Tag: strength

The Voice in the Mirror

June 25th, 2025

“You are so kind to others.
Why are you so cruel to yourself?”

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, how easily the harshest voice becomes my own.

It’s automatic, almost.
A glance in the mirror turns into a running list of everything I wish I could change.
Your face looks puffy today.
Are you bloated or just gaining weight?
Why can’t you just get it together?
You’d look better if you were more disciplined.
It spirals quickly. Before I even realize what’s happened, I’m tearing myself apart over a bad angle or a passing thought.

I don’t talk to myself the way I talk to people I love.
If someone I cared about said they hated the way they looked, I’d remind them how beautiful they are when they’re laughing. How kindness lives in their eyes. How their worth has nothing to do with angles or lighting or bloat.
But when it’s me?

I zoom in on every flaw. I replay every misstep. I weaponize my own reflection and call it honesty.
I would never speak to anyone else the way I speak to myself.
And yet, I’ve made cruelty a habit. I’ve dressed it up as accountability… as self-awareness… as “tough love”.
But it’s not love.
It’s shame. It’s fear. It’s conditioning. And it runs deep.

So I’m trying to interrupt it.
To notice when the voice in my head starts getting sharp and ask:
Would I ever say this to someone else?
And if the answer is no, I pause. I breathe. I try again.
Not perfectly. Not always. But more than I used to.

It’s not about loving every part of yourself overnight.
It’s about choosing not to tear yourself down every time you look in the mirror.
It’s about learning to speak to yourself the way you speak to the people you love.
Not because I’ve earned kindness… because I deserve it.

If you wouldn’t say it to someone you love, maybe it’s time to stop saying it to yourself.

Reflective Question:
What might begin to heal if you started speaking to yourself the way you speak to the people you love?
For My Father, On Father’s Day

June 15th, 2025

If love had a face, it would look like yours. Tired eyes that never missed a moment, calloused hands that held too much, a heart that made space for both roles when the world asked too much of you.

You didn’t just raise me, you carried me through a storm you never asked for. When Mom passed, the world changed in ways we couldn’t name. But somehow, in the wreckage, you stood up and became both the anchor and the sail. You didn’t have a guidebook for grief or a blueprint for raising a daughter alone, but you did it with a strength that was quiet and constant. You never flinched.

You braided my hair with trembling fingers.
You showed up to every cheer competition, screaming louder than any other parent in the stands.
You cooked dinners, helped with homework, made me laugh when all I wanted to do was cry.

You made sure I never felt the emptiness you carried. And somehow, in the absence, you built presence. A love so big it filled the whole house. A laughter so loud it echoed through the lonely parts.

You were selfless when it would’ve been easier not to be.
Kind even when the world was unkind.
Dedicated in ways most people will never see.
And funny… God, thank you for the funny. The way you made space for joy when we needed it most.

I don’t know how you did it.
But because of you, I know what strength looks like.
Because of you, I know that love doesn’t always look like two people, it can look like one person doing everything they can, with everything they have, for someone they love.

You were both my mother and my father. You still are. And on this Father’s Day, I hope you feel what I’ve always known:

You were never “just enough.”
You were everything.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.
You are, and always will be, my first home.
The Days That Stayed

June 9th, 2025

Most days, I don’t remember.

They blur together, folding into a rhythm I moved through without much thought… morning alarms, text messages, grocery store runs, dinner plans… moments of joy and pain caught up in the flow of everyday life.

But some days stay.

The ones where everything shifted, or nothing did, but I felt it anyway.
A song playing for the first time, catching me off guard… mid-laugh, mid-tears, or somewhere in between.
There’s something wild about how music marks time in me… like I can always trace it back to the exact moment I first heard it.
A strange, permanent timestamp. A memory hooked to a melody.

I remember the summer I felt infinite.
The one where the world felt like it belonged to me in all its chaos and color.
It was loud and hard and messy and magic.
And it cracked me open in ways I didn’t know I needed.
That summer taught me how to become myself.

