This is my chance

One thing I know for sure.. my heart has carried a weight it was never meant to hold.

Trauma knocked on my door when I was six, and in some ways, I never left that threshold. My emotions lingered there, frozen in time, waiting for me to return and reclaim them. I see it now.. in the way I’ve stumbled through love, in the way I’ve held too tightly or let go too soon. In the way I’ve mismanaged the very blessings Yah placed in my hands. And most of all, in the way I’ve loved myself.. soft in some places, harsh in others, never quite whole.

For too long, love has been survival. I’ve mistaken attachment for intimacy, mistook familiarity for safety, wrapped my arms around trauma and called it home. But wisdom, she has a way of arriving exactly when you’re ready to receive her. It took me 30 years to meet her, but here she stands, patient and knowing. And now that I see, I cannot unsee. Now that I know, I must move differently.

So I step forward, not just into healing, but into wholeness. I am learning how to love without losing myself. Learning that love true love begins with me. That the boundaries I set are not walls but doorways, invitations for others to meet me in truth, not in my wounds.

And in this becoming, I mother differently. No longer parenting from the echoes of my pain but from the wisdom of my healing. My children will not inherit my brokenness; they will inherit a woman who chose to rise. I will teach them love not just through words, but through my wholeness .. through the way I honor myself, the way I honor them, the way I allow Yah to guide my steps.

And while this journey is mine, I will not walk it alone. It I will be held by the hands of community, strengthened by those who see me beyond my past. And I will stand beside the one Yah has already placed before me

not to complete me, but to witness the woman I am becoming.

song: C’est ma chance by Abi Bernadoth

(This song captures the essence of seizing one’s moment and embracing destiny.)