sit down. Feel it. All of it. There is no rushing this part.

What I do know is this: I want to hold people who are still alive.

Not just people preparing to die, not just people sitting in grief—but people who are in the thick of living and don’t have anyone slowing down with them. People who need someone to say you don’t have to have it figured out yet. You don’t have to perform, okay. You can just be here, in this, and that is enough.

Because I think that’s what most of us are missing. Not more advice. Not more strategy. Just someone willing to sit with us in it.

I’ll figure out the rest later. Right now, I’m just honoring this.

Before you go.

The world is going to keep asking you to move on. To have a plan. To turn your experiences into something productive, something explainable, something that makes other people comfortable.

You don’t have to.

Sit with these for as long as you need to:

Where are you rushing past something that deserves more of your time?

What experience are you carrying that hasn’t been honored yet—not turned into a lesson, not processed into growth, just… felt?

What would change if you stopped moving long enough to actually be inside your own life?

No pressure to answer out loud. Just sit with it.