There are parts of you that wait all year for space. Not loudly, not with demand — just quietly, patiently, like someone standing at the edge of a doorway with their hands folded. For me, those parts have always been the softer ones. The pieces of my femininity I never truly felt safe enough to let unfold. They showed up in flashes, in moments when life wasn’t pulling at me from every direction, but they never felt like something I could lead with.
And softness, for me, has never just been about pretty clothes or delicate aesthetics. Softness is permission. Softness is grace. Softness is letting myself move without bracing for whatever blow might come next. As a woman — an independent one, a single mother, a Taurus woman made of stubborn earth and sharp edges — softness has always been a harder thing to inhabit. People meet me and see dominance. They see the rigidity that survival forced into me. They see the version of me that had no choice but to be loud, firm, grounded, and unshakeable.
But this year? This year I finally felt safe enough with myself to let the other half breathe. And I’m realizing that those softer pieces were never supposed to be hidden. They were supposed to be the first thing you meet when you meet me now.
The Rituals That Bring Me Back
Returning to myself never comes through noise. It never comes through distraction. It comes through the rituals and silences I’ve built around my spirit:
Staying to myself.
Talking to myself.
Journaling.
Reading.
Writing.
And the kind of silence that most people avoid — the one without TV, without background chaos, without anything feeding my mind except God and my own thoughts. That silence used to scare me too. Sometimes it still does. But it always leads me back to the woman I actually am, instead of the woman life molded out of necessity.
In that silence, I feel myself becoming someone I’ve never been before. Someone I once envisioned instead of endured being. My choices have become gentler and wiser. I no longer punish myself for the wrong turns I’ve taken. I know when to stand up, and I know when my silence is strength, not surrender. My voice is calmer now, but stronger than it’s ever been.
If I Met Myself in Early December…
If I could walk into a little café and sit across from myself — the version of me from last December — I would take her hands, look her in her tired eyes, and say the exact sentence I know would irritate her to her core:
“Girl… just hang on.”
It would piss her off. She’d roll her eyes. She’d hate how vague it sounds. But she would have nothing to say back.
And before I left, I’d remind her of Romans 8:18:
The suffering you’re carrying now has nothing — not even a chance — against the joy that’s waiting for you.
Because that joy? I feel it now. Even with some pain still lingering at the edges, I feel it.
The Reintroduction
December, for me, is not an ending. It’s a reintroduction. A soft, slow, steady walk back to myself. Back to the woman underneath the survival instincts. Back to the version of me that doesn’t need to fight through life to feel worthy of being in it.
This year cracked me open, but it also cleared space. And in that space, the softer version of me — the truest version — finally stepped forward. And she’s not going anywhere.
Leave a Reply