A Gentle Reminder

I hope you have the courage to go deeper. To never exist on the surface of your life, even if it’s easier or more convenient.

You are not afraid of being without it, because you know that you will always have yourself.

No one will ever fully be able to understand the internal battles you had to endure just to heal, just to grow, just to make it here today. Be proud of the way you fought to save yourself. Be proud of the way you survived.

It is okay to be affected by something you thought you had healed from. Healing is not linear. Be gentle with yourself.

We cannot wait to be the people we have always dreamed of being. We cannot wait for life to perfect itself. There is no right time, there is no perfect circumstance. We have to leap, even when our legs are shaking. We have to show up for ourselves — not in 3 months, or 5 years, or 10 years, but now. In this moment. Because every single day is a blessing. Every single day is a gift. Do not lose sight of that.

The truth is, you cannot skip certain chapters in your life. Sometimes, you have to experience the wrong love in order to learn how to fight for your heart, in order to learn how to recognize the right love when it comes your way. Sometimes, you have to be alone, you have to heal in the quiet, so that you do not let your past wounds stop you from receiving all that you deserve in this life. Sometimes, you have to choose the wrong path, you have to make the mistake, in order to truly connect with the fact that even the missteps, that even the rejections, were really just redirections.

The right person will choose you just as deeply as you choose them

But if you managed to find someone who cared for you, who saw you, who heard all of the horrible and haunted things you did in your life and still loved you harder, still thought it all shone like gold — that is special. You shouldn’t forget that. You should be thankful for it.

The bravest thing

you will ever do

is learn how to love

the things that made you.

hope you have 17

the courage to see endings as the cornerstones of the chapters that changed you without needing them to be a part of the rest of your story.