Be The One To Show Up
Show up for the people you love.
Show up because life with a ghost or a memory or a halfway anything is not much of a life at all. Let them know you’re there—even if only in the most broken and imperfectly human way possible.
Show up because love isn’t a state of being or a destination or a much longer journey through life. Show up because love is an action and it requires a steady force of energy to exist.
Show up because love isn’t stagnant—show up because neither are you.
Show up for the big stuff—celebrate and cry. Share in the experiences that will undoubtedly shape lives beyond your own.
Don’t go through the motions, or pretend to feel what they feel. Feel what you feel, but try not to feel it alone.
Show up for the small moments, the ones we’re conditioned to forget. The pajama filled nights, the long road trips home, the seconds and minutes and hours that have truly defined your love. Really, please promise to show up for those.
Show up for the “I’m sorry,” the one we often just decide to overlook.
Never underestimate the power of that apology. Even if it’s too short, or too late or unwanted and ill-received, show up for it anyway.
Show up for the hard conversations because life is built to be messy.
Be honest and brave.
Leave everything you feel on the table.
But if you can’t do that—if you’re not ready yet.
Well, then at least find a way to show up.
Show up to figure it out.
To learn and to lose.
To discover whatever the fuck your life is meant to be about.
Showing up isn’t for forcing a feeling or a relationship or a dream, and it’s not about clinging to what could or should be. It’s about ending the avoidance. It’s about accountability and being vulnerable. It’s for putting in enough work to know who and what is worth fighting for. And it’s for seeing with less hesitation—who and what is not.
Show up for yourself.
Give yourself a real shot, a true chance at whatever it is that your mind wanders toward right before you fall asleep.
Even when it feels hard and unnatural or incredibly frightening, show the fuck up—because it’s the only great choice that you have: to be the one to show up. 
Read more by Sam in her book, We Are Like Wells, available here.
