You can be hurting and feel broken AND be incredibly, unimaginably worthy of love and belonging.
Nothing in life is ever just one thing. (A letter of encouragement)
As you move through each day this week, remember to hold space for yourself — for everything you feel, and know that what you’re feeling is okay. You don’t need a reason for it. You don’t need to explain it. You don’t even need someone to understand it. If you feel it and you understand it, that is enough.
And not only is it enough — you are enough. You are precious and you are important. Your life is important and you do amazing things. You do hard things. You are strong and you are warm and you make a bigger impact on so many people’s lives than you can ever realize.
So often we’re so caught up in our own heads, focused on our own problems, what we think of in ourselves as “not enough,” that we don’t realize the impacts we make. We don’t realize that we just made someone smile, or that what we just said off-the-cuff is something someone else will carry with them for the rest of their lives.
Think about all the things you still hold with you that other people have said to you or done for you. Think of the little memories you keep like dried flowers on your heart, that help sustain you and remind you of the goodness of things.
What if you are those little flowers to other people, and you don’t even know it? What if your self-consciousness and the things you think you’re “not enough of,” or the false narratives you tell yourself about who you are, keep you from seeing that you’re a brighter, more beautiful light in the world than you can even imagine?
Nothing is ever one thing.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent so much time worrying if I’m being too-this, or too-that. I spend time explaining myself, over and over, to make sure people think I’m responsible enough or intellectual enough, or so they don’t think I’m foolish, or self-seeking. I’ve spent time justifying my beliefs even though no one asked, because I fear their secret (unconfirmed and totally projected) judgments. Or I spend time fighting the desire to justify my beliefs, all the while hoping that people think I’m still “enough.”
Mostly, I haven’t allowed myself to “take up space,” as my sister puts it. To be fully comfortable in who I am and what I’m feeling all of the time, and not need anyone to notice it in order to feel bright and shiny and just as valuable as anyone else. I apologize for needing to ask for help, I make myself smaller in order to accommodate others, and I push down my own needs so I don’t have to make anyone else feel uncomfortable. Not all the time, but pretty regularly. My friends recognize this, and they’ve started to call me out on it, or to give me permission to ask for what I want, reminding me it’s reasonable to do so, and that I’m worthy of it. I love that, and I’m getting a lot better at it, but it’s still hard.
I think, to some degree, we all struggle with this. We all justify our emotions, beliefs, or feelings. Or, if we’re not justifying them, we’re shaming ourselves for feeling them because of the few people out there who make or have made us feel small, unworthy, ridiculous, or crazy.
Well you know what? Who you are and what you feel is fully valid. Whether you’re feeling on top of the world, or you’re scared and sad and really struggling just to keep treading water — you’re beautiful and complete either way. You can feel angry and frustrated at the current state of the world and you can marvel in the complexity and beauty of nature, or the simplicity of the small moments that give us meaning. You can be exhausted and love your job and wish you had more time. You can love your kids with all your heart and want space away from them. You can love a partner and know you shouldn’t be with them.
And you can be hurting and feel broken and be incredibly, unimaginably worthy of love and belonging.
Because nothing is ever one thing. We’re all full of a million different things at once, just as the world is made of a million different parts and pieces that aren’t remotely mutually exclusive, but work together in tandem to create this vibrant, complex organism of life. And there’s so, so much power in that. And so much peace.
I want you to know that regardless of where you are in life, you are capable of far more than you think; far more than you, even now, give yourself credit for. You’re an incredibly important human, who has an incredibly important story to tell, and an incredibly important life to live. You are the stuff of stars, of that very same power, and what makes you you is at once entirely unique and crazily connected to all the life that’s ever been. You hold the universe within and the universe without. To me, that’s both immensely grounding and immensely empowering, and it makes me feel larger than life.
Despite what our society likes to convince us of, you are not what has happened to you, nor are you what you have done. You are who you are right now, and you are who you are for a reason. You make an impact on people every single day, and bring far more light to the world than you can ever know.
Every time you face a challenge, you learn from it. Every time you make a mistake (an incredibly human thing to do, and a necessary part of living, so remember to give yourself grace), you know what to do better in the future. Even if you make that same mistake over and over again, it takes baby steps to walk into the power that is yours if you can allow yourself to release the burden of control. Of controlling what others think of you, or even controlling what you think of yourself.
Release yourself of the burden of having to have it all together, and remember to speak to yourself, and give yourself encouragement, as you would your best friend.
You would never tell your best friend to be smaller, to take up less space, or to think of themselves as anything less than an incredibly strong, incredibly capable, and incredibly important human being. So never stop doing that for yourself.
Give yourself more space than you’re comfortable with. Don’t apologize for stating or asking for what you need. Don’t apologize for your opinions, your beliefs, or your ideas. You are your own affirmation.
Stand firm in the grace you naturally possess as a child of the Universe or God or the earth or humanity, and remember that you’ve got this.
