i hope that you give yourself permission to become who you want to be.

i hope that you learn to discern whose voice you are speaking with, especially if it says things to you that are unkind.

unloving.

untrue.

if it forces you back, holds you down, keeps you hungry…

…and you know exactly what i mean, don’t you?

one of the hardest parts of healing the hurt child within you, is learning how to say ‘no’.

…learning to disagree with the lies that speak with the same voice as your father, or your mother, your grandfather, or your grandmother, because here’s the truth—if they never learned how to soften, how to speak truth to themselves?

then their pain, is also your pain.

and your scars might look different, but hurt goes by many names.

and you might disagree, this is ok, but healing doesn’t look for blame, only.

healing doesn’t look for forgiveness, only.

healing looks for the truth.

searches for it with light in her fingers and when she finds it, she sees the thread that runs all the way back, because your pain is connected to every mother and every father that didn’t know how to heal themselves.

and if the voices who held you and shaped you into the heart that you are today, left only kindness in your bones, then breathe a deep sigh of thanks.

you are a field of quiet strength.

but not everyone has been given this gift and unlearning is a fierce rebellion and it goes by many names and none of them will call to you.

and it might be hard to understand sometimes, hard to see someone you love get up and fall.

get up.
fall.

over and over again.

they are learning how to use their legs.

learning how to stand.

learning how to walk away.

and we who are learning how to say ‘no’, need you for your ‘yes’—need you for the gentleness that you know
how to own.

please be patient with us.

perhaps we will find each other further along the road where the two paths meet in the wood and we will tell you how we climbed a mountain and you—you will show us the blue sky that you have behind your eyes, the green of the meadow underneath our feet.

we are undoing.

please, wait for us.

— i will find you where the two paths meet in the woods.

© Liezel Graham 2020.

Image by Jens Lelie.
Unsplash.

for those who are learning how to say ‘no’ and for those who love them through that journey as they climb that mountain.

liezel