Once upon a time,
Before the world told you who you needed to be,
Before your voice learned to soften itself for survival,
Before you mistook your depth for danger,
You were a song,
Not one performed,
But one you were.
Close your eyes,
And let your breath come in like a tide,
Slow,
Inevitable,
Remembering the shape of the shore.
And let it fall the same way as if the ocean itself is breathing you in again.
There is a place beneath the surface of you,
One that has never been rushed,
Never been edited,
Never been made smaller for comfort,
A place that hums.
And if you listen closely,
You might begin to hear her.
Once upon a time,
The sirens were not feared,
They were revered.
Daughters of the river and muse,
Keepers of memory,
Voices that carried truths too vast for ordinary language.
They did not lure,
They revealed.
And what they revealed,
Not everybody had the courage to face.
Feel that now in your body.
Where have you been told you were too much?
Too emotional,
Too intense,
Too magnetic,
Too hard to understand.
Let those words drift through you like seafoam dissolving at the shoreline.
They were never definitions,
Just projections from those who could not swim that deep.
There is a reason that sailors feared the sirens.
Not because the sirens chased them,
But because something inside of them answered.
A longing,
A restlessness,
A quiet,
Aching truth.
One that they had spent their entire lives avoiding.
The siren did not beg,
She did not perform,
She simply existed in her voice.
And those who already were unraveling,
Followed.
Take a breath in.
Inhale as if you are calling your voice back home.
Exhale as if you are releasing every version of you that learned to quiet it.
Now imagine you are standing at the edge of the dark endless sea.
The air is thick with salt and memory and the moon hangs low like it knows your name.
And somewhere out there,
Distant,
You hear it.
Not loud,
Not demanding,
But truly undeniable.
A call that does not pull you away,
But pulls you deeper into yourself.
Step forward and feel the touch of the water on your feet.
Cool,
Electric,
And alive.
You are not afraid of depth,
You are made from it.
And with each step,
The water rises.
Ankles,
Knees,
Hips.
And something old begins to slip away.
The need to explain yourself.
The need to be easily understood.
The need to shrink your magic into something digestible.
Let it fall from you,
Like pearls slipping through open.
And then,
You hear it clearly.
Be the song.
Not outside of you,
But within.
A vibration in your chest,
A resonance in your throat,
A truth that has been waiting,
Patient,
Unwavering,
For you to stop abandoning it.
This is the part of you they never told.
The siren's power was never in controlling others.
It was in being so deeply aligned with her own voice that anyone who heard it could no longer ignore their own longing.
Place a hand on your throat or your heart,
And just breathe into that space.
You do not need to sing,
Just feel the hum.
The quiet,
Ancient frequency of being fully,
Unapologetically,
You.
You are not here to convince.
You are not here to chase.
You are not here to make yourself palatable.
You are here to resonate,
And those meant for you will recognize the sound.
The sea does not apologize for its vastness.
The siren does not apologize for her song,
And neither do you.
Take one final breath in,
Deep,
Expansive,
Remembering,
And as you exhale,
Feel yourself return to the shore.
But not as the same version of you who arrived.
You carry something now.
A once upon a time because you forgot your voice,
And now you are remembering it again.
Open your eyes.
The tide may recede,
But the ocean,
She lives within you.
