Being Good To Yourself

Dawn in the Kitchen

The kettle sang its quiet song at 5:07 a.m. Not the frantic whistle of a combat medic rushing to a field dressing station, but a soft, steady hum. I stood at the counter, the house still wrapped in pre-dawn grey, watching steam curl from the spout. My hands, usually moving too fast, too sure, just held the mug. No coffee. Just hot water, no sugar. A small rebellion.

I’d been rushing. As always. The therapist’s schedule, the emails, the weight of the day already pressing. But this morning, the kettle’s song stopped me. I didn’t pour. I just watched the steam rise, tracing the same path it had for years, but never noticed. The silence wasn’t empty. It was full. Full of the absence of alarms, of shouts, of the constant hum of being on.

I took a breath. Not the sharp inhale of a combat zone, but a slow, deep one that filled my lungs like water. I held the mug with both hands, feeling the heat through the ceramic, the simple weight of it. No need to fix anything. No need to be strong. Just to be here, with the quiet, with the steam, with the fact that I was safe. That I was here.

It wasn’t dramatic. No epiphany. Just a single, unbroken moment where I stopped trying to be a soldier and remembered I was a person. A person who needed to stand still, to feel the warmth, to simply be without the armor. The kettle clicked off. I sipped the hot water. It was just water. But in that stillness, it was everything.

I didn’t need to earn this quiet. I didn’t need to do anything to deserve it. I just needed to be present for it. To let it sink in, like the steam into the cool air. That’s the quiet courage I needed to learn: not the roar, but the soft, steady hum of showing up for yourself, exactly as you are, in the ordinary, sacred space of a single, unhurried breath.

— Lois Brown, still serving