The Shape My Joy Takes VI: I Never Needed A Witness

This is a collection of essays not about surviving—but about living. Not about pain—but about presence. These are not reactionary—they are revolutionary in their refusal to look back.

This is a 10-part series of personal essays. Check back each day to read the next essay.

Want more softness, strength, and quiet joy? Click here to read the full Shape My Joy Takes series.

There are things I’ve done that no one knows about.

Not because I was hiding. But because I wasn’t performing.

There are moments so holy, so whole, they never made it to a camera roll or a caption. There was no one watching. No one clapping. No one measuring the moment’s worth by how many eyes it drew. And still—those moments glowed.

Like the time I danced barefoot in the middle of the kitchen floor while the kettle boiled, arms overhead, head tilted back, the air thick with honeyed light. I was wearing mismatched socks. The dog was watching. The world was not.

Or the time I forgave someone who never said sorry. Not aloud. Not in a letter. But inside my own chest, on a Tuesday, with the window cracked and the scent of rain crawling in. I whispered it—not to them, but to myself. And just like that, the chain snapped.

There are poems I’ve written on napkins, and left in drawers.
There are sunrises I’ve seen alone, wrapped in a blanket, breathing in the pink of it.
There are small, shimmering kindnesses I’ve offered in passing that no one will ever trace back to me.

I have not always been this way.
There was a time I wanted to be seen.
To be believed. To be understood.
To be witnessed.

But something changes when you stop needing applause.
When you stop curating your existence for consumption.
When you realize the most sacred moments aren’t meant to be posted.
They’re meant to be lived.

I have learned how to treasure beauty without documenting it.
To taste joy without announcing it.
To grow without proving it.

I plant seeds no one will ever see bloom.
I clean my home with music in my ears and gratitude in my bones.
I light candles for no one but me.

This is not secrecy. This is sovereignty.

This is the quiet confidence of a woman who no longer needs permission to feel deeply, to live intentionally, to experience magic that belongs only to her.

Let them think I’ve gone quiet.
Let them wonder what I’m doing.
Let them imagine my days are small.

They will never know the depth of the silence I’ve chosen.
The peace I’ve protected.
The life I’ve built brick by unseen brick.

Because the truth is—
I was never doing it for them.

I never needed a witness.