There you are

My dear sweet self,

So.  I've kind of been beating the crap out of you lately.  And I'm sorry about that.

I know you want to hurry up and be better already.  To just be at the end.  I know it's discouraging and frustrating and defeating.  You want to be smart, to be successful, to have fun.

That's valid.  All of it.  You're allowed to want that.

But here's the thing.

None of that is a prerequisite for your worthiness.

You are already okay.  You are already safe.  You are already enough.  In every. Single. Way.

I know you want to find yourself again.  I know that what you're most afraid of, deep down inside, is that you're disappearing.  That the part of you at your very core, the part that makes you special and unique, the part of you that is a real person and not "just a mommy" is gone.  I know that you're afraid that you aren't special, that you - the real and true you - doesn't matter.

It isn't true.

You've been looking for you in the wrong places.  You've been looking for you in the bottom of a bag of yarn, in a glass of wine, in a tube of lipstick, in games and jokes and manicures and playdates.  You've been looking in other people's places.

You just needed to look in the quiet.

Which is a scary place.   I know.

You are still there, where you always were.  And in your own words,

Part of you is still dark, and really always has been, and may always be a little bit, but really that’s okay.  What makes you dark is also deep and gentle and beautiful.  It makes you the person you are.

You saw it there once before.  And you believed it before.

I know you want to be better.  You want to be healed.  You want to be happy.

But the truth is, you need to love the you that is.   You don't need to fit into anyone else's mold of what it means to be okay.

You don't need to find you really because, at the core of you, you've never for a single moment been lost.

You've been so overwhelmed lately by the noise and the quiet.  You've been starving for validation.  You've been dancing and hustling and panicking, desperate to be seen.

I see you now.  I hear you.  You are enough.

With all the love in the world,

Me