When the small voice inside begins to whisper that you are less than the light you carry,
Pause for a moment,
Pause.
Let the world breathe around you.
Even the air knows your name,
Though it never speaks it aloud.
There are mornings when the mirror tells only half the truth.
It reflects the shape of your body,
But not the soft resilience of your being,
The invisible architecture that keeps you standing when everything in you would rather fall.
You are not a mistake wrapped in skin.
You are the continuation of something vast and unfinished,
A sentence that began long before you were born and still unfolds in you each time you exhale.
The mind will try to measure you in units,
Success,
Failure,
Beauty,
Approval,
But the soul was never built for measurement.
It moves in the language of tides without applause.
When you think you have fallen behind,
Remember,
There is no race.
Even the stars are late sometimes,
Their light arriving centuries after they've burned,
Yet we still call them constellations,
And no one argues that they shine too slowly.
If you could see yourself the way the night sees you,
You would never again call yourself unworthy.
You would bow to your own existence as to a rare and living mystery.
So let this be your quiet vow tonight,
To treat yourself not as a problem to solve,
But as a landscape to explore.
To meet your own uncertainty with the gentleness of rain meeting dry ground.
To forgive the years you spent apologizing for being human,
Because even your doubts are part of the pattern.
Even your hesitation is holy,
A pause in which life gathers itself before taking another step through you.
Rest then in the knowledge that you are allowed to be unfinished.
The world itself is not complete.
The ocean still writes new shapes on the shore.
The wind keeps revising the mountains.
Why should you be any different?
Let this moment be your simple prayer,
To stand quietly inside your own belonging.
And when the voice of not enough returns,
Listen to it as you would to a tired child.
Hold it,
Rock it gently,
Then let it sleep.
For the truth is this,
You were never meant to be perfect,
Only real.
And that,
Beloved traveler of this vast and trembling world,
Is more than enough.
