Your starter for today is:
It was time to take a break.
Write for at least 7 minutes, and feel free to share your writing in the comments if you wish.
This is our last prompt before our month long break in August. We’ll be back in September with more nudges to keep you writing, as well as fresh articles, events and an exciting new offer for those looking to develop their writing skills who can’t come to our Zoom classes.
Meanwhile, we’d love to know what you think of our prompting service - if you’d like to give us feedback you can do so here.
There’s still a few courses to run in our Summer School this week - check out Delicious Poetics and Beyond Form at our events page, and Helen’s charity writing marathon!
We hope you have a great August. Keep writing!
It Was Time to Take a Break
I used to think taking a break meant giving up.
That if I stopped fighting… stopped explaining… stopped proving… somehow I’d lose.
Yesterday taught me something different…
A break isn’t quitting.
It’s putting down the sword long enough to remember, why you picked it up in the first place?
For months.. maybe years.. I have been carrying things that were not meant for one pair of shoulders. Court dates,single motherhood,five children who all need different pieces of me.
Grief that still sneaks up in grocery store aisles and quiet drives… Financial stress. Dreams bigger than my circumstances. Healing from things I never asked to survive. Some days I’ve become so used to surviving that I forgot what living felt like.
Yesterday I chose peace. Not perfect peace. Not “everything is fixed” peace.
Just enough peace to say…
“Today, I don’t have to carry every fight.”
There is a strange guilt that comes with resting when your life still feels unfinished.
The laundry still waits. The bills still exist. The future still asks impossible questions.
But so does my soul.
It whispers, “Sit down for a minute.”
The world celebrates people who never stop moving.
I’m learning to celebrate the people who know when to pause.
Because seeds don’t bloom the day they’re planted.
Muscles don’t grow during the workout, they grow during recovery.
Even God rested.
Maybe breaks aren’t interruptions to the journey.
Maybe they are part of it.
Today I’m not chasing every answer.
I’m not trying to predict every outcome.
I’m simply allowing myself to breathe.
Tomorrow I’ll pick up what’s mine to carry.
But today…
It was time to take a break.
Taking a break requires permission from yourself to temporarily drop the internal weight of expectation.
It means accepting that for the next fifteen minutes, an hour, or a day, the world will keep turning without your active supervision and that is a comforting thing.
Rest isn't wasted time; it's the soil in which clarity grows.