What If Meaning Lives In How We Respond

The season opens with a breath you can feel. After months of enforced stillness—pain, surgery, and a body that said “enough”—we step back to examine what mindful living actually asks of us when the lights are off and the milestones stop counting. I share how grief cracked my certainties, how recovery humbled my pace, and why I’m rethinking the language we use around healing so it guides rather than governs.

We unpack the subtle shift from healing to performing: when vulnerability becomes strategy, stillness turns into content, and mindfulness reads like a brand. I call this drift societal narcissism—not a diagnosis, but a posture where visibility outruns integrity. Drawing on Viktor Frankl’s insight that meaning shows up in our response when we cannot change our situation, I talk through the difference between reacting and recognizing, and how response becomes a practice that lives in the body, not just the brain. The conversation moves from doing to being, from milestones to presence, from proof to patience.

You’ll hear the questions animating where we go next: What happens to healing in a world that demands evidence? When does empathy become supervision? How can language remain a compass and not a courtroom? Along the way, we ground in a simple breath sequence to return to the body, and I offer a quiet prompt to carry through your week. If your season feels like a hallway with no signage, this is a gentle place to pause, listen, and choose your next response with care.

If this resonates, subscribe, share with someone who needs a slower pace, and leave a review so others can find the space. Your healing does not need an audience—but your story might help someone breathe.

