Through the storm

Lately, my emotions have felt like a roiling sea, heavy, insistent, crashing against me like waves in a storm. There are moments when they feel overwhelming, when they threaten to pull me under. And yet, if you were to see me from the outside, you probably wouldn’t notice much at all.

When I was younger, my instinct was to shut it off. To suppress. To compartmentalize. To pretend the storm wasn’t there.

But I’ve learned something over time: turning off your emotions doesn’t calm the sea, it just pushes the storm deeper.

This haiku came from a different approach. Instead of numbing the waves or letting them carry me wherever they please, I’m trying to stay present with them. To feel them without being consumed. To ask what they’re trying to tell me.

There’s a difference between being ruled by emotion and understanding it. One makes you drift. The other teaches you how to navigate.

“Through the storm” isn’t about toughness. It isn’t about gritting your teeth and surviving. It’s about courage, the quiet kind. The kind that sits in the storm and says: I will not run from this. I will move through it.

We all have storms. We all have waves that crash harder than we expect. The goal isn’t to silence them, nor to surrender to them.

It’s to learn how to swim.