DAY ONE — The Bottom Step Journal

“Where the Porch Light Stays On Even When You Don’t.”

I didn’t plan to sit on the bottom step today.

Didn’t plan to take stock of my life like I was counting coins on a church fan. But life has a way of cornering you right where the truth can see your face, and the step seemed to know somethin’ I didn’t.

That wood greeted me like an old friend—sun-bleached, cracked, a little tired around the edges. Felt familiar in a way I hadn’t felt in a long while. I settled there, and that’s when MawMaw’s voice floated up from memory, sweet as sorghum and sharp as barbed wire.

“Baby,” she’d say, “you stand still long enough, the world’ll start thinkin’ you meant to be forgotten. And worse yet, you start believin’ it.”

I didn’t understand it back then, not fully.

But today it hit me deep—so deep it rattled the dust off parts of me I’d buried.

I’d been so still these last few years that moss grew on my name.

So still I forgot what my hands were built for.

So still I mistook silence for safety.

Depression and anxiety don’t show up with a knock; they seep in like swamp fog, slow and sure, until you can’t see your own outline anymore. And I let it happen. I let days fold into each other until time didn’t know what to call me, and neither did I.

That’s when another one of MawMaw’s truths kicked open the door of my mind:

“Don’t you ever let the darkness convince you you’re finished. The devil loves a quiet soul—keeps him from havin’ to work.”

She said it half-joking, half-prophecy.

I laughed then.

I ain’t laughin’ today.

Because sittin’ there on that bottom step, I realized I had disappeared from my own story.

Not died—just drifted so far from myself that even the mirror started lookin’ unsure.

I’d forgotten the things that once made me… me.

The fire.

The wild.

The art.

The way my mind used to spin whole worlds out of thin air.

The way my feet once knew how to dance even when life kicked back.

It wasn’t that the world had forgotten my name—

I had just stopped speakin’ it.

MawMaw used to say names have weight; they’re little prayers stitched into sound.

Stop sayin’ yours and the wind’ll carry it off like a loose receipt.

“Call yourself back, baby,” she’d tell me. “Call yourself back ‘fore the world claims your empty spot.”

So I sat today, on that humble little step, and I whispered myself home.

Not out loud—my throat was too tight for that.

But inside.

Quiet.

True.

Like rebuilding from the ashes of who I used to be.

The air thickened around me, heavy with cicadas and late-day heat.

The porch light flickered—like it knew I needed proof something was still burnin’ for me.

Maybe that’s what Day One truly is:

Not a beginning.

But a remembering.

A remembering of all the things I let slip.

A remembering of the woman I’m still allowed to become.

A remembering that stillness ain’t the same as peace—sometimes it’s just fear dressed up polite.

Day One is the moment you feel yourself stir after a long hibernation of the soul.

It’s the first spark.

The first hum.

The first whisper of your own name echoing back to you.

And hell… maybe that’s enough.

I ain’t fixed today.

I ain’t shiny.

I ain’t triumphant.

But I’m present.

And that counts.

Stay close, sugar.

Tomorrow’s step might be higher, or it might be the same one.

Either way…

the light will be on.

— Light’s on, darlin’. Come back when your heart gets heavy.