Rise, even if you crawl
883 Words
Grief doesn’t leave you. It merely changes shape.
After reading my mother’s diary, something shifted in me—not a grand transformation, but a quiet thawing. Her voice had bridged a gap that even God hadn’t managed to cross since her death. It didn’t answer every question or erase the pain. But it gave me permission to stop drowning.
I found a small notebook in the back of her journal. Its pages were mostly blank, save for the first one.
"When you are ready to live again, don’t look for light. Be it."
I copied that line and taped it to my wall. I saw it every morning, even when I couldn’t believe it. Especially when I couldn’t believe it.
In the following weeks, I began to rebuild—not in a cinematic, tear-streaked montage, but in slow, uncertain steps that felt more like crawling than rising.
The first step was finding a job.
I walked into Olive & Pages, a modest bookstore-café tucked into the corner of a quiet street, not far from where I’d first met Michael. I hadn't planned to go there. I was just walking, avoiding the places that held too many memories, and the scent of coffee and old pages drew me in like warmth on a cold day.
There was a handwritten “Help Wanted” sign in the window.
The woman behind the counter, Miss Ebele, looked up from a stack of receipts and smiled at me like she’d been expecting me.
“You here for the job, sweetheart?”
I paused. My voice caught in my throat.
“Yes. I think... I am.”
I started the next day.
My tasks were simple: shelve books, take coffee orders, wipe down tables, smile. The kind of work that let your hands move even when your heart wasn’t ready to. And that’s exactly what I needed—something to do while I figured out how to feel again.
Working at Olive & Pages became my therapy. I found peace in the repetition, in the scent of cinnamon scones and freshly brewed espresso. The quiet hum of conversation and jazz music filled the silences that used to scream in my head.
I met people—real people. Some were regulars: an elderly woman who always asked for peppermint tea and sat by the window to knit; a group of university students who used the far table to argue about politics and write poetry; a young man who came in daily to read one page of the same book, like he was slowly savoring each word.
These strangers didn’t know my past. They didn’t know about the graves I’d stood beside or the ring I’d thrown into the sea. They just saw me—a young woman behind the counter who handed them coffee with a tentative smile.
And in their eyes, I started to see myself again.
But healing isn’t linear. And grief doesn’t like to be forgotten.
There were days I relapsed—days when I walked past the beach and heard Michael’s laughter in the waves, or nights when I reached for my mother’s number before remembering it no longer existed. I cried in the stockroom once, clinging to a box of romance novels I hadn’t even opened. Miss Ebele found me, didn’t say a word, just sat beside me until my breathing slowed.
“I lost my son ten years ago,” she whispered. “Grief changes, but it never leaves. We just learn to carry it.”
It was the first time someone said exactly what I needed without asking me to move on.
My second step was finding a reason to write again.
My mother had written in silence. Not for anyone else—but for herself. I realized I could do the same.
So I started a blog.
It wasn’t anything fancy—just a free website with a simple theme and a name that felt both broken and brave: Still Rising.
I wrote about pain. About love lost. About eating alone. About laughing again for the first time. About guilt and healing and that one time I screamed into my pillow until my throat went sore.
I didn’t write to teach anyone. I wrote to survive.
To my surprise, people found it. Slowly at first. A comment here. A shared post there. A woman from South Africa messaged me one evening:
“I lost my husband last year. Your words feel like my heartbeat. Thank you for reminding me I’m not alone.”
I read her message over and over, tears streaming down my face.
Maybe I wasn’t alone either.
But the real shift came one Saturday morning at the shelter down the road.
It started as a chance encounter. One of our regulars at the café, a kind-faced man named Uncle Tunde, came in with flyers.
“Faustina, you’ve got a good heart,” he said. “Ever think of volunteering?”
“Volunteering?”
“At the shelter. We feed the homeless, help displaced women, tutor street kids. Nothing fancy. Just light, where the dark likes to grow.”
I wasn’t sure I had any light left in me to offer. But I took a flyer anyway.
The next weekend, I showed up.
And that’s where I met Daniel
- Writer