I remember Halloween of 2017.
The day I stopped waiting for someone to save me.
The day I realized I could begin again… and so I did.
It took me seven months.
Seven months to soften, to rebuild, to learn what it meant to choose myself every day.
Seven months to remember I was worthy.
And seven years to that day, I married someone who never lets me forget it.

I remember porch light sun and the wind through open car windows.
The first dip into a cold pool at the start of summer. The scent of a new book.
The warmth of a laugh I didn’t know I needed.
The way shadows danced on the wall during slow afternoons.
I remember the way aliveness sometimes sneaks in through the simplest things… not the milestones, but the moments in between.
The ones that asked for nothing.

Most days, I don’t remember.

But the ones that stayed…
They gave me everything.

Reflective Question:
What are the days that stayed with you and why do you think they did?
I Sat Down With My Younger Self for Coffee

June 2nd, 2025

I sat down with my younger self for coffee today.
She ordered something sweet, like always. I smiled, because of course she did.
We found a quiet corner. She had questions… all the ones I knew were coming.
And I did my best to answer them, gently. Honestly. The way I wish someone had answered them for me back then.

She wanted to know if I ever figured out who I am.
I told her I’m still figuring it out, but that maybe that’s the whole point. That every season uncovers new layers, and none of them are wrong.
I said the goal isn’t to arrive, it’s to keep going.
She liked that.

She asked if I ever stopped being so hard on myself.
I paused for a while.
I told her I’m learning. Slowly. That I’ve gotten better at offering myself the kind of grace I so freely give to others.

She wondered if I still think about our mom.
I said, “Every day.” But now I do it with more softness than ache.
She didn’t cry, and neither did I, but we held the moment like we both knew what it meant.
(We did.)

She asked about him, the person she always hoped she’d meet.
I told her yes.
Yes to the kind of love that makes you feel safe to breathe.
Yes to someone who chooses me, over and over again, in all my forms.
She sighed, relieved. “I was starting to worry,” she joked.
I told her not to. That some of the best things take their time and require some distance.

She asked if we ever stopped feeling behind.
I told her the timeline she’s chasing doesn’t really exist and the moment you stop comparing, life gets a little lighter.
She asked if I really believe that.
I told her I’m trying to.

She asked about Dad.
And I told her…
He’s still our hero.
But now I understand even more of what he gave up to give us everything.
We’ve only gotten closer. He still shows up, still sacrifices, still finds ways to make us laugh when life feels heavy.
She smiled wide, the kind of smile that comes from deep, steady love.

She asked if I’m happy.
I said yes. Not all the time. But in the ways that count the most.

And just before she left, she looked at me one more time searching for something she couldn’t quite name.
I smiled and said, “Whatever you’re hoping this life will be… it’s even better than that.”
She believed me.

Reflective Question:
What would happen if you sat down with your younger self for coffee? What would they want to know and what would you want to say?
The Weight You Learned to Carry

May 15th, 2025

You don’t remember the first time you felt like you weren’t enough, only that once the question arrived, it never really left. It found its way in early, latching onto grades and glances, threading itself through mirrors and moments where you longed to feel seen. You’ve spent years trying to outrun it, hoping the next milestone, the next win, the next nod of approval might finally be the thing that soothes the ache. But it never is.

And maybe that’s the real truth… not that you’ve failed to measure up, but that the measuring was never yours to begin with. That somewhere along the way, the world convinced you that worth had to be earned. But what if it doesn’t? What if being enough isn’t a finish line you fight toward, but something you’ve carried all along, even when it was buried beneath doubt?

Maybe the best thing you can do is stop running and turn back toward yourself. Not the self you’ve performed into being, but the one you were before anyone told you who to become.

For most of us, the story we’ve been told is that worth comes from achievements, applause, milestones. We learn early on that validation is the currency of belonging, and we chase it, thinking it’s the key to feeling whole. But how often have we chased something only to find that it didn’t fill us the way we thought it would? How many accomplishments have been followed by a familiar, unshakable sense of dissatisfaction?

