The Day I Lost a Month of My Book (and Barely Flinched)

Last night, I realized I deleted the last month of work on my book.

Gone. The edits. The rewriting. The momentum. All of it.

Earlier in the day, I’d been tidying up my digital files, finally facing that flashing red exclamation mark about my Google storage being almost full. A few months ago, that kind of thing would have spun me out: “What if I don’t know how to fix this?” “What if I delete something important?” “gah…one more thing I don’t have the capacity for.”

But not this time.

This time, I saw the warning, opened my Drive, and calmly started clearing out files I no longer needed. I remember feeling… competent. Unbothered. No drama. No dread. Just: “I’ve got this.”

At some point, I was bulk-deleting unlabeled Google Docs, assuming they were old notes or rough drafts. It never occurred to me that I might be tossing out something important. And even if a flicker of that crossed my mind, it didn’t land with weight. I was clearing space. I was moving forward.

It wasn’t until later that night, when I went to open my book document to write, that I felt it: the quiet “oh no.” The realization. A breath held. A pause.

Then just… stillness.

Not the panic I used to know. Not the inner lashing I once expected: “How could you delete something that mattered?” “What’s wrong with you?” “You’re so careless.”

None of that arrived.

What did arrive was a deep exhale. And a quiet truth: If it’s gone, it wasn’t meant to stay.

I still had a copy from late April. I still had my voice. I still had the growth. And most of all, I had this moment, this nervous system proof point. This is clean, clear evidence of the work I’ve been doing. On trust, regulation, self-forgiveness, and grounded identity, it isn’t just conceptual. It’s real. It’s embodied.

I didn’t just lose a month of writing.

I gained confirmation that my baseline has shifted.

That which once would’ve undone me barely nicked the surface.

That I don’t spiral when something slips through the cracks.

I trust that I can start again, not from scratch, but from a position of strength.

And that’s worth way more than any lost document.