LETTERS TO MY YOUNGER SELF: PART 6

Dear Boba,

I never had a problem with standing out, may be because I had never known what it felt like to really fit in.

So somewhere along the journey, I felt the quiet confidence to stand out on my own, to learn to be okay with being judged, with being the only, with having to be the first, being the one breaking the patterns wrecking havoc on generations gone and even some to come.

I learned to be okay with being odd, with being different and never really belonging. I made friends with that loneliness and became friends with that solitude.

My lesson in healing now, isn’t about being comfortable with standing out but actually becoming acquainted with standing in in community, in love, in friendships, in vulnerability, in belonging and in all the spaces that have given me permission and safety to be exactly who I am and even more who I could be.

I never intentionally let myself indulge in a healthy community and love, so here I am being called on to abandon the ship of hyperindependence, and here I am learning to lean in and stand in.

Learning that this island of an existence that I’ve always known doesn’t have to be the only place I’ve ever called home.

B.