Love Note

A letter to my, beautiful, silly, intelligent, ever-growing inner-child-teenager-adult self — from myself. #selfception

How could I ever describe my love for you? It burns within me. 

My breath matches yours, two parts of the same soul, growing into a more integrated, healthy whole. You are the little girl in me who I don’t acknowledge enough, the scared and anxious one who needs to be reminded of her worth.

I see you, darling  — the way your curiosity about the world is endless and ever moving, the way a simple sunset can light up your whole world. The way you dance and sing and laugh, free to be completely you — unreserved, incomparable to those around you. 

I hope you see yourself like I do in those moments. Beautiful, wonderful, perfect ... you.

I love how hilarious you are, how you bring light to others with your humor. You are bright and radiant and full of wit. But please remember that you are just as worthy when you have nothing funny to say, or even when you have nothing to say at all. 

You are worthy in the quiet, in the stillness, in the empty moments. It’s okay to relax, to retreat. You don’t ever have to hold the whole world in your hands, or even the emotions of those around you.

I am in awe of the grace you show to others, sweet girl, how you navigate your life with a sense of wonder and are always striving to grow — desiring to judge the people around you less and less every day — to truly see them.

I so desperately want you to look in the mirror and know that you are deserving of the same grace and unconditional love you give. I know that losing your dad so young has grown your heart even bigger for others in their pain, and I see that you sometimes wish this would be reflected back to you more. 

I am here for you in that regard.

I will lead you and hold your hand and show you the depth of beauty that is inside you, the kind that stars are made of. I’ll remind you that not everyone will leave you, and if they do, I won’t.

It’s hard, I know, to live with balance, to understand that you have everything inside of you that you need, and also that is okay to ask for help, too. At times, you will ask for something someone cannot give, and in those moments, I will teach you, slowly but surely, how to give all of this to yourself. 

I see you learning to trust your own instincts and often feeling like you’re failing at it. It’s always been easier to put your full faith in those around you. It even makes it so that when they fail you, you have someone to blame, instead of yourself.

Beautiful girl, you have done nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing. And even when you have made mistakes, I know you do your best to change and to shift them, even if it takes time. You’re learning how to grow into an adult. It’s scary, and I see you.

You were so young when you lost your daddy, and that taught you that the world is unsafe. It ripped from you your ability to know how to trust yourself and others and kept you feeling small. 

It’s painful to realize that throughout your life, people have continued to fail you deeply. You have trusted the wrong ones — but it has always led you back to yourself. 

I know it’s the scariest space for you, to be alone. But you are never truly alone. I am here for you. And there are people who love you so deeply and endlessly. There are people who will show up for you because you are not meant to do this entirely by yourself. Let them love you in the ways they know how, and I will show you how to love yourself in the ways they don’t.

I marvel at who you are, all of the intricacies that make you, you. I know it’s difficult to feel different, to feel like you don’t fit in, like you can’t quite master some of the most basic life skills those around you are nailing. But please don’t let this dim your light. You fill up a room, and you deserve to take up every ounce of that space.

I love you, I love you, I love you. And I beg you, with all that is in me, to please know that you are exactly the you this world needs, just as you are now, and in every stage as you grow.

The Divine Canvas

“If God was a blank canvas — what would you paint?”

This question rang in my ears during a breathwork session tonight.

At first, it began as a vision where I saw God using brilliant colors to paint all of the intricacies of my brain. The lobes, the cords, the fissures — whatever else is up there in that noggin’ of mine.

It felt like such a beautiful reminder of how, even though I struggle so deeply with my thought life, with how to navigate it, and with how to care for my mental health — all of it is still beautiful and always has been. It is good. It is not my enemy, even though it feels like it sometimes. I am not merely my thoughts — I am more than just the neurons firing in my head.

I was also able to see that all of my thoughts are safe and I am capable of taking care of them. And the process of trying to figure it all out is actually a fascinating journey and my brain is an art piece of its own. It often feels scary, but when viewing it from a more Divine perspective tonight, I could look at my brain the same way I marvel at a sunset. (And if you know me at all, you know I live for a good sunset).

I sat with all of that for a little while, all of the beautiful colors and realizations.

And then it morphed into more.

In the beginning of the session, I had expressed a whole lot of anger toward God and others and myself, but suddenly my perspective completely shifted. I began to marvel at everything and everyone with a sense of curiosity, rather than judgment. Somehow my anger turned into holding space for the humanness of it all. I was able to see some of the people who had hurt me the deepest in a new light. They became canvases in my view — canvases that are still worthy to be painted on.

