Consume This At Your Worst

While eating takeout on the living room floor

June 22nd, 2025

Maude’s Coffee Shop – 11:50 AM

Last night, I got the best sleep of my life on Meg’s new couch. We’d spent hours talking about our internal chaos and how it was weighing on our delicate souls. From that conversation, I’ve come to understand this: when it feels like the world has found a resting place on your chest, the best thing you can do is ask for help. Just call for help. Put the shame aside and speak. Confide in a friend. Roam the neighborhood a few steps behind an old, bouncy pup. Eat takeout on the living room floor.

The climb toward peace may feel overwhelming—completely all-consuming—but even in that heaviness, hope can be found. Hope in strangers. Hope in your friends. And above all, hope in yourself. Chances are, you’re not the only one being clawed at by insecurity, or greeting anxiety like an old, complicated, distant aunt who shows up at your door unannounced. Chances are, you’re not the only one wondering if your presence is a burden.

You, too, are part of the human race. You will feel stuck and confused. You’ll feel like a runaway train, a soul in shambles. But because you are human, you also have the ability to begin again. You can learn to love the very parts of yourself you spend hours picking apart. You can be a soul set on fire. You can exude confidence. You can give yourself grace. And, my goodness—you are worthy of taking up space.

So bring your sorrows to a friend, and to the neighborhood dog. Watch him bounce in his joyful trot. Bring your heartache to the living room floor, and prepare for the tears to form.

You are a part of the human race, and yes, it can be all-consuming. But before it has the chance to swallow your becoming whole, consume the things that fill you up. Hold out your empty cup. Watch i it overflow. Consume what is good, what is real, what makes you feel alive.

Be hungry enough for all that you can be instead, of starving yourself over who you have been.

The Ketchum Starbucks – 2:55 PM

It’s our third coffee shop of the day. We just wrapped up lunch with a couple of close friends at 4Roots across the street. I just finished typing up a letter for a friend traveling through Europe this summer. Between that and the conversation over coffee and toast just moments ago, I’ve realized how anchored I’ve been mentally these past few weeks.

Still, I’m at peace with the rough days—understanding they are just as much a part of me as the smooth ones. I get scared of how quickly my mindset can shift. There’s something unsettlingly nostalgic about them. They take me back to a time when my feet didn’t know balance, when guilt planted untrue patterns of thinking in my brain, when grief robbed me of tranquility.

In those moments, I'll remember: this too shall pass. I will not make myself my own enemy—I am stuck with me for eternity. I'll find acceptance in the mistakes I’ve made, and in the mistakes others have made. I'll remember that I am loved. I'll remember to forgive—both myself and them.

We are all so much alike. Surely, we can find grace through inner restoration, and acknowledge that we share in this self-resentment. We are similar in our guilt, in the insecurities that plague our minds. Isn’t that oddly comforting? To be uniquely challenged by life, and yet feel the same pits in our bellies, the same weight on our chests.

So, just as you would set boundaries with others, set boundaries with yourself.

When shame comes to strike you down and rob you of peace, say: “I don’t get to talk to myself like this. How dare I make my mind a living hell, when heaven is one corrected thought away? I am a member of the human race—and my mission is to make that a proud statement, through just a little bit of grace.”

— Sarah