21 Letters – #21 – Myself, future, past
You are still here.
That matters more than you know.
In the quiet moments,
in the noise of it all,
you kept breathing.
When the ground gave way beneath your feet
again and again,
you learned how to fall
without forgetting how to rise.
This year,
this impossible, raging, aching year,
you lost more than words could hold.
A love you thought would last
slipped through your fingers,
and something even deeper,
a piece of your soul
that wore a heartbeat and a name,
was taken.
A part of you
that once walked beside you
in laughter and light
is now
a memory you cradle
with care and quiet reverence.
You watched the people you love
break in front of you,
grief wrapping around them
like smoke in their lungs,
and you couldn’t fix it.
But you stayed.
You held space.
You offered your hands,
your time,
your heart ...
even when yours was barely mending.
And still
in the rubble,
in the unraveling,
love found its way back to you.
A gentle, patient kind of love,
that asked nothing
but your honesty.
That saw your scars
and didn’t flinch.
That said, even now,
you are worthy.
Even especially now.
Look around,
and you’ll see it –
the way you are becoming
the woman you were always meant to be.
Not in leaps,
but in quiet evolutions.
In every moment you chose
to keep going.
To soften when the world
tried to harden you.
To open again,
even when it hurt.
She is coming –
the future you.
You are meeting her in fragments,
in the warmth of new faces,
in the steady comfort of the old ones.
Each person,
each story,
each pain,
each joy
is shaping her.
She is not separate from all this,
but because of it.
A woman born
from the fire and the flood
who walks with grace
because she knows the cost of stumbling.
Like always,
you are adapting.
It’s what you do –
take what breaks you,
what tries to end you,
and mold it
into a foundation.
You’ve done it before,
you’ll do it again.
So that when she arrives,
that woman waiting just ahead,
she’ll know how to thrive
no matter the terrain beneath her feet.
Be proud of how you’ve moved
through all of this.
Not perfectly
but honestly.
You did the best you knew how,
even when you were bleeding.
Even when you were blind in the dark.
And still,
somehow,
you were loved.
Not just despite the mess,
but because of your raw,
unfiltered heart.
To every soul
who stayed,
who held you,
who saw the truth of you and said
yes, still, yes,
this is your thank you.
This is your altar of gratitude,
bittersweet and shining.
And to you ...
this is a promise:
you will keep going.
You will keep becoming.
And when you finally meet her,
the woman shaped by this storm,
the one who walks with her head high
and her heart open,
you’ll know
it was all for her.
And you’ll know
she’s proud
that you never gave up.