There is a girl—small, fragile as the autumn leaf that clings to the branch too long—who never learned how to laugh without trembling. I see her sometimes, in the glass of the past, her eyes wide with that terrible innocence, the kind that comes only when the world has betrayed you before you knew its name. Childhood, they say, is supposed to be safe. But for some, it’s a battlefield, and this girl, with her heart like a ticking bomb, learned early the taste of fear.
You carry it with you, don’t you? The ache, the sharp splinter lodged deep in your soul. The hands that should have cradled you instead left bruises; the words that should have lifted you up instead cut you down. And here you are, years later, trying to piece together some semblance of self from the shattered glass of what was.
I know this well. I know the ghost that lingers in the mirror, whispering, “You will never be whole.” I have danced with her, a grotesque waltz of agony and shame, her fingers cold and relentless, pulling me back to that dark place where love was a weapon and trust a broken promise. But you, like me, must learn to lay the ghost to rest.
It is not easy. Healing never is. The body remembers what the mind tries to forget. Nights when you wake up sweating, heart pounding with the old panic, the old dread. But listen, child of broken things, there is a way forward. It starts with forgiving yourself for carrying the pain this long, as if it were a stone in your pocket, a weight you believed you had to bear.
You do not.
The world lied to you, told you love was dangerous, that trust was fragile, that you were undeserving. But the truth is simpler, though no less frightening: you were always worthy. You were always enough. And now, you must learn to love the girl who was broken, who grew into a woman terrified to be touched, to be seen. You must learn to hold her, even as she shakes in your arms, and say, “It’s okay. We survived.”
Trust will come, slowly. It will feel foreign, like something stolen from another life, but it will take root. You will stumble, falter, but every time you reach out with an open hand, every time you choose not to flinch, the wound closes a little more.
This is your rebirth, and yes, there will be scars. But those scars are not chains—they are your freedom. Proof that you can burn and burn again, and still, somehow, find it in yourself to soar.
So, let go. Let the girl rest. Let the ghosts fade. And learn, finally, to love the woman who stands here now, whole in her brokenness, radiant in her survival.
B 🤍
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