A Gentle Reminder

Chapter 4 The bravest thing you will ever do is learn how ~

The bravest thing you will ever do is learn how to love the things that made you.

If you are trying to forget someone who was once a beautiful part of your life, the answer is you don't.

You don't try to sanitize your experience, you don't try to cut the pain from the bone.

You don't downplay it.

You don't try to sweep it under the rug or hide it away.

Letting go of someone you thought would be in your life forever is difficult; sometimes circumstance gets in the way.

Sometimes, no matter how much love is there, you have to lay it down.

You have to walk away.

You have to accept that sometimes you get too big for it, or you want different things, or you cannot pour yourself out for it any longer.

And that is okay.

But if you managed to find someone who cared for you, who saw you, who heard all of the horrible and haunted things you did in your life and still loved you harder, still thought it all shone like gold that is special.

You shouldn't forget that.

You should be thankful for it.

Be thankful that you got to feel that way about someone.

Be thankful for all of the mornings, and all of the nights, you got to wrap your limbs within theirs.

Be thankful for the way they cracked your heart open.

Be thankful for the way they challenged you and calmed you and made you believe in the person you were becoming.

Be thankful for the fact that they saw you didn't see yourself.

Be thankful for the fact that you risked for love, that you unhinged your rib cage and opened yourself up in a world that sometimes favors playing it cool over leaping towards connection.

Be thankful that you found this person, in a world of billions, and for a moment in time, even if it was fleeting, you got to dive into the soul of them.

Just be thankful and walk away with grace.

Walk away with gratitude.

Walk away knowing that you felt something, that you experienced something a lot of people haven't, and in that way you were changed.

Love is not meant to be possessed. It is meant to be felt.

Be proud of yourself for feeling so deeply, appreciate it for what it was, and let that love go off into the world and change others the way it changed you.

Move on, not for anyone else, not to prove to anyone that you can, but rather, do it for yourself.

Do it for your future. Let go of what is heavy within you.

Move forward with the lessons, carry them inside of yourself.

Move on, not because you have something to prove to the outside world, but because you have something to prove to your heart, you have something to prove to your soul.

You are worth saving. Save yourself.

I think it's beautiful, the way you show up in this world, unguarded and willing to try again, despite all of the ways it has tried to defeat you.

I think it's beautiful, the way you tuck courage into yourself each morning, the way you refuse to be anything but hopeful in this world, despite the inner battles you fight, despite the struggles you have experienced for so long.