After all of those experiences was when I felt God nudge me with, “so, what would it look like if you painted Me?”

Whew, what a profound question. There weren’t many thoughts that came to mind about this. I stared at the page and resisted the urge to try to fill in some sort of “answers” to the mysteries of God. I’m used to filling in the blanks in Sunday school, having concrete reasons and Bible verses to explain it all.

But tonight, I left it as it was.

I had dropped from my head into my heart in that moment. It became more than what words could say. It was an inner-knowing of the innate goodness of God weaved throughout everything.

I wonder if every day begins with a blank canvas of the Divine, ever-changing with the colors of each person we encounter, each agape moment we experience, the deep love we learn to breathe in with every new moment, and even the pain, confusion, and suffering.

I wonder if, after the sun goes down and we lay our heads down to rest — maybe we do awaken to new mercies each morning.

If God was a blank canvas — what would you paint?

“God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out, his merciful love couldn’t have dried up.
They’re created new every morning.”

— Lamentations 3:22-23a

Shadow

I was playing with the lighting in the window of my room because I loved the way it fell on my face — ya know, a photographer thing.

It was just for fun at first — a simple, spontaneous exercise of being present in the moment.

But then I started to notice a whole lot more.

I saw beauty and depth and meaning through my own eyes, reflected back at me in photo form.

I saw half of me in light, the other half in shadows.

One side, the bright parts of me that I show to the world. 

The other, the dark parts of myself that are hidden from view.

As I continued to look deeper into this photo, staring into my own radiant, blue eyes, I felt something. But I couldn’t put it into words because my brain would not let me.

I have been wrestling with this a lot lately, my mind turning off when it all feels like too much.

So I looked at the photograph, wanting to write about how it made me feel. The picture was worth 1,000 words to me — they just couldn’t be formulated yet.

After my little photoshoot, I went about my day, listening to YouTube videos about self-love and healing, trying to get myself out of the head-space of NEEDING to figure out RIGHT NOW how to solve some of my more intense mental health battles. I wanted to get myself out of the spaces I felt trapped in.

And then it clicked — trapped. Ah yes, stuck in my own body, in my own mind — that feeling you get when you’re on the brink of doing what this photo was speaking to me about — “shadow work.”

I paused the video I was listening to and sat there with no thoughts. My brain was empty because I was being asked to feel, not to think.

And I really, really didn’t want to. At all. I just wanted to analyze my way out of this endless trap, hoping that it would make me feel safe. 

But I had no choice at this moment, my body was screaming at me to feel all the things I had been ignoring. 

And rather than shaming myself for it getting to this point, I reminded myself that I have been trying to feel into my body and feelings lately, and that it’s okay it got a point where it felt more extreme and urgent.

I did a little bit of breath work to try and access what was going on, but it didn’t take much for the feelings to come pouring out of me.

I bawled, I yelled, I screamed into my pillow, and even punched it a little (exercises I’ve learned in some classes about releasing and feeling through emotions).  Cathartic, to say the least.

And it was interesting, the things I found myself yelling and screaming about. I spoke of my desire for things to just be simple. I asked “why” a lot. “Why can’t there just be the one thing in the future that will save me, help me, cure me, allow me to life fully in my body and mind? Or how about something in the past that I can cling to, or someone or something I can blame?”

“No,” I proclaimed to that part of myself, “all I have is this. This body. This mind. This moment. Right here. This soul. Me. All of me.”

And then I melted into myself, I hugged myself, I gave myself the tenderness and compassion I had been seeking.

I begged God, or some elusive being I was praying to, to give me the love and comfort I sought after, to send me someone to just hug me.

And while I do believe in God, the Divine, a presence that is always near and loving. I’m not always able to lean in.

And there isn’t always someone sent to comfort us.

So in that moment, all I had was me.

All I will ever always have, is me. 

And I sat with her.

All of her.

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Gosh, what a morning!

I wasn’t expecting all of this, and I resisted it because I didn’t want it to get in-between me and all of the tasks I had planned today. I wanted to be productive and get things done.

But in the grand scheme of things, this work was and is far more important.

What started as being a distant observer of shadows seen in a photo of myself, turned into a deep journey inward and an incredibly powerful experience.

Whew!