Transcript

Struggling With Stillness And Anxiety

Grief As A Turning Point

From Doing To Being

Language Of Healing Vs Legislation

Viktor Frankl And Chosen Response

Performing Healing And Societal Narcissism

Questions For A Proof-Obsessed Culture

Surrender, Nonlinearity, And Presence

Guided Breath And Reflection

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Hello, mindful partners. Oh my goodness, it feels so wonderful and satisfying to say those words again after a long five plus months hiatus. You could call it a forced break. You'll find out why in a moment. Let me tell you, since taking up mindful living, life has constantly thrown challenges at me, testing my understanding of living in the present and by ability to enjoy that moment. This might not sound very significant to you, but because I'm a person who prides herself at being a lever of what I preach, it's quite significant. This is where I find myself struggling. I admit I am not great at being still. However, the essence of mindful living is being present, while I'm observant, my usual default response are anxiety, overstimulation, and hyper sensitivity. I am an introvert, I love quiet, but I struggled with being still. And if you've read my book, Living Mindfully a Journey to Being, you'd likely understand for those who haven't. Here's a quick rundown. In that book, I tell a story of two men. So you can imagine I'm the type of person who notices two people on the road and instantly can figure out which of the two would do something funny, or at least I would begin to observe and wait for them to do something funny or out of the ordinary. I find this moment quite teachable and suitable for my personal instruction. But that changed dramatically for me in 2025. If you recall the last episode of 2024, I mentioned that the new year will be about becoming. You know, that end-of-the-year energy that is reflective where everyone's doing a dip thing. Inside though, I felt pursed, like something in me was waiting for me elsewhere, a seizing ahead waiting to be left. Then March 2017 arrived. My mother transitioned. That one event shook my whole being. The table, the house, the foundation, the ground and the streets on the road. Everything in me shook to its core. And then 2017 came in a blaze. Not the gentle breeze that comes with January resolution. It hit like a Pungwa Bridge. Permit the allusion to traffic today. I probably am um worst word now, just challenge mine days in traffic radio. So it hit like traffic on a Monday morning. No warning, no diversion, just a mental agomanagem like that. Oh, with my voice on traffic radio, officials are on the road making sure they clear the impediment so you can have a smooth ride to your destination. And then music. Not because I was qualified, because I wasn't at a time, but because something in me knew if I survived this grief, if I survived the season, I couldn't come out empty-handed. Seth's became the language I didn't know I was learning. Healing became the school nobody told me to apply to. And presence, real presence, became the assignment. Now, fast forward to 2024, my friend and I, Rodney, the young god, were having a conversation about how 2024 was going to look like. This was just right after a fight for life. And he asked to me, she what do you feel about 2025? Without thinking, I said, it feels like I've lived it before. But to be honest with you, when I said that I wasn't afraid, because back in 2016 I reacted. In 2024, I was in a different place. I recognized it. Because you know what? The word had gotten louder, healing had gotten louder, and even silence had become a brand strategy. But you see, my body, my body and my mind shut me down so I could listen. My body, my stubborn, faithful, breaking healing body, forced me into a stillness I did not choose. By August the 7th, I was shut down, and later on, a laminectomy, leading, of course, to recovery. In the midst of that, there was stillness. The kind of stillness where God sits on the edge of your bed and says, So, are you ready to stop performing now? In that silence, I realized something I wanted to carry into this new season. Something I knew in my head, but my heart and mind were struggling to execute. Why? I felt healing had become performative, and I needed a healthy relationship with it and the way I wanted to serve. Not just as a coach, but also as an advocate for mental health. What I needed was a new approach to healing and service. And you know me well, I'll always go back to language because I'm a linguist or maybe not, but it struck me that healing provided me with language, a language I could use to navigate my process and not legislation. I will explain. Language, of course, is for navigation. I mean, it is what uh it is with words and the words that make up language that will make meaning and make sense of everything happening in the world and how we communicate to. But on the heels of realizing that my healing gives me language, I quickly understood it could be a tool to legislate, a tool to enforce my healing journey on others, and that might be true or not. But before I invite you to explore the language around mental health, which is the core of mindful machine and its legislative tendencies, it is imperative that I say this: I am not here to police your emotions, I am not here to control your experiences, I am not here to shout mindfulness like advert jingles. I have come back with a different posture. So, welcome! Not to a comeback with that, to a crossing. But first, let's breathe. The journey will make sense. Healing is school, and presence an assignment. And this is where I invited Victor Frankl's um work from the book Man's Search for Meaning, and all of this, the language, the healing being a school, and the presence being an assignment began to make sense. Not in theory, but in my tissues and memory. Frankel wrote, When we can't change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. I couldn't change the grief, the body shutting down, but I could change my response. That book by Victor Frankel taught me that meaning isn't found in answers, it is found in response. It is not why did this happen? It is what does this now call me to. Let me share another, perhaps esoteric observation with you. The final episode of Mindfully Tumisha in 2025 was episode 95. It was in August when my body shut down, which could have been some kind of sign. Because one of the goals for 2025 was to get to the 100th episode. How I arrived at the 95th episode was a miracle. I was doing not being in. I arrived at the 95th episode without any form of awareness. I was simply grateful to be recording and serving despite the pain I was in. However, God and my body had other plans. I wish I could say I surrendered easily, but I fought, I cried, I blamed and threw my fists at heaven. Interestingly, I could only throw these sponges from a bed. And when September arrived of surgery, I realized I needed to surrender and accept the lessons this has taught me or has come to teach me. Then one day in that stillness, I opened my app and then bum five episodes to your next milestone. Hundred. Very, very tsumishe. I honestly, honestly do not know how mindfully with Tumishe and indeed Tumishe herself or Lua Tsumishe will show up moving forward, but I want to share where we are headed next. What this month have taught me. This month haven't just thought me about my body, about grief, about rest, they have also shown me something about the world we're healing in. I have noticed a pattern, or I noticed a pattern, a kind of cultural shift in conversations online, in faith spaces, in therapy language, and even in myself. It sounds like healing, but it feels like performance. Right now, I do not have a perfect term yet. I probably would invite you to help me navigate this. But the phrase that keeps coming up in my mind as I think through this is societal narcissism. Before you roll your eyes, this is not my coinage. I'll delve into that in future episodes. But for now, let's focus on the word narcissism. This isn't narcissism as a diagnosis, but rather a collective posture where we start believing that our personal healing gives us authority over someone else's journey. In this world of societal narcissism, sharing replaces listening, insight replaces humility, influence replaces integrity, and even empathy feels like emotional supervision. We don't just want to be healed, we want to be seen healing. Mindfulness becomes branding, vulnerability becomes strategy, stillness becomes content, and silence is suspicious unless it comes with aesthetic lightning and a quote card. In Man's Search for Meaning, I was reminded by Victor Frankl that meaning is never found through status only through response. However, this days, our responses have been watched, they have been rated, they've been measured and reposted. Healing is happening on the stage, and I'm not sure that the soul was designed for that kind of audience. In the coming episodes, I won't present myself as an expert or guru. Instead, I'll be learning in public and exploring this gently with you. What happens to healing in a world that constantly demands proof? What happens when empathy becomes emotional colonization? What happens when personal growth becomes a lore for everyone else's lives? What happens when the body whispers rest and the society whispers content? These are the questions driving the next few episodes, and I do not have answers. Remember, I have only language. Added to that, curiosity, and some lived experience. So if you choose to stay with me, the next episode begins the journey. Uh, but first, let's finish arriving here. The paradox of what I am doing with this podcast and episode is not lost on me. I almost didn't want to give voice or words or emotions to this, but even at the Risk of sounding pharisical, meaning a pharisee, and being hypocritical. That is not a word, but feel free to use it. Being pharisistical is more like a feeling for me and to me. Like I said, it felt like if I did not give voice to this, it will be a disservice. As I sit with everything becoming, I remember that life is not linear. Healing isn't linear either. Even faith isn't a straight line. It curves like the body when it finally rests. I am learning. Healing isn't a performance, a timeline, or a brand. It is a posture, a presence, a willingness to respond to what is, even when it doesn't look like progress. Going back to Victor Frankel, he said that the meaning is found when we choose our response not to escape reality, but to accompany ourselves through that reality. So if something in your life feels like a transition right now, like a hallway with no signage, may I invite you to not rush to fix it yet? Maybe sit with it the way a friend sits with you in a hospital hallway. Present, very awkward, but faithful. Because, as I said earlier, my healing gave me language, not legislation, nor here to supervise your softness, police your pace, or collect evidence of your becoming. I am here to sit in mind with honesty, and if something in the space sits with you too, then welcome. Don't rush it, don't rush past your shadow. Let contentment be your guide. Most importantly, do not audition for your own life. The journey will eventually make sense in the order it chooses to reveal itself. Now, if it feels safe for you to do so, bring one hand to your chest and one to your belly. Inhale slowly as if you're arriving in your body for the first time today. Inhale for four, then one, two, three, hold for two, then one, two, exhale, four, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. If you wish, you might repeat the cycle so that it brings you back to your body. Remember to let your shoulders drop, unclench your jaw, and let your heart be heard. As you leave this episode, ask yourself gently: where in my life am I reacting? And where am I recognizing? You do not have to answer immediately. Let that question sit with you, let it linger with you, arriving at its own time and allowing your answer to arrive at its own time. Thank you for returning to the space with me and to yourself. I'm truly, truly grateful. Episode 97 begins our journey into the world's volume and what happens when the buddy whispers enough. Until then, I pray peace for you in the unseen places. Stay mindful, stay human, stay becoming. It's a space, it's not a place for fixing, it's not a place for diagnosing or giving advice, it's a space for reflection, for listening, and for shared humanity. I believe strongly in the power of shared stories. You're welcome to join if it feels supportive to your journey. The link will be in the show's episode note. Whether you choose to join the conversation or you want to keep it private, remember this: your healing does not need an audience. Thank you for listening. Love yourself, love your neighbor, love your country. Above all of this, love God, He is the essence of your being. I am Uluwatsumishi.