Some days I stop under that huge tree near the corner by my street, like the one in the photo, and I just breathe. The branches are thick and wild, like arms raised in silent protest, but they also hold a kind of peace I can’t always find in my own head. I lean against the trunk when I’m waiting for the bus or after picking up my kid from school. It’s quiet there. No one is trying to prove anything. And in that stillness, I notice how much of my mental noise isn’t mine. It’s complaints I’ve absorbed from people around me. Or worse, stuff I’ve repeated on autopilot. You know what I mean. That low-grade everyday whining disguised as conversation. The weather sucks. Work sucks. Gas prices suck. Everything sucks. Except it doesn’t. Not always. And definitely not all at once.
I’m not here to play the positivity game either. That’s not what this is. I’ve had my share of mornings where I cried brushing my teeth because the toddler wouldn’t stop screaming and the kitchen smelled like failure from the night before. But I’ve also learned that repeating this is all too much like a mantra doesn’t make it less. It just fills up the air like clutter does a room. And just like clutter emotional mess accumulates fast. One complaint piles on another and before you know it you’re buried under your own voice echoing your exhaustion. I’m not judging. I’ve been queen of that spiral. But you know what snapped me out of it, at least partially. Watching how nothing outside me changed even when I screamed inside. Rent was still due. The fridge was still empty. The tree still stood.
Let’s talk minimalism not as some aesthetic flex on social media but as survival. Not the white walls and bamboo furniture kind but the kind where you ask yourself do I need to carry this thought today. I started small. Unsubscribed from noise, literal and digital. I stopped following people who ranted daily but never acted. Began replying less to drama I didn’t start. Cut back on apologizing for not attending every family meltdown. When I stopped feeding the complaint machine something weird happened. I heard my real needs again. Not I hate this job but I need time to feel useful. Not I’m tired of my kid whining but maybe we both need more rest. It wasn’t about silencing pain. It was about decluttering it.
There’s this thing I noticed in others and painfully in myself. We get attached to the identity of struggle. Like if we’re not always exhausted or mad we’re somehow not trying hard enough. And yeah society feeds that. Especially for women. Especially for moms. Hustle. Grind. Push. Then vent online so you don’t explode. And that feels like release but really it’s just another form of spinning in place. The tree in the photo doesn’t need to scream to grow. It stretches because it must. Because it was made to. I think we’re the same if we let go of the layers that weren’t ours to begin with.
No moral of the story here. No ten step plan to inner peace. Just this. Next time you hear yourself complaining pause. Not to shame yourself but to ask is this helping. If the answer’s no maybe leave it there. Let it drop like a heavy bag you forgot you were carrying. You don’t owe the world a constantly suffering version of yourself. You’re allowed to be okay even when things aren’t perfect. You’re allowed to grow in silence without narrating your pain to prove it’s real. And if you need somewhere quiet to start over maybe go find a tree. Or just close the apps drink some water and breathe like you mean it.
All photographs and content used in this post are my own. Therefore, they have been used under my permission and are my property.
