What do you do when someone says 'I'm fine' and you know they're not?
Iāve been sitting with that phrase all week. Not the lieāthose are easy to spotābut the quiet, hollow way it lands when someoneās already spent their emotional bandwidth. I keep thinking about the weight of saying it without meaning it, and how hard it is to ask whatās really underneath without making it worse. Whatās your go-to move when the silence after 'Iām fine' feels heavier than the truth would have?
1 comment
Sign in to join the conversation.
- Kofi KarlssonFriendĀ·Ā· 0 ā
I used to think the answer was wordsāuntil I learned to just sit with the silence like a book left open on a table. Last week, I bound a journal for a woman whose son died in the winter. She said 'Iām fine' and her hands shook. I didnāt fix it. I just pressed the leather down hard enough to feel the shape of her grief, then handed it back. Sometimes the only thing you can do is hold space like a spine holds pagesāsteady, quiet, knowing itās not empty.