Dear beloved me,
Today I am no longer pretending that everything is fine.
For years I have carried a quiet grief inside my chest and today I am opening the door to it.
I am allowing the truth to come forward without softening it or hiding it.
I miss my life the way it used to be.
I miss the strength that lived in my body.
I miss the freedom of walking wherever my heart wanted to go.
I miss feeling light,
Capable and alive in motion.
Nature used to feel like my second home.
The trees,
The earth beneath my feet,
The rhythm of my body moving through the world.
That was where I felt most like myself.
And then everything changed.
The pain came.
The years of struggling came.
The surgery came.
And with them came something I was never prepared for.
The slow,
Aching feeling that parts of my life were slipping away from me.
And for four years is a long time to live inside pain.
And I know some do it for lifetimes,
But for me four years is a long time.
Four years of adapting.
Four years of losing pieces of the life I once knew.
Four years of watching my body change in ways I did not choose.
And today I allow myself to say the things I have held back.
I am angry that this has happened.
I am angry that my body has had to endure so much.
I am angry at the limitations that now shape my days.
I am angry at the dreams that once felt so close and now seem to float just beyond my reach.
And beneath the anger is deep sadness.
I grieve the woman I once was.
The strong,
Active,
Adventurous woman who moved easily through this world.
I grieve the body that felt like freedom.
I grieve the paths I imagined walking.
The adventures I thought were still ahead.
The version of my life that now feels like it belongs to another time.
There are days when I feel like I have been left behind.
Days when I look at the sky of my dreams and watch them drifting like clouds.
Farther and farther away while I stand still.
And that hurts me more than I often allow myself to admit.
So today I release it.
I release the sorrow I have been holding in my muscles and my bones.
I release the frustration that has built up inside my heart.
I release the shame about the weight I cannot shift and the body that does not move the way I once did.
I release the belief that I have failed my dreams.
None of this is failure.
It was a storm.
A hurricane maybe.
Nonetheless a storm and they change landscapes.
But storms do not erase the earth beneath them.
And so today I place my hands gently over my heart and I speak a new truth.
My body has been through battle.
My body has endured pain.
Surgery.
Healing.
And the long road of recovery.
This body is not broken.
This body is brave.
This body has carried me through something incredibly hard.
And the woman inside this body,
The one who loves nature,
Magic,
Herbs,
Ritual and the whispers of life.
She is still here.
She may have moved slowly now.
She may need gentleness where she once needed speed.
She may walk a different path than the one she imagined.
But she has not disappeared.
My dreams may not look the same as they once did.
But they are not gone.
They are shifting.
Reshaping.
Finding new ways to live through me.
And today I release the grief of what was.
Today I soften toward the life that still wants to unfold.
And I do not have to know the whole path yet.
I only have to take the next small step.
And even if that step is slow,
It's still movement.
I am still here.
My spirit is still alive.
And my story is still unfolding.
And somewhere beyond these clouds,
The sky of my dreams is still waiting for me.
With deep compassion and truth.
Me.