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I will say, too, that as of now, I’ve merely touched the surface of shadow work on my own personal inner work journey because it’s SCARY (at first). So, I’m not very well-versed in it, yet. 

But one thing I do know is that most of us avoid looking at the parts of us that we have always viewed as “bad” or the parts of us that have been shamed, mistreated, or not accepted. 

We hide them because, at some point in our childhood, we were told they weren’t okay and needed to be thrown out completely. 

And now, we often put all of our focus into the aspects of self that everyone sees as “good,” or the things that make us popular, or fit in, or help us belong — to the point where we completely deny other aspects of self that want to be heard and seen and loved, too.

I do not know what all of this looks like for me in the future. God knows I want to. I want to know what will help me or fix me or heal me or what will take me to some ultimate place of flow and gratitude and bliss and purpose. Sometimes, I desire this just for myself, but often it’s because I feel it is what others expect of me.

But those expectations are no longer mine to bear. People often want certain things from us simply because they want to feel safe. It is their own nervous systems that “need” us to get to a certain point in our journeys, to get to some sense of “arrival,” just so they don’t have to worry about us anymore. People who care for us often want us to be on their timelines so that they can feel some sense of control.

But for me, in my desire to “arrive” too quickly, I bypass very important parts of the journey.

The more I deny the present moment, the more I deny myself, and that is a cost I am not willing to pay anymore.

It should go without saying, but I will voice that I do not mean we go do whatever we want and hurt the people we love simply because we have a shadow side that wants to act out. This journey is toward the exact opposite of that. It is about being aware of all of these parts of us so that we do not continue to judge what others do wrong, while acting in complete ignorance of our own issues and the way we hurt others.

So today, I sit with and honor the parts of me that felt safe enough to express their grief and pain today. 

I honor the fact that I do often feel divided and at war with myself, not only with my shadow self, but with all of the parts of me that confuse me, that make me wonder who I really even am, and where I am going.

And though I “know” a lot about the modalities that will help me in this journey, and the steps to take, and the things to do, — for today, I only have today. I don’t have the answers and I am not in a hurry. I am not on anyone else’s timeline. I am on my own.

And today, as it is, is beautiful.

I am also laughing at the irony of it all, because at first I was typing all of this out in part because I wanted to write myself into solving some of the current dilemmas in my brain, since thinking my way out wasn’t working.

But all my body wanted from me was to feel — to be, to photograph, to write, to express, and to know that I am worthy of the fullness those experiences bring. I don’t need to think or write my way into any conclusions. I need to just, be me.

And that is enough.

I am enough.

House of Mirrors

I seek
But do not find
I knock
But the door does not open

And I notice that all of the things I’ve been told about God
Are platitudes
That do not hold
The weight
Of the grief that fills my eyes
Of the fear that fills my mind

So I leave
That old belief behind
I run
In search of something Divine

And I notice that all of the things I’ve been told about God
Have deeper roots than I knew
’Cause at least they hold
The weight
Of an endless search for meaning
Of a desperate desire for home

I’m not saying it’s all true
But I’m not saying that all of it isn’t
Because I’m sprinting as fast as I can
Away from a system that hurt me so deeply
Only to be found smashed up against the wall
Of my own endless discontentment
With all of the places the journey led me to

The psychics
The sex
And the spiritual gurus

The books
Inner work
And new political views

Enneagram
Astrology
Cognitive psychology

Alcohol
Psychedelics
And all the things the good book tells us

To do
Or not to do
Wait — now that verse means something new?

Interpretations
Revelations
Always there, yet ever-changing

I’m in house of goddamn mirrors

And all I see
Is my reflection
In a different shade of light
Radiating from each new thing I try
All leading me back to the Divine
Deep inside
Of me

And I weep
Because I want it to be simple
To be easy and tried and always True
(In some ways, we all do)

But it is an ocean
And as we ride each wave to the next
All that is ever required of us
Is to enjoy the view

“Ask, and it will be given you.
Seek, and you will find.
Knock, and it will be opened for you.
For everyone who asks receives.
He who seeks finds.
To him who knocks it will be opened.”

— Matthew 7:7-8

Rest

It’s been 24 years since I last saw you — and it’s only in these past few years that I’ve had words and tools to really know how grieve.

When I was little, I just couldn’t get it.

I don’t remember a lot.

And one of the main reasons it’s so been hard is because I have always begged for you to be back in my life somehow.

