Latest / Still Standing: Stories of Resilience, Survival & Strength / The Invisible Climb: Why Writing Down Your Struggle Reveals Hidden Strength | Still Standing
Transcript
- You are standing at the bottom of a mountain you can’t see, convinced you’re just walking in circles. But if you could step back and look at the map you’ve been drawing all along, you’d realize you’ve already climbed three thousand feet. I want you to think about the last time you felt completely stuck. Maybe it was a week ago, maybe it was last month. You woke up, did the things you needed to do, went to sleep, and when you woke up again, everything felt exactly the same. The anxiety was still there. The grief was still heavy. The job search results were still silent. In those moments, it is so easy to believe that nothing is changing. We convince ourselves that we are spinning our wheels, that we are running on a treadmill while the rest of the world moves forward. It feels like failure. It feels like you’re being left behind. But here is the truth that is often hardest to accept in the thick of it: change rarely announces itself with fireworks or fanfare. Real transformation is quiet. It is subtle. It happens in the small shifts of perspective, in the moments where you choose kindness over criticism, in the breath you take before you react instead of explode. These moments vanish into the ether of your daily routine. Without a record, they disappear as soon as they happen. And so, you are left with only the weight of the present moment, which feels unbearable. You forget how much lighter you felt yesterday. You forget the courage it took to get out of bed this morning. This is why I have always loved the practice of documenting your journey. Not in a way that feels performative or curated for an audience, but in a way that serves as evidence for your own soul. When you write down what happened, when you note the tiny victories, you create an archive. You build a library of proof that you are moving, even when you cannot feel the motion. Let’s sit in that for a second. Think about a journal entry from six months ago. Remember that version of you? She was scared. She was tired. She thought she couldn’t make it through Tuesday. Now look at you. You are here. You made it through Tuesday. You made it through Wednesday, Thursday, and every day since. That continuity is not an accident. It is a testament to your resilience. But without documentation, that thread can easily snap in your memory. We have this tendency to smooth over our past struggles, remembering only the pain and forgetting the progress. We rewrite history to make ourselves look weaker than we actually are. Documentation breaks that spell. It holds the line between who you were and who you are becoming. I need to be honest with you about my own relationship with this. For years, I resisted writing things down. I thought it was vain. I thought it was too much work. I was living in that high-pressure corporate world, where efficiency was king and reflection was seen as a distraction. I moved fast. I didn’t stop. And because I didn’t stop, I didn’t see myself crumbling until I literally collapsed. I had no record of the slow erosion of my boundaries, the quiet accumulation of stress, the small signs that I was drowning. By the time I fell apart, I had no context for why it happened. I had no map. When I started rebuilding my life, when I moved to this small town and began therapy, I picked up a notebook. Just a simple, cheap one. I started writing. Not essays. Not poetry. Just notes. 'Today I said no to a request that drained me.' 'Today I cooked a meal instead of ordering takeout, and it tasted like victory.' 'Today I cried for twenty minutes, and then I drank water.' At first, it felt silly. But after a few weeks, I noticed something. On the days when I felt hopeless, I would open that book. I would read the entries from two weeks prior. And I would see that I had survived those hard days too. I would see patterns. I would see that my mood lifted when I spent time outside. I would see that my energy returned when I connected with friends. The documentation became my compass. It showed me that I wasn’t going in circles. I was spiraling upward, slowly but surely. There is a question I ask often in these conversations: What did that cost you? When you document your journey, you start to answer that question with clarity. You begin to understand the price of your growth. You see how much effort it took to set that boundary. You see how much bravery it required to speak up in that meeting, or to leave that relationship, or to simply ask for help. In the moment, these costs feel like losses. They feel like exhaustion. They feel like sacrifice. But when you write them down, you reframe them as investments. You acknowledge that the pain was real, but it was also purposeful. You honor the grief as part of the growth, not something to bypass. This is crucial. We often try to rush past the hard parts, wanting to get to the 'good' stuff. But the hard stuff is where the work happens. Documenting it validates the struggle. It says, 'This was hard. This mattered. I am still here.' It transforms suffering into data. It turns emotional chaos into a narrative you can hold. And a narrative you can hold is far less terrifying than one that floats away in your mind. So, how do you do this without making it another chore on your to-do list? Because I know that adding more pressure is the last thing you need. The key is gentleness. You don’t need a perfect system. You don’t need color-coded planners or expensive apps. You just need a way to catch the fleeting moments of insight. Try this: Keep a small notebook by your bed. Or use the notes app on your phone. When something happens—a small win, a difficult emotion, a moment of clarity—write it down. Just one sentence. One fragment. 'Felt proud today.' 'Anxious about tomorrow.' 'Laughed with Sarah.' Do this once a day. Maybe twice. That’s it. Don’t worry about grammar. Don’t worry about style. Worry about honesty. Over time, you will accumulate a record of your inner life. You will see the seasons of your heart. You will notice that the winter was cold, but the spring is coming. You will see that your resilience is not a static trait, but a muscle that grows stronger with use. And when you are in the depths of a dark day, that record becomes a lifeline. It reminds you that you have been here before. You have survived before. You are capable of surviving now. There is another layer to this, one that connects us to each other. When we share our documented journeys, we give others permission to do the same. In a culture that celebrates polish and perfection, showing our messy, unedited progress is a radical act. It tells the woman next to you, the one who seems to have it all together, that you are not alone. It says, 'I am struggling too. But I am also growing.' This builds community. It antidotes isolation. Isolation thrives in silence. It feeds on the belief that we are the only ones failing, the only ones lost. But when we put our stories into words, we break that spell. We invite connection. We remind each other that resilience is not a solo sport. It is a collective practice. We lift each other up by bearing witness to each other’s climbs. So, consider sharing your fragments. Not necessarily on social media, but with a trusted friend. A therapist. A partner. Let someone else see the map you are drawing. Let them point out the paths you might have missed. Let them say, 'Look how far you’ve come.' Sometimes, we need another pair of eyes to see the progress we are too close to notice. Take a breath with me. Feel your feet on the ground. Trust the invisible climb. You are doing better than you think. Until next time, I’m rooting for you. Always.