21 Letters – #7 Self – Young coming to age/trauma reconciliation
I see you.
In the shadows you walked through alone,
barefoot on broken glass,
carrying wounds no one should have to carry.
You thought silence would swallow you whole,
and maybe a part of you wished it would.
The world handed you cruelty
in the place of love,
and you bore it in your chest
like a cathedral gutted by fire.
There was the boy who stole what was left
of an already crumbling childhood.
The man who twisted your innocence
into his own hunger,
and when his sin was dragged into light
they threw your name in the dirt,
called you the root of his ruin.
There was the father who never arrived,
the mother who drowned in her own escape,
the grandmother whose sharp tongue
cut deeper than comfort ever could.
And so you stood
a child, unarmed
forced to be your own witness,
forced to hold the weight
others should have lifted from your small hands.
I know the night when faith slipped from you,
how the prayers tasted like ash,
how stained glass became shards,
how you knew God would not descend
to pull you from the dark.
And so you left Him there,
and chose instead the fire of survival,
the altar of your own strength.
Listen, little one.
You should not have had to grow through this.
You should not have been asked
to carry every silence,
to bleed without balm,
to stand while the world crumbled around you.
And yet,
you did.
You grew into a woman
who carved kindness from stone,
who stitched empathy from her own scars,
who learned to walk unafraid into storms,
because storms were the first sky you ever knew.
You became a woman who refuses to be silent,
who bares her teeth at injustice,
who knows the shape of pain
and so recognizes it in others,
who chooses to protect
where you once needed protection.
This is not to glorify what broke you.
I would tear it from your timeline if I could.
But I cannot.
So instead I tell you:
You survived it.
You rose from it.
And every hand that failed you
taught you what it means
to never fail someone else.
You are not their ruin.
You are your own resurrection.
And I love you
for surviving long enough
to let me write this letter.