Latest / She Survived: Stories of Courage, Recovery & Reinvention / Why Patience Is An Active Choice, Not Passive Waiting | She Survived
Transcript
- You are not stuck because you are broken; you are stuck because you are waiting for permission to heal. Let me tell you a secret that took me forty years to learn: patience is not something that happens to you, it is something you do. I want you to picture a garden in late November. The soil is frozen hard as concrete. There is no green. There is no sign of life, just dead stalks and gray skies. If you walk past this garden, you might think nothing is happening. You might think the gardener has given up. But I know what she’s doing. She is raking. She is turning the earth so it can breathe when the thaw comes. She is planting bulbs that won’t see the sun for three months. She is protecting the roots from the frost. Most of us treat our lives like that barren patch of land. We look at our messy hearts, our stalled careers, or the relationships that feel like they’re on ice, and we call it stagnation. We say, 'I’m just waiting.' We imagine healing as a pause button pressed on life, a quiet interval where we sit still until the storm passes and then everything snaps back to normal. But that isn’t how resilience works. That isn’t how growth works. When I was younger, I thought patience meant endurance. I thought it meant gritting my teeth and suffering through the days until they were over. I treated time like an enemy, counting down the minutes until I could move on. But that kind of patience is heavy. It’s full of resentment. It’s passive in the worst way. It assumes that if I just suffer long enough, the universe owes me a reward. And when the reward didn’t come, I felt betrayed by my own waiting. But real patience? It’s active. It’s a verb. It requires more energy than complaining does. It demands that you show up for yourself even when there is no visible progress. It asks you to tend to the frozen ground with fierce, quiet love, trusting that the work you do in the dark matters, even if you can’t see the sprout yet. Let’s talk about the violence of impatience, because it’s a quiet little killer. We live in a culture that worships speed. We want the quick fix, the overnight transformation, the viral moment of success. When we don’t get it, we blame ourselves. We think, 'If I were stronger, smarter, or more disciplined, I would have figured this out by now.' I remember a period in my thirties when I tried to force my grief into a box. My mother had passed, and the world expected me to be 'over it' within a year. A year! As if love has an expiration date. So I pushed. I forced myself to smile at parties. I forced myself to return to work with a vigor I didn’t feel. I told myself I was being productive. I was being strong. But inside, I was tearing myself apart. That wasn’t patience. That was suppression. And it came back to haunt me. Two years later, I couldn’t get out of bed for a week. The body keeps the score, friends. It remembers what the mind tries to rush through. Impatience is a form of self-abandonment. It’s saying, 'I don’t trust you to handle this pain, so I’m going to try to outrun it.' But you can’t outrun your own shadow. You can’t sprint through trauma. Healing is not a race. It is a landscape. And landscapes change slowly, invisibly, in ways that defy our need for immediate feedback. When we rush, we damage the very things we are trying to save. So, if patience is active, what does it look like? It looks like rebellion. In a world that screams 'Do more, be more, go faster,' choosing to slow down is a radical act. Choosing to sit with discomfort without trying to fix it immediately is a radical act. Think about the last time you felt angry or sad. Your instinct was probably to distract yourself. Pick up the phone. Scroll through social media. Eat something sweet. Watch a show until your eyes burn. We do this because we are terrified of the silence. We are terrified of what we might hear if we stop moving. Active patience means staying in the room with that feeling. It means saying, 'Okay, I am hurting right now. I am not going to run away from it. I am going to make tea. I am going to wrap myself in a blanket. I am going to let this wave crash over me, and I will not drown.' This is not easy. It requires a steady hum of presence, like the cello notes I mentioned earlier. It’s low and resonant. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t demand attention. It just holds space. When you choose to stay present with your pain instead of fleeing from it, you are telling your nervous system, 'We are safe. We can handle this.' That is active courage. That is the muscle of hope being built, rep by tiny rep. Back to the garden. The gardener does not dig up the bulbs every day to check if they are growing. She knows that digging them up would kill them. She trusts the process. She trusts the seasons. She knows that winter is necessary for spring. Your life is that garden. Some seasons are for blooming, and some are for dormancy. But we often try to bloom in winter. We try to create joy when we should be resting. We try to find purpose when we should be grieving. And when we can’t, we feel defective. Active patience is learning to read your own seasons. It is recognizing that right now, you are in a winter. And that is okay. Winter is not a failure. Winter is a phase. It is a time of gathering strength. It is a time of deepening roots. When I stopped fighting my winters, everything changed. I stopped asking, 'Why is this taking so long?' and started asking, 'What is this season teaching me?' Maybe it’s teaching me to rest. Maybe it’s teaching me to set boundaries. Maybe it’s teaching me to value solitude. These lessons don’t come when you are rushing. They come when you are still. They come when you are willing to sit in the cold and wait for the warmth to return on its own schedule. Hope is not a lightning bolt. It is not a sudden epiphany that solves all your problems. Hope is a muscle. And like any muscle, it grows through small, daily repetitions. It grows when you choose one tiny act of care for yourself today. Maybe it’s drinking a glass of water. Maybe it’s sending one email you’ve been avoiding. Maybe it’s calling a friend and admitting you’re struggling. These moments seem insignificant. They feel too small to matter. But they are the bricks that build the bridge out of despair. I used to think I needed to make massive leaps to prove I was healing. I wanted to transform my entire life in a month. But transformation is cumulative. It is the sum of a thousand small choices. It is the result of showing up, again and again, even when you don’t feel like it. Even when you don’t see the results. This is where the magic happens. This is where the turning point is tiny. It’s not a grand gesture. It’s the decision to brush your teeth. It’s the choice to step outside for five minutes of sunlight. It’s the willingness to forgive yourself for having a bad day. These are the reps. They build the strength you need for the bigger battles. Don’t underestimate the power of the small. Don’t dismiss the quiet wins. They are the foundation of everything you are becoming. There is a profound mystery in the unseen work of healing. We cannot see the cells repairing themselves. We cannot see the neural pathways rewiring. We cannot see the heart mending its cracks. All we see is the surface. And the surface often looks unchanged. This invisibility is terrifying. It makes us doubt our efforts. It makes us question if we are making any progress at all. But trust the unseen. Trust that the work is happening. Trust that you are changing, even if you can’t measure it yet. I learned this lesson the hard way. For years, I measured my worth by external metrics. Did I get the promotion? Did I find the partner? Did I achieve the goal? When I couldn’t, I felt worthless. But now, I measure my worth by my capacity to endure. By my ability to keep going. By my willingness to be gentle with myself when I stumble. These internal shifts are invisible to the world, but they are monumental to you. They are the true markers of growth. They are the signs that you are becoming more resilient, more compassionate, more whole. So, when you feel like you’re standing still, remember the gardener. Remember that the roots are growing. Remember that the spring is coming, whether you can see it or not. Be gentle with yourself, my friend. The waiting is part of the work. And you are doing it beautifully. I’ll see you next time.