Some plea for this to not be my reality.

But as I reflect this year, on the anniversary of your death, it feels a little different.

It feels like release.

Like safety to let go a little bit more.

Like rest.

And tonight I wish for you to Rest (even more deeply) In Peace because I don’t pine for you to come back as often anymore.

Instead, I behold the resilience and strength that we built without you here. I ponder the fact that maybe we didn’t need you as much as I thought we did?

Of course I do still miss you — and am grateful that you loved me in the best way you could for the short time you were in my life.

And I am thankful that, though your sense of humor bloomed from pain and sometimes masked it (and so does mine), you passed it on to me as a coping tool that is also used to bring joy.

You needed it because you were haunted with your own demons. Your own pain. Your own guilt and shame and worry and sadness and grief.

We all are.

But you also brought a lot of joy.

I love you, daddy.

Burn

Will the eyes of men always w a n d e r
Away from the soul of a woman
Who bears the scars of the wounded feminine?

Who carries a longing to light her fire from within 
As society blinds itself to her beauty?

Will she care enough about getting him to notice her —
Enough that she will hand him the matches
To ignite the flame of her own divine right to be a female? 
The right that never belonged to him?

Will she s i n k into the waters of his patriarchal perception,
His uneducated rejection, 
Which fuels the deception that a woman must fit a certain mold of attraction? No.

She will d r o w n in her own tears 
And let the pain-filled story that brought her here
Be felt
As she stares into the mirror,
Begging her reflection to love her exactly as she is,
Slowly b e c o m i n g

And when she rises from the ashes
Of the fire which burned her sense of self to the ground,

The wind from her own mouth
Flowing through her soft lips
Will reignite 

And burn
And burn forever

Until the whole world sees that she is everything she is meant to be

And his eyes will fixate on the power before him,
The beauty that she is,

The beauty that is a w o m a n.

Magic

Sometimes death sounds like magic to my ears,
To my soul

A yearning to be elsewhere
To go beyond this body, this mind, this earth

I see it in slow motion
As my spirit rises above it all

I hear sounds of beauty and joy and peace 

In the moments when my trauma no longer paves the path
And I am found

Face -to-face with wholeness,
With the me underneath the madness,

As the endless chatter in my head subsides

What bravery it takes to leave the world behind On a search for more than this

And braver, still — to stay. 

I Forgive You

I forgive you
For burying your grief in the grave with him, 
Just to make your tears small 
So you wouldn’t have to be different from the other kids,

For pushing it down until you were older
And finally ready to admit that you’ve needed your dad in your life,
That a part of you has craved him every single day for the past twenty-something years 
And it’s okay to miss him.

I forgive you
For every large display of intense emotion used as a cry for help,
Each one, an attempt to save you from the deep-rooted pain of loss you were to afraid to feel,

Constantly seeking help from the unavailable ones
Over and over again
To prove that the story you’ve been telling yourself is true,
The one that says you’re “too much,” “not enough,” and everything in between.

I forgive you for the way your wounds have hurt others, 
And for giving your power to them
Because you struggle to believe that you have everything inside of you
That it takes to make it in the world.

I forgive you for making yourself small,
For being scared to thrive without others’ approval
Or to be okay without them taking care of you, 
Without your daddy here to protect you.

I forgive you for always thinking that you’re the problem, 
For diminishing your light so others can be seen, 
For taking one hit after another
Because you believe it is all you deserve,

For becoming addicted to that pain 
Because you still cannot face your own, 
Each hit, like a drug, waking up the beautiful lion inside you,
Yet still too afraid to roar.

I forgive you
For thinking there is anything to forgive 

Beneath the Pain

I have never known a depth
Quite like the ocean your eyes hold

Waves crash and your soul screams in anguish
As you cry another thousand tears tonight

Only for the tide to roll in again with the morning light 
Holding more reminders of the grief

I weep for your pain, darling  
Because I see my own heartache reflected in those eyes

I drown in the weight of it
I sink into the deep end with you

Holding your hand as we fall 
Because I know you’re not scared of the darkness

Or of facing the rejection wounds
You have borne for a hundred lifetimes

But I am

I’m afraid of knowing who I am beneath this skin
Of melting into the pain in order to let go of it

Of feeling through the suffering of what has always haunted my subconscious 
The emotions that resemble death

And somehow still survive

It’s always death, isn’t it? 
The old continues to die so the new can resurrect

And on and on it goes forever
Until our souls reunite with the reflection of our Divine self 

To see the magic of who we have been all along 
Our capacity for connection and intimacy and love beneath the ocean of pain 

And I don’t ever want to let go of your hand.

t o x i c.

