The Art of Showing Up: How to Be There for Yourself and Your People

by Rachel Wilkerson Miller

Showing up is what turns the people you know into your people. It’s at the core of creating and maintaining strong, meaningful bonds with friends, family, coworkers, and internet pals. Showing up is the act of bearing witness to people’s joy, pain, and true selves; validating their experiences; easing their load; and communicating that they are not alone in this life.

When you have a clear sense of what specifically makes you feel good (or bad), you can improve your self-awareness, recognize your true needs, set boundaries, and effectively respond to problems (big and small).

‘As I look back on today, what did I do that was actually worth my time?’”

social media apps allow us “to maintain relationships that would otherwise decay.”10 While most of us tend to think of this as a good thing, it’s actually not. Some of these relationships actually should decay—that’s necessary for us to have the time and space to establish and nurture new ones. Even if you feel your phone usage is healthy overall, it’s likely that your phone (and social media apps more specifically) cost real time and energy that could have been used to show up for yourself or someone else.

that moment, I realized that things are good until they are not, and they are bad until they are not. So often, the bad times happen without any sort of warning. But I found it comforting to remember that the good periods also tend to happen without warning.

“At the root of snobbery is a lack of imagination and confidence about how to decide who in the world is valuable.”27