The day stretched on as if it were the longest day of sum­mer; yet it was the mid­dle of win­ter. It was only 4:30 pm, but dusk was around the cor­ner; the clouds in the win­tery sky mak­ing it seem darker than it should be.

She should be doing some­thing to keep her mind busy; any­thing to take her thoughts off the shades of grief that lay inside the pit of her stom­ach. Instead, she sat at her local bookstore’s café mind­lessly flip­ping through the lat­est gos­sip rags and fash­ion magazines.

Nor­mally read­ing such things would enter­tain her; would make her laugh at such ridicu­lous­ness. Or at the very least, inspire her to change her wardrobe to some­thing other than jeans and a t-​​shirt. But today, she nei­ther felt nor heard noth­ing but the silent hum inside her head that told her that some­thing about her was defective.

That silent hum had always lived inside of her for as long as she could remem­ber. She never felt pretty enough or smart enough to accom­plish any­thing sig­nif­i­cant in her life. And although she had a good career and an incred­i­ble hus­band, she never thought she could deserve to be happy.

At times in her life, the silent hum would sur­face out­wardly. When she and her hus­band found it dif­fi­cult to start their fam­ily, that hum became a silent roar. When she lost her job, the silent roar returned. How­ever, even­tu­ally that roar would once again return to a hum.

She knew that her antsy-​​ness today was because that hum was slowly turn­ing into a roar. She even knew her actions over Christ­mas was its root cause. But just like those other times, she had no idea how to silence the roar. She had no way of stop­ping such neg­a­tive, self-​​defeating feel­ings that lay rooted inside of her.

Although she knew she had the sup­port of her hus­band, her best friend in life … her fam­ily … she also knew she would ulti­mately be the one respon­si­ble for tam­ing the beast inside herself.

She also knew that in order to tame the beast, she had to get rid of the hum all together. She had to stop depre­ci­at­ing her­self and start to build up that self-​​esteem.

This will prove to be a dif­fi­cult task for her; espe­cially since she never par­tic­u­larly had con­sis­tent, ongo­ing self-​​confidence. Her entire life had been rooted in self-​​doubt with only fleet­ing moments of con­fi­dence. It would take a lot to rid her life of that silent hum.

What could she do? What *would* she do? She had already sought the help of pro­fes­sion­als; she already had the sup­port of her lov­ing hus­band. The only thing she could do is uproot those thoughts of self-​​doubt and self-​​deprecation and replant con­fi­dence and self-​​esteem in its place.

It sounded sim­ple enough; replace the neg­a­tive with the pos­i­tive. Believe that the glass is half-​​full rather than half-​​empty. Begin to believe in herself.

But why then, did it seem so much more com­pli­cated than that? Why does the silent hum persist?