Everyone told me to leave you

But my soul told me to hold you
To love you
To see you

Until you finally broke open and let me in.


I wonder how many lifetimes it would have taken
How much self betrayal I would have needed to bear 

To chase affection that was merely a ghost
Until you finally chose to love me

How many sloppy seconds I would have needed to eat from your table
When I wanted to offer you all my firsts —

Hell, my first kiss
My first long embrace
My first I love you 

I already gave those to you
And you gave me “space”


Over and over and over again until “space” filled every inch of us and there was nothing left.

So I finally stopped running toward you
And breathed all the love I had for you

Into myself

I left your mirage
To chase after my own dreams —


Dreams you never show up in anymore.

Enlightened One

I’m wondering why 
You stay back 
Behind the lines,
Behind the routines, 
Behind the things you think make you come alive,

Behind the shadows,
When what you crave are the sunlit meadows, 
As you walk hand-in-hand with me.

It’s easier to see me as an experiment —
As a means to an end for your own growth, 
Your own enlightenment.

To hold me while I cry,
Just so that you can arrive 
At your next personal development phase on time.

Oh Enlightened One, 
How quickly you forget
I am Light, too — I am not something to be dimmed.

You will never be able to look into the eyes of the Divine
Without being willing to look into mine —
To see God in the ones you touch with your hands.

You seek some elusive end, 
Or even some contentment of the present moment,  
All of this masking a yearning for unconditional love.

My God, it’s right here, but still you run!
It is the breath in my very lungs, 
My acceptance for everything that is you.

You’re scared, I know this — 
And for every excuse you put to rest, 
You’ll find a thousand more. 

So I’ll hold on a little longer,
To see you through the madness,
Some naive glimmer of hope in my soul.

But then I won’t wait for you anymore. 

Resilient

Today I noticed resilience.
The kind that heroes are made of.
The kind that goes unnoticed unless one takes time to look closely — to see deeply. 

I saw it ever so subtly in the eyes of the girl staring back at me in the mirror.

Her face was stained with tears from the night before. 
Her cheeks were red from the imprints of her sheets—from the the weight of her body as she slept, but mostly due to the heaviness of her mind.

Her hair was both coiled and straight, untamed and shooting in multiple directions — the embodiment of her hatred for mornings. 
Her scalp was greasy and dirty. The last time she had energy to wash it was unknown, and frankly, unimportant. 

From the outside, she was a total and complete wreck. 
She was beyond tired, worn, and confused.
Broken — or so it seemed. 

I stared at her, saddened that she didn’t wake up feeling different this time — as she had continually hoped she would. 
I stood silently, knowing the questions that haunted her every single day —

What is the point of holding onto hope at all, anymore?

How is it possible to keep believing that things will get better?

Yet as her eyes gazed back at mine, I took one last, deep, long look —
And that’s where I saw it.
Resilience. In its purest form. 

Beneath the tears, and the pain, and the exhaustion — there was a spark.
The golden hue around her dilated pupils represented something beautiful to me. 
Something profound. 

I stepped closer. 
That girl in the mirror was me. 
I was her. 

And there, I discovered that it is not the outer appearance that reveals my inner strength, or lack thereof—it doesn’t show all of who I am.
My tired eyes and messy look don’t explain the fierce persistence my heart holds. 
They don’t show the day-to-day battles I’ve won.

They don’t disclose the moments when everything around me tells me that my life is not worth living, when the thoughts in my own head say I’m worthless—and yet, I push through anyway. 
With trembling breath, I scream truth to the lies. 
I proclaim that I am enough.

No one sees the nights when loneliness feels so tangible I could touch it, and taste it, and often do — The dark moments when I feast upon the deliciousness of sorrow, when I lean into the fear and let it whisper my name.
And still, I wake up the next morning, believing there is more love than there is fear, and that it is exceedingly more powerful than anything. 

Today I noticed resilience — and it was deep in my very bones.
I became aware of the Divine within me, a force stronger than what is relayed to the world on the exterior.
I finally got comfortable with the truth that my presence in the world fills up a room.

Yours does too, dear one — and it is never too much.

It is just enough. 
We are perfectly and brilliantly enough.
We are resilient.