A couple of weeks ago it was CF (Cystic Fibrosis) Week here in the UK. I didn't post or get involved with anything.

Both my daughters live with cystic fibrosis, so you'd think that would be the obvious week to say something. I sat with a draft and couldn't do it. Not because I don't care, but because I care too much to compress it into a yellow graphic on the right day.

It's the same with the cancer ones tbh.

It was this time last year that I was visiting my mum in hospital every day. Every day having to see that, whilst simultaneously awaiting the joy of becoming a day. Last summer just feels bizarre in my mind.

For a while I felt guilty about the silence on awareness days/weeks/months and not shouting about the charities. Then I realised the guilt was pointing the wrong way.

Awareness weeks are mostly for the people on the outside. That isn't a criticism as it's the whole point of them, and the charities behind them do work that genuinely changes outcomes. But when a thing is actually yours, when it lives in your house seven days a week, a designated week starts to feel beside the point. CF doesn't take 51 weeks off. The hospital visits last year weren't scheduled around a ribbon & the reality doesn't run on the calendar, so performing it on cue can feel like the smallest, least honest version of it.

And there's a quieter cost, especially for people wired to perform. We're good at saying the right thing on the right day as it's a reflex. But that reflex can turn into a tax… a low-grade pressure to broadcast our hardest things on schedule, to convert private weight into public content, to prove we feel something by posting it.

You don't owe anyone your grief on a timetable & you don't owe the internet your daughters' diagnosis or your mother's worst year. Opting out of the ritual isn't apathy, it’s actually sometimes it's the more honest position, alongside being the healthier one.

So this is me supporting the cause the way I actually want to. Quietly.

The real work was never the post. It's showing up, every ordinary day, for the people who are actually in it.

— Antonio