Somewhere deep within, you know that the truth is different. That the space you’re seeking has always been there, waiting to be recognized. Being enough doesn’t need validation from anyone or anything else. It exists beneath all the noise, beneath all the pressure, beneath the constant measuring. You’ve been enough all along, and the key isn’t chasing it, it’s acknowledging it.

This isn’t about stopping your pursuit of growth or goals, it’s about shifting the lens. It’s about seeing yourself as worthy of everything you desire, right now, not as something you’ll become once you’ve met all the expectations set for you. It’s about realizing that your worth is intrinsic, not external.

The work becomes less about proving yourself and more about releasing the burden of needing to prove anything at all. That’s the most selfless act of all: to rest in the truth that you are enough, just as you are.

And once you begin to believe that, everything starts to shift.

You begin showing up differently in relationships, in your work, in the way you speak to yourself. You stop shrinking to fit someone else’s idea of who you should be. You start choosing things because they feel aligned, not because they make you look impressive. You let go of the pressure to constantly improve, and instead, you begin to uncover. Not fix. Not perform. Just return.

This is the rebellion: not in loud defiance, but in choosing gentleness in a world that profits off your insecurity. In pausing when the world tells you to speed up. In saying, “I am enough,” even when no one claps for it. Even when it feels unfamiliar. Even when you don’t fully believe it yet.

Because learning to believe it is the work. And that work takes time. Patience. Practice.

But every time you offer yourself that belief, even just for a moment, you’re building something unshakable. A foundation that won’t crumble every time you fall short. A home inside yourself that doesn’t need anyone else’s permission to stand.

So maybe the goal isn’t to become someone new or someone else. Maybe it’s to remember who you were before the world told you you had to be more. To return to the parts of you that were never broken, only buried. And from that place, to live as if you’ve always been enough. Because you have been.

Reflective Question:
What would change if you stopped trying to prove your worth and started believing in it instead?
I Thought I Was Lazy

May 13th, 2025

It’s strange how easily we forget we’re human. That we were never meant to perform endlessly, never built to stretch ourselves thin in the name of being “good enough.” I didn’t notice it at first, the way my days filled to the brim, the way my body stiffened in protest. Rest became something I had to earn, prove I deserved. And by the time I realized I was unwell, I’d long been applauded for the very pace that was breaking me.

My body began to rebel in ways I couldn’t ignore. Back pain that anchored me to my bed, illnesses that showed up like clockwork, anxiety pressing in like a weighted fog. I was exhausted, but still convincing myself I hadn’t done “enough” to justify a break. The idea of slowing down felt indulgent, even weak. But what if the real strength is in the slowing?

There’s something radical about choosing rest. Especially in a world that rewards your productivity more than your presence. It felt like swimming against the current… canceling plans, letting dishes sit in the sink, leaving texts unanswered until I had the capacity to respond with intention rather than obligation. I had to unlearn the lie that rest is laziness, and instead learn that rest is how we reclaim our wholeness.

Emotionally, the hardest part was the guilt. That gnawing feeling that if I paused, I would be perceived as less capable, less motivated, less worthy. But that guilt didn’t come from truth. It came from a culture that equates value with output, a world that expects you to be everything to everyone while asking nothing of yourself.

So I started small. Saying no without apology. Letting silence stretch a little longer. Making space to breathe without rushing to fill it. I began tending to the kind of rest that doesn’t just restore your energy, but your sense of self. The kind that makes you feel like you again, not the version of you that gets things done, but the version that remembers what matters.

And what I’ve come to understand is this: choosing rest isn’t giving up, it’s rising up. It is resistance in its softest, fiercest form. In a world that worships urgency, choosing stillness is a rebellion. It’s a refusal to be emptied for approval, a complete act of self-devotion. It’s saying: I will not sacrifice my body for productivity. I will not trade my peace for performance. I will not abandon myself to be more digestible to a world that thrives on burnout. Rest is not a luxury. It is your right. And reclaiming it unapologetically and intentionally, is how you begin to remember who you are.

In choosing stillness, you’re not falling behind, you’re finally catching up to who you were always meant to be.

Reflective Question:
What would change if you stopped trying to prove your worth and started honoring your need for rest?

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