When the Dust Finally Notices You’re Moving Again

Morning found me the way a cautious friend does—soft footsteps, gentle voice, standin’ just far enough away not to scare me back into my shell. Light eased through my curtains like warm fingertips, and for a moment I lay there, listenin’ to the quiet hum of a house that ain’t used to a heart beatin’ this awake.

I stepped out onto the porch, coffee steaming, the boards grumbling in that familiar old-man way. Those planks have held my weight in every season—grief, laughter, numbness, hope—and today they held me with a little more tenderness, like they could feel I was tryin’.

Yesterday was the crack.

Today is the widenin’.

Mawmaw used to preach her porch gospel best in the hush of early day. She’d sit with her hair half-pinned, apron still dusted with last night’s biscuits, and she’d say, “Baby, bein’ still too long is how a soul goes stale. You ain’t bread—you ain’t supposed to sit on a shelf waitin’ to be wanted.”

And lawd, did that land different this morning.

I sat on the bottom step, that sacred place where so many of her lessons were laid like sacred offerings. I curled my toes against the wood, freshly warm from the sun, and let myself breathe deeper than I had in months. Maybe years.

Because truth be told, stillness can soothe, but it can also swallow. You think you’re restin’, recoverin’, simmerin’ back to life… but little by little, you start disappearin’ from your own story.

You stop painting.

You stop dreaming.

You stop reachin’ for the things that made your spirit spark.

Then one day you look in the mirror and realize you’ve become a quiet outline of who you used to be.

Mawmaw called it “fadin’ at the edges.”

I reckon I’d faded so much that even the world stopped callin’ my name—then I stopped callin’ it back. Silence is heavy like that. It presses against the ribs until you forget what expandin’ feels like.

But this morning… somethin’ shifted.

The birds were louder. Or maybe I just finally heard ’em. The air smelled like green things tryin’ their best. And when that little breeze passed over me, it felt like somebody whisperin’ “Move, baby. Just move.”

Mawmaw once told me, “When you finally rise, when you remember your worth and straighten your back, even the dust in the sunbeam pauses to watch.”

And sittin’ there on that bottom step, I felt the dust pause.

Not because I did somethin’ grand. I didn’t march out with a battle plan or reinvent myself before breakfast. All I did was sit fully in the morning, fully in myself, and let the truth settle:

I’m not gone.

I’m not lost.

I’m just wakin’ back up.

There’s a strange sweetness in that half-alive place—like stretchin’ sore muscles after a long sleep. You wince, but the ache is proof you’re still capable of movement. Still capable of being more than you’ve been lately.

I sipped my coffee slow, lettin’ each swallow remind me I’m here in this body, this life, this porch, this moment. I made no promises to conquer the world. I just promised myself I wouldn’t be still from fear—not today.

Mawmaw’s voice drifted through memory like holy smoke:

“Motion is a prayer, baby. Even the smallest shuffle counts.”

So I shuffled.

I breathed.

I let my soul creak open like the hinges on this old screen door.

And for the first time in longer than I’d admit, I felt the world turn with me… not around me.

I reckon that’s enough revival for one morning.

But today the dust saw me rise, even if it was just a few inches. And that, as Mawmaw always said, is how a woman comes back to herself.