The Women Who Keep Things Alive

 

Some women keep things alive so naturally that nobody notices they’re dying inside of it.

Nobody notices because the dogs are fed.

The plants are watered.

The laundry is folded.

The grass gets cut before the neighbors can complain.

The meeting notes are still written.

The groceries still appear in the fridge.

The porch still glows warm at night like somebody gentle lives there.

And maybe that’s the cruelest part of all.

The world only panics when women stop functioning.

Not when they go numb.

Not when they stop sleeping.

Not when they cry in parked cars.

Not when they stare at ceilings at four in the morning trying to figure out how a human body can physically contain this much grief without splitting open.

No.

The alarm only sounds when the work stops.

So some women learn how to keep moving with blood in their mouth.

I think people misunderstand women like me.

They think because I’m soft, I must also be stable.

Because I can make a house beautiful, I must feel beautiful inside of it.

Because I can host meetings and water gardens and comfort animals and remember birthdays and keep routines alive, I must somehow be okay.

But some of us were trained in survival so early that functioning became instinct.

I can weed whack an entire property while actively grieving my life.

I can deep water the plants while emotionally collapsing.

I can answer messages kindly while privately wondering how much longer I can keep carrying this version of myself. 

I can fold laundry with tears running down my face.

I can make dinner with shaking hands.

I can smile at strangers while feeling like my entire inner world has turned to static.

And still…

the flowers bloom.

That’s the confusing part.

People think devastation always looks dramatic.

They think heartbreak always looks like destroyed houses and screaming and public wreckage.

Sometimes devastation looks incredibly productive.

Sometimes it looks like a woman obsessively tending gardens because caring for living things is the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth.

Sometimes it looks like reorganizing rooms at midnight because if she keeps building maybe she won’t completely disappear.

Sometimes it looks like immaculate grocery lists and watered herbs and swept porches and color-coded calendars.

Sometimes it looks like:

“wow she’s really doing better lately.”

Meanwhile she’s quietly become a ghost inside her own body.

I think that’s why I’ve been outside so much lately.

The gardens don’t ask me to explain myself.

The dogs don’t ask me to make my grief digestible.

The trees don’t demand I summarize my pain into something more comfortable for other people to hear.

The corn just needs watered.

The mulch needs turned.

The weeds keep growing whether I’m heartbroken or not.

And strangely enough, that saves me.

Because the earth doesn’t care about performance.

It only responds to tending.

You can’t manipulate a garden into thriving.

You can’t gaslight tomatoes into growing.

You can’t love-bomb a dying hydrangea.

You can’t yell a root system into stability.

You show up.

Or you don’t.

And lately, showing up is the only thing I know how to do.

So I keep tending things.

I keep checking on the girls outside during heat warnings.

I keep filling bird feeders.

I keep making the house softer.

I keep planting things like a woman trying to convince herself she’ll still exist in October.

Maybe that sounds dramatic.

But anyone who’s ever planted something while grieving understands exactly what I mean.

There’s something deeply human about placing roots into the ground while your own life feels uncertain.

It’s an act of defiance.

A quiet one.

A holy one.

Every pepper plant.

Every flower box.

Every little seed pressed into dark soil says:

“I’m still planning on being here.”

Even if your voice shakes while saying it.

Especially then.

And I think there are so many women living like this right now.

Women carrying entire emotional ecosystems on their backs while privately unraveling.

Women answering “I’m good!” while trying not to cry in Target parking lots.

Women holding families together while nobody notices they haven’t felt emotionally safe in years.

Women making magick out of exhaustion.

Women becoming infrastructure instead of people.

The ones who remember the dentist appointments.

The dog food.

The school forms.

The medication refills.

The groceries.

The birthdays.

The emotional temperature of every room they enter.

The women who keep things alive.

I see you.

I see the way your body keeps moving long after your spirit became tired.

I see the way you clean when you’re overwhelmed because control feels safer than feeling.

I see the way you apologize for becoming distant when really you are just trying to survive yourself.

I see the way you continue nurturing everyone around you while secretly wondering what it would feel like to be nurtured back.

And maybe that’s why this house matters so much to me lately.

Maybe that’s why the porch lights and rugs and flowers and old wooden walls and steaming coffee and dogs at my feet feel almost sacred.

Because I’m trying to build a life gentle enough to hold me.

Not the version of me that performs well.

Not the version that hosts and fixes and carries and manages and absorbs.

Not the strong one everybody depends on.

The real one.

The exhausted one.

The grieving one.

The one sitting on the bathroom floor trying to breathe quietly so nobody hears her cry.

The one who keeps saving everybody else while slowly disappearing herself.

I think people assume resilience is loud.

But honestly?

Sometimes resilience is just a woman watering her plants before she falls apart.

Sometimes it’s laundry folded during heartbreak.

Sometimes it’s weed whacking the yard while your chest feels hollow.

Sometimes it’s answering one more text.

Cooking one more meal.

Attending one more class.

Keeping one more thing alive.

Anyway.

The grass needed weed whacked.

So I did.

Some things stay alive because somebody keeps showing up.