on april 17, 2022, i woke up with love in my heart for myself for the first time in my life. i love myself. it was an insane feeling, an insane thought. it felt like i was on drugs. like my ribs had opened up like a dungeon door and suddenly my heart was free of its cage.
i grabbed my camera, hopped in my jeep wrangler, and drove up the blue ridge parkway, listening to trevor hall’s blue sky mind the entire time. i wandered around the woods, thinking of all that i’d been through in the last year. the death of both of my grandmothers, my dad’s death and resuscitation, the end of a deeply toxic relationship, the loss of my home and my dogs, life as i knew it completely blown apart.
i looked back at the protector- turned jailer- that had formed through all the years, all the scar tissue, of trauma. a horrible, reactive creature of anger and fury. A vicious, cornered beast- claws out to protect my most tender parts. i stared into the eyes of that version of myself, told her i loved her, and laid her to rest. i didn’t know, at the time, what i was stepping into after that chapter- but i knew a part of my soul had finally found its way back home.
