On the small yes

There is a thing you can do in a liminal season that sounds like nothing.

It is not a goal. It is not a habit. It is not a productivity strategy dressed in softer language. It is the shower on the third day. The text to one friend instead of the group chat. The walk to the end of the road and back. The chair moved one foot closer to the window. The book placed on the bed, even if you do not open it.

The small yes is the only honest metric a liminal season has.

why it feels embarrassing

Because it sounds like nothing. Because the culture you came from rewards big moves, clear decisions, five-year plans, the definitive text that ends a conversation. Because if you tell someone what your small yes was today, they will look at you with the polite confusion of a person who thought you were about to say something else.

Because it sounds like something from a wellness app. Because the language of self-care has been so thoroughly colonized by commerce that any small act toward your own life now sounds like an advertisement for a subscription service.

The small yes is not that. The bar had to come down because the bar was made for a season you are not in.

what it actually is

The small yes is the thing you can do, in the body you have, on the day you are actually in.

It is not pretending. It is not the performance of being okay. It is not a step toward a big yes that you are secretly hoping will arrive faster if you do enough of these. It is not striving in a quieter outfit.

The small yes is not a performance. It is for no one watching, earns no compliment, and by Friday you may not remember you did it.

That is the point. It is the only movement that is not being measured by anyone else. It belongs to you entirely.

how to find one

Ask yourself this: What is the smallest true thing I could do in the next hour that would be in the direction of my own life?

Not the direction of fixing it. Not the direction of getting through it faster. The direction of your own life. Opening a window. Putting on real clothes. Eating with a fork instead of over the sink. Moving the book from the shelf to the bed. Texting the one person who does not need you to be okay.

The answer will be smaller than you think it should be.

the practice

Pick one small yes in the morning. Or at noon. Or when you remember. Do it without telling anyone. Do not post it. Do not journal it. Do not let it become a project.

At the end of the day, notice the moment you said yes to your own life. It was real. It happened. It is not erased by the rest of the day being hard, or by the thing you did not do, or by the big yes that still has not come.

Then do it again tomorrow. Or come back to it on Thursday without explaining where you were.

what the threshold notices

The threshold does not measure progress the way you do. It does not care about the big move, the announcement, the decision that makes other people say you are doing so well.

The threshold only notices that you are still showing up.

The woman on the other side of the wilderness is not the woman who tried hardest. She is the woman who kept showing up to her own life in small honest ways, on days when no one was clapping, when nothing was working, when the big yes still had not come.

She just kept saying yes to the smallest true thing.

One more time, if you can. Then rest.

— Bukola. For the woman who said yes to the smallest true thing today.

Limen is a quiet 90-day journey for women in the in-between. Begin with the six questions →