01/24/2026
Stop 🛑 drop & roll… Screaming for Change
No one ever tells you the whole truth about “stop, drop, and roll.”
They teach it like a tidy little rhyme.
Catchy. Calm. Almost playful.
As if, when your body is on fire, you’ll politely remember a childhood lesson, lower yourself gently to the ground, and roll with quiet determination.
They don’t tell you that you would be screaming.
That fear would hijack your body before logic ever had a chance.
That pain would be loud, blinding, and urgent.
That every instinct in you would want to run—because running feels like survival.
And yet… stopping, dropping, and rolling is still what saves you.
That’s the part that sticks with me.
Because life works the same way.
We are rarely prepared for how terrifying the necessary things will feel. We are told what to do, but almost never what it will feel like to do it. No one warns you that the right choice might come with panic, shaking hands, nausea, or grief. No one explains that growth can hurt in your body, not just your heart.
We glamorize courage as confidence.
We create glittered memories.
We sell healing as peaceful.
We talk about change like it arrives wrapped in motivation and clarity.
But real change often starts while you’re screaming inside.
It starts when you are scared and still have to make the first move.
When your nervous system is on fire and the instructions feel impossible.
When stopping means facing the thing you’ve been running from.
When dropping means surrendering control.
When rolling means staying in the discomfort long enough for it to pass.
Motivation doesn’t usually come before the hard thing.
It comes after you survive it.
First comes the fear.
Then the pain.
Then the choice to act anyway.
No one tells you that sometimes doing the “right thing” feels wrong in your body. That your instincts may beg you to flee when the safest option is to stay. That healing might require you to slow down when every cell in you wants to bolt.
But just like fire safety, the lesson still holds.
You don’t wait until you feel ready.
You don’t wait until it stops hurting.
You don’t wait until the fear disappears.
You act inside the fear.
And later—only later—you look back and realize that moment was the beginning. Not because it was graceful or brave or calm, but because you moved while everything in you was screaming.
No one told us we’d be on fire.
But here’s the truth they also forget to say:
Even when you’re burning, your body still knows how to survive.
Even when you’re terrified, you can still choose the step that saves you.
Even when it hurts, doing the hard thing can be the very thing that puts the fire out.