mental-health

If you’re wondering what you’re looking at, these are star trails.

They form when a camera stays still long enough to notice what we usually rush past. It holds its breath, holds its place, and lets the Earth turn beneath it. We’re the ones moving, but the long exposure makes it look like the stars are the ones wandering, sweeping their light across the night like they have somewhere gentle to be.

I think that’s why I love them.
Because they prove something I keep forgetting.
That movement doesn’t always look like progress.
Sometimes it looks like staying in one place long enough for the truth to catch up to you.

What I can’t stop staring at is the reflection in the water.

That doubled sky.
That echo of light.
Like the world was so full that it overflowed and spilled itself into the stillness until even the dark had to carry something bright.

There is something almost painfully tender about that.
How the sky didn’t shrink itself or dim itself or apologize for being too much.
It simply became two skies instead of one.

And maybe that is what hit me.
The reminder that even in silence, even when my days feel stuck or small or swallowed by their own shadows, things are shifting.
Healing is shifting.
Grief is shifting.
I am shifting.
Not loudly. Not obviously. But undeniably.

The water didn’t move, but it mirrored the stars anyway.
And some days I feel like that.
Quiet, unmoving, like nothing is changing at all.
But maybe I am reflecting things I can’t see yet.
Maybe the parts of me that feel still are actually catching light I didn’t know was reaching for me.

I stayed out by the water longer than I meant to.
The grass was cold.
The night smelled like winter trying to arrive too early.
And I felt that familiar ache in my chest, the kind that comes from wanting more than I can name, from missing things I can’t explain, from holding hope and exhaustion in the same trembling hand.

But the stars kept tracing their slow arcs across the sky.
They didn’t hurry.
They didn’t need to.
They simply kept going, one thin line at a time, drawing proof of their persistence in the dark.

I think I needed to see that.

Because lately I have been feeling like I am barely moving.
Like I am suspended between worlds, South Dakota and Virginia, past and future, memory and whatever comes next.
But the camera caught movement my eyes couldn’t.
And maybe that is true for my life too.

Maybe I am changing in ways I won’t recognize until later.
Maybe this season is a long exposure.
Slow, quiet, honest.
Capturing shifts I won’t understand until I step back and see the trails.

Maybe you are in one of those seasons too.

If you are, I hope you remember this.
Stillness is not stagnation.
Quiet is not failure.
And even on the nights when you feel like you are holding your breath, the sky is still moving, and so are you.

I took this picture at the end of one of those days. The kind where your body feels ancient before the sun even considers setting. Where every muscle aches with the kind of tired that sleep can’t fix. I couldn’t remember the last time I sat down, let alone stopped moving.

I’d been going nonstop since morning— soaked through with sweat and sudden summer rain,
mud on my shoes, hair stuck to my face, filling water coolers, hauling trash bags, fixing what broke before anyone even noticed it had fallen apart. It was the kind of day where the clock slips away from you, where all you can do is keep your head down and push forward because there’s still so much left to do, and you’re the one who does it.

But for a moment—
a rare, fragile moment—
I paused.

I looked up.

And there they were: clouds that held both weight and softness, like they’d been stitched together by lightning and lullabies. They glowed with that strange, storm-lit kind of light—
blue and gold and bruised gray all at once, like the sky couldn’t decide what it was feeling either.

So I took a photo. Something in me said remember this.
Not because it was perfect— but because it was real.
Because something about that sky made me feel like maybe there was more going on than I could see.

Later that night, I was curled up in bed—exhausted, sore, scrolling half-heartedly through my camera roll, just trying to tether myself to something good. And I stopped on that photo again.

And there it was.

A rainbow.

Faint. Hidden in the upper corner. Tucked into the clouds so subtly you could miss it if you weren’t really looking.

And I hadn’t seen it when I took the shot. Not even a flicker. But it was there. It had been there all along.

And I sat there—
staring at that quiet little arc of light—
and felt something crack open in me.

Because that’s what this week has been.
Heavy.
Demanding.
Full of things I didn’t sign up for
and moments that almost broke me.

But it also held things I missed in real time:
a laugh during a water break
that made the weight of the day feel a little lighter.
The wind kissing my face after the storm passed,
reminding me I’m still alive.
The hush of the world right before sunset—
when even the chaos takes a breath.
A rainbow I didn’t know was there
until the day was done.

It reminded me:
Sometimes beauty is quiet.
Sometimes grace doesn’t show up loud and obvious.
It’s tucked in corners,
woven into the ordinary,
soft and steady like a whisper.

And maybe that’s the whole point.

Maybe the good things are still there,
even when we’re too tired to see them.
Maybe the light doesn’t disappear—
it just waits patiently
for us to slow down long enough to notice.

So if your week has felt like mine—
exhausting, unrelenting,
a string of moments that asked too much—
please know this:

There might be a rainbow you missed.
There might be laughter still echoing somewhere in your memory.
There might be grace folded into the day you thought you barely survived.

You are not alone.
Not even close.

Hold on.
Keep going.
There’s still light.
Even in the storm.
Especially in the storm.

The Stars Take Note

The Night The Sky Couldn’t Hold Itself

Hidden In The Corners