many have taken my kindness for weakness, my smile as a symbol of submission, my youth a recipe for naïveté .
and what I love most is creating such an idea of myself that they can't tell I'm using all three as weapons against them.
A Call to Bloom
Friend - Here are three wishes my soul carries:
That you know your beauty. To know this is more than a declaration on the days you grasp for healing. To know your beauty, as I have come to, is to watch you divide yourself amongst everyone in need, trying to keep warm with the remaining pieces.
That you wield the magic of what’s within - remembering how many times you pulled yourself from darkness and brought color into the lives of children, men, women, family, and strangers.
That you feel the strength of solitude in a world that commiserates self-induced inadequacies with false testaments for growth.
On the day that you unearth from the soil, nails blackened by decades of fear you’ve uprooted, I will clap, as I always have, and laugh at the shadow that was no match for your light.
Testing Grit
Today someone told me “the best way to tell yourself I love you is doing what’s best for you.”
Don’t ever take the second option.
White Space
I used to think avoiding people with toxic energy was a coward’s move. Then I realized how much power I actually surrendered by continuing to show up.
