A sample of Look Up: A Guide for Navigating Life's Uncertainties and Finding Your Horizon
Look Up
A Guide for Navigating Life’s Uncertainties & Finding Your Horizon
Rachel Havekost
Thought Catalog Books — thoughtcatalog.com
Copyright © 2025 Rachel Havekost.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior written consent and permission from Thought Catalog.
Published by Thought Catalog Books, an imprint of Thought Catalog, a digital magazine owned and operated by The Thought & Expression Co. Inc., an independent media organization founded in 2010 and based in the United States of America. For stocking inquiries, contact stockists@shopcatalog.com.
Produced by Chris Lavergne and Noelle Beams
Art direction and design by KJ Parish
Circulation management by Isidoros Karamitopoulos
thoughtcatalog.com | shopcatalog.com
First Limited Edition Print
Printed in the United States of America, JST 2025
ISBN 978-1-965820-09-4
Contents
- a prologue of sorts — 9
- a map to this book — 11
- holding on — 13
- opening the heart — 27
- roaming free — 41
- integrating — 55
- zooming out — 71
- opening the mind — 87
- navigating forward — 115
Look Up
A collection of poems and short love notes: encouragement for times of wild uncertainty, loving reminders for recovery and change, and ultimately, small moments of great comfort: this is not who you are, this is something you are going through.
Reminders, to look up.
“Look Up” is dedicated to all the girl’s girls—especially mine.
A Prologue of Sorts
You will have seasons of life when you’ll wonder if anything will ever work out. You’ll doubt yourself or feel stuck. You’ll question if it’s worth trying to get up again when you’re just going to fall once more. You’ll feel seasons of hope and recovery and forget the painful ones. You’ll lose sight of how much you’ve grown, and when the stuckness comes again, you’ll feel defeated. These seasons will come and go, rise and fall, and just like you, they’ll persist.
I find myself in this cycle often. Despite decades of therapy, research, and spiritual study, I return to a state of overwhelming loss. These periods can lead me to feeling hopeless and disgruntled, as if I’ve failed myself by coming back.
At times these cycles have kept me stuck long enough to wonder, will I ever emerge, or will I always find myself back here?
I remember (as I do every time I’m in this season of stuckness) that even though it feels like nothing is happening or coming together, and even though I have no idea what direction I’m going or how to get there, that one day I’ll look back on this time and say, “oh yeah, it was all working out, I just couldn’t see how then because I was in it.”
The truth is, we will all find ourselves back here: in the doubt, in the stuck, in the loss. It is life’s natural balance: life and death, love and loss, pleasure and pain...to know one is to know the other, and it would be foolish to chase a life absent of any discomfort. Still, these seasons of pain have the ability to break us. Without the right support, tools, or compassion, our pain becomes suffering and we become truly stuck.
I hope this book finds you when you’re stuck. I hope this book finds you when you’re afraid. I hope this book finds you when you’re doubting that good things will come or when you’re seeped in grief or on the precipice of change. I hope this book can serve as the companion you may not have right now. The compassion you may not have access to. Wisdom you may feel too clouded to see, or the tools you may feel too tired to reach for. I hope this book finds you when you’re ready to shift in the cycle and move forward in life.
When you’re ready to Look Up.
A Map to This Book
Look Up is divided into seven sections: Holding On; Opening the Heart; Roaming Free; Integrating; Zooming Out; Opening the Mind; & Navigating Forward.
Think of this book as a map of sorts: a tender guide for moving through life’s big questions, love lost, and hearts found. This guide is not meant to be a how-to or what-to-do: rather a hand to hold while you forge your own path.
I invite you to read from beginning to end, especially if you are finding this book in a time of grief, uncertainty, or change.
Of course, this is your book, your life, and your time, so if you want to flip through the pages and land somewhere in the middle and start there, please do.
You’ll find what you need no matter where you start, for the truth is we are always at the beginning, constantly at the end, and forever right here, in the middle.
There is no right way, there is the only way you do it.
Holding On
read this when you feel like you can’t let go. when you feel stuck or trapped or unable to see what’s next. when all you want is to go back in time, when the future looks hazy, when it’s easier to feel pain in the familiar than find peace in the unknown. read this when it’s time to begin again.
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