Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night —somewhere between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. —with a knot, a tension, you couldn’t quite name?
You know the voice; the one that haunts us at 3 a.m., whispering that we’re falling behind, that we’re not enough.
It happened to me last night.
I slid my eye mask on my forehead, reached for a sip of water, shifted to a cooler spot on the mattress. But sleep didn’t come.
Instead, I spiraled into the familiar script:
I should go back to the gym.
I should cut back on sugar.
I should be better.
Eventually, I drifted off again. But when I woke this morning, something in me had shifted.
That voice in the night?
It wasn’t me.
It was the self-critic. The inner perfectionist. The wounded masculine impulse to fix, to control, to optimize.
But what if our bodies don’t need fixing?
What if they just need… noticing?
What if we treated them the way we long to be treated by a lover —gently, curiously, attentively?
What if we could walk past a mirror without flinching? Without scanning for what needs to be changed?
What if, just for today, we chose to stay?
To stay with ourselves. To soften. To listen, without trying to solve.
Just a thought to carry with you, wherever you are.