Healing

<p>To every woman.</p><p>To every woman who stopped confusing silence for safety.</p><p>To every woman who stepped out of the habit of shrinking herself just to make someone else feel bigger.</p><p>To every woman who cried herself to sleep and still woke up th…

To the friend I still haven't called back, It isn't you. It's that I don't have the language yet for what I'm sitting with, and I can hear the questions inside your kindness. I will call. I promise. But first I'm trying to learn how to say "I'm not okay" witho…

I used to hope for gentler people. Now I try to be one. To listen without fixing. To speak without sharpening. To stay without needing anyone to become smaller for me. Let me be, on my best days, the kind of quiet someone else has been praying for.

A hummingbird stopped at my window this morning. Just hovered there, looking in. I hadn't cried in weeks. I cried at a bird. I think that counts as something. I'm going to let it count.

How do you know when it's time to let something go? Not for anyone else. For you. Because you're tired of carrying it around. I keep setting it down and then picking it back up in the morning like a bag I forgot I packed.

I used to think growing up was linear. A tidy climb toward some steadier version of me. It isn't. Some mornings I wake up feeling whole, and by dinner I'm twelve again, replaying a conversation I can't change. What I'm learning: the goal isn't to stop feeling…

To the version of me from a year ago, I know why you kept quiet. It wasn't weakness. It was hope wearing your face, whispering that tomorrow would feel a little softer. I forgive you for the nights you rehearsed apologies for things you didn't need to be sorry…