Dust? Or Diamonds.
Stress is healthy.
Ever heard that?
It was a common refrain in the circles I grew up in — and it got louder in college. (That’s a whole can of worms for another day.)
Somewhere along the way, I assumed that because I was stressed all the time, I must be healthy. Spoiler: I was not.
There’s a fine line between the kind of stress that stretches you and the kind that slowly eats you alive.
Healthy stress looks like deadlines, big transitions, or the kind of pressure that comes with purpose — not the kind where you’re constantly bracing for the next unpredictable thing.
I spent most of my life hopping from one stressor to the next, never giving myself a moment to come down. Even the “good” stress turned sour because I never let my body or mind recover. I thought staying calm under pressure meant I was fine — that it was normal to live with that much tension humming under my skin.
College is where I finally realized I was wrong. COLLEGE.
People were talking about how stressful school was, and I was just… rolling with it. Not thriving, but functioning. I could take hit after hit without blinking, which I thought was resilience. It was actually numbness.
As a kid, I could disappear into books. As a young adult, I didn’t have that escape anymore. So I turned to my phone. I’d scroll for hours — when I should’ve been studying, or sleeping, or doing literally anything else. It became my new hiding place, and it’s a habit I’m still trying to break.
Today, there’s this push to keep going, going, going. Everything has to be done now, and there’s no room to simply be. Rest isn’t just undervalued — it’s treated like a moral failure. And somewhere along the way, it all turned into a competition: who can stack their schedule the highest, who can stay at the office the longest, who can function on the least amount of sleep.
We call it ambition, but it feels more like collapse.
Our culture is being crushed under the weight of its own expectations. And when you grow up in that kind of world, you don’t learn how to rest. You learn how to endure. You learn to measure your worth by how much you can carry.
There’s a quote from Girl Meets World that’s always stuck with me. Riley walks into the apartment holding a boy’s hand, both of them painfully awkward. Her parents start asking questions, and it comes out that Riley and this boy are letting other people’s opinions pressure them into moving too fast. Riley says, “But sometimes the right pressure can turn you into a diamond.” And Topanga (her mom) replies, “Yeah, and the wrong pressure turns you into dust.”
That rings true in any situation. The right, healthy pressure can shape you into a beautiful diamond. The wrong, unhealthy pressure will turn you into dust.
So here’s the homework — for me, and maybe for you too: choose a time this week to start the habit of taking time to breathe. Oxygen is good for the brain, or so I’m told. Use that time to do something that actually relaxes you. Read a book, go on a hike, take a 15 minute power nap - something that gives you the space to reset.
Choose to enjoy these moments.
That’s all for now.
Talk soon,
Rae
