Latest / She Rose: Women Who Turned Pain Into Purpose / When the World Feels Chaotic: How to Keep Your Rhythm | She Rose
Transcript
- The phone buzzes on the counter, a violent vibration against the wood, and for a second, you just stare at it like it’s a live grenade. That is the moment where your whole nervous system decides whether to hold its breath or let it out. I want you to take a deep breath with me right now. In through the nose, filling up the belly, and then a long, slow exhale. Good. I know today has been loud. Maybe not in decibels, but in noise. The kind of noise that lives in your chest. We live in an era that demands we be anchors in a storm that never seems to end. But here is the truth I’ve learned after years of sitting with women who feel like they are drowning in other people’s emergencies: you cannot control the wind, but you can adjust the sails. And sometimes, the most radical thing you can do is simply keep rowing. Let’s sit with that for a second. What does your rhythm actually look like? It isn’t some rigid schedule posted on your fridge. It’s the quiet pulse beneath the chaos. It’s the way you make your coffee in the morning, steam rising in lazy curls. It’s the five minutes you spend stretching before you check your email. It’s the walk around the block when your mind feels too heavy. When the world outside feels chaotic—when the news cycle is screaming, when the politics are polarizing, when your family dynamics are fracturing—the temptation is to stop moving entirely. To freeze. To shut down because everything feels too much. But freezing doesn’t protect you; it isolates you. Your rhythm is your tether. It is the small, consistent acts that remind you that you are still here, you are still breathing, and you are still you, regardless of what is happening in the headlines or the group chat. I remember a Tuesday a few years ago. I had just left my corporate job, feeling unmoored and terrified. The world felt like it was spinning off its axis, and I was trying to spin with it, faster and faster, thinking if I could just keep up, I would be safe. I wasn’t sleeping. I was drinking coffee like water. I was saying yes to every opportunity, every request, every crisis. And then, one afternoon, I dropped a mug. Not a dramatic shatter, just a dull thud. Ceramic cracking on the tile. And I just sat there on the kitchen floor, surrounded by shards of my favorite blue mug, and I couldn’t stand up. My body had made the decision for me. It said, 'Enough.' That was the crack where the light got in, even though it felt like darkness at the time. I realized I had abandoned my own rhythm in favor of reacting to everyone else’s urgency. I was living in the external chaos, and I had forgotten the internal quiet. So, how do we get back? We don’t do it by fixing the world. We do it by returning to our small anchors. This week, I want you to identify one anchor. Just one. It could be making your bed. It could be reading two pages of a book instead of scrolling. It could be lighting a candle when you get home from work. These aren’t trivial things. They are declarations. They are your brain saying, 'This matters. I matter.' When the external world feels unpredictable, these micro-routines create pockets of predictability. You are building a house of cards in the wind, and each card is a small act of self-care. If one falls, another holds. You are creating a structure that can withstand the gusts because it is flexible, rooted in repetition, and chosen by you, not forced upon you by circumstance. I also want to talk about the guilt that comes with pausing. We have this cultural belief that if we aren’t productive, we aren’t valuable. If we aren’t solving the problem, we are part of the problem. But listen to me closely: rest is not a reward for productivity. Rest is a prerequisite for survival. When you pause, you are not checking out. You are recalibrating. You are giving your nervous system a chance to drop out of fight-or-flight mode and back into rest-and-digest. This is physiological, not just spiritual. Your heart rate slows. Your shoulders drop. Your jaw unclenches. In that space, clarity returns. You start to see solutions that were hidden by panic. You remember who you are outside of the crisis. So give yourself permission to stop. Give yourself permission to do nothing for ten minutes. Let the laundry pile up. Let the emails wait. The world will not end if you take a breath. In fact, it might improve because you show up differently afterward. There is also the matter of your energy field. Think of it like a garden fence. You wouldn’t leave your gate wide open in a neighborhood with roaming dogs. Yet, we often let the chaos of the world walk right into our living rooms. We doomscroll. We engage in arguments we didn’t ask for. We absorb the anxiety of friends and family members who haven’t done their own healing work. This isn’t about being cold or indifferent. It’s about sustainability. You cannot pour from an empty cup, and you certainly cannot guide others from a place of depletion. Setting a boundary around your attention is an act of love. It says, 'I care enough about myself to preserve my capacity to care for others.' Start small. Turn off notifications after eight PM. Unfollow accounts that trigger your anxiety. Step away from conversations that drain you without offering connection. These are not selfish acts. They are necessary maintenance for the engine that drives your life. Finally, I want to remind you that maintaining rhythm is not about perfection. It’s about return. You will miss your anchor. You will get swept away by the current. You will scroll for three hours. You will yell at your partner. You will forget to breathe. That is okay. It’s okay to be a work in progress. The goal is not to never fall off the wagon; the goal is to get back on quickly, without shame. Shame keeps us stuck. Grace moves us forward. Every time you choose your rhythm again, you are strengthening a muscle. You are teaching your brain that you are safe, that you are capable, and that you have agency. Over time, these small returns build a reservoir of resilience. You begin to trust yourself again. You begin to know that no matter how hard the storm gets, you have a way back to center. And that knowledge changes everything. Thank you for letting me into your day. Thank you for showing up for yourself, even when it’s hard. I’m so proud of you. Take that next step, however small, and keep your rhythm. I’ll be right here when you need it. Until next time, breathe easy.