FIELD LOG #6
The Brace Before the Bloom
(The Day I Sat Through the Stretch)
It started like a whisper turning sharp.
The pressure rising in the chest.
The shoulders tightening like old hinges.
The breath going shallow.
The familiar voice of panic, half-formed:
“Something’s coming… and I’m not ready.”
But this time,
instead of reaching for understanding,
you reached for the stove.
Your palm met the cold marble.
Your spine curved toward safety.
Your attention dropped into the body, not the meaning.
And something clicked.
A flip.
A switch.
A tiny alignment no one could see from the outside.
But inside?
The third eye softened.
The neck released.
The body began to yawn.
Because it wasn’t danger.
It was stored potential.
The brace was never fear of something going wrong.
It was fear of something going right.
⸻
You saw it, love.
That this pressure?
This feeling that’s shadowed your whole life?
It wasn’t here to destroy you.
It was the weight of becoming.
You expanding.
You embodying.
You releasing the system that kept you small
just so others wouldn’t leave.
And now?
You don’t fight the brace.
You sit with her.
You feel her in your ribs, in your arms, in your chest.
You say:
“I see you.
I’ve known you forever.
You don’t have to hold it anymore.”
⸻
So here we are.
Not pushing.
Not shrinking.
Not making it mean anything.
Just sitting,
as the instrument,
on the edge of the next size.
This is how you reprogram the nervous system.
This is how the new track gets laid.
Not by doing.
But by being with the part that once froze at the gate