Curiosity Is How Showing Up Begins

| September 2026

4 minute read

The sign was mounted inside the hospital entrance, block letters against a pale wall:

MOMENTS BIG AND SMALL, WE SHOW UP.

I read it once, my mind three floors ahead, where my son and his husband were settling into the first hours of their new life together.

And yet, the words stayed with me.

For quite some time before my granddaughter arrived, I had been wondering what showing up might look like as I stepped into this new role as a grandmother. How could I best welcome this little human, my granddaughter, into our family and find my own way into becoming part of her mandala?

I had asked friends who were already grandparents what they had learned. I listened to their advice. But one of the answers that stayed with me came unexpectedly, from a stranger in a café.

One morning, a few weeks before the birth, while having my morning espresso, I found myself sitting beside a young mother holding her newborn as she had coffee with friends. I mustered up the courage to interrupt the girlfriends’ meet-up. I told her I was about to become a grandmother for the first time and asked:

As a new mother, what is the one thing you would want your parents to do to support you?

She didn’t hesitate.

“Just show up.”

Her three words landed within me like a knowing I already carried but needed to hear.

A week later, in an entirely different state, there were those words again, waiting for me at the hospital entrance: MOMENTS BIG AND SMALL, WE SHOW UP.

Twice now, the same four words, as if they wanted to be sure I’d heard.

I stopped. I pondered.

For the entire month, showing up revealed its many faces, some tender, some unglamorous, all of them real.

How you show up is shaped by the choices you make, often moment by moment. Reading the room. Noticing what’s missing. Listening without offering an answer. Asking questions rather than making assumptions. Knowing when to step in and, equally, when to step back.

But there are other subtle experiences emerging too, less obvious, yet no less worthy of your attention. What I am learning is that showing up is about how you meet the present moment — with patience, a willingness to feel, humility, and a spirit of generosity.

In other words, showing up is measured by how fully you’re present, not by what you accomplish. It is a continuous practice of witnessing, sensing what might be needed and choosing, again and again, to meet the moment as it is, with curiosity.

And perhaps that is why the words on that hospital wall have followed me home.

They have invited me to think about showing up not as something you switch on when a moment demands your attention, but as a daily practice, an orientation to life, a way of being.

Because when you meet the present moment with an inquiring mind and an open heart, you tend to explore experience differently, with greater awareness to what it might reveal. You set aside the agendas you arrived with, the need to fix, to direct, to make something happen, and ‘be’ in the moment, as it is, unfolding and ever-changing, like clouds passing in the sky.

Fully present. The mindful way.

For some, September may mean watching a child leave for university and discovering how to stay close while giving them room to find their own way. For others, it may be caring for an aging parent, or recognizing that a shift within is asking for attention.

Each of these moments asks you to show up in its own way. And each time you do, showing up becomes a way of growing into yourself and toward one another.

And so, I find myself curious (and, to no surprise!) to discover how much there still is to learn, in almost everything, if I’m paying attention.

MOMENTS BIG AND SMALL, WE SHOW UP.

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