The Woman You Are Becoming

There is a part of you that has stayed with you through every season,

The part untouched by the noise,

The expectations,

The shrinking,

The storms.

You may not feel her often.

She lives beneath the surface,

Steady as an underground river,

Quiet,

Faithful,

Moving through you,

Even on the days you felt hollow,

Or lost,

Or far from yourself.

This part of you does not break.

She bends,

She waits,

She watches,

But she never disappears.

When life pulled you away from yourself,

She stayed rooted.

When your voice softened out of fear,

Hers remained whole.

When you hardened to survive,

She held the softness for you beneath the layers.

She is not the version of you that learned to cope,

She is the version that never needed to,

The one who knew truth before you learned to question yourself,

The one who felt instinct before you learned to silence it,

The one who carried your essence when the world asked you to become something else.

You may recognize her in the moments that feel strangely familiar,

A warm heaviness in the chest,

A sudden clarity,

A sense that you have been here before in a truer way than your life has allowed.

She shows up whenever you stop running,

Whenever the breath settles low,

Whenever honesty rises without being pushed.

She is the part of you that loved before fear,

The part that trusted before disappointment,

The part that opened before life taught you to measure the cost.

She has waited for you with a patience that only the soul understands,

Knowing that one day you would come back to her when the world became too loud to live inside.

You do not need to recover her,

You only need to recognize her.

She is the warmth beneath your breastbone when something feels right,

She is the steadiness you feel when your truth rises without trembling,

She is the quiet strength that has carried you through every ending and every beginning.

Let yourself lean toward her now,

Let yourself feel the familiarity of her presence,

Let her remind you that you were never as lost as you believed.

This part of you has always been here,

Waiting with open hands,

Holding what you cannot hold,

But keeping safe the pieces of you,

You thought you'd lost.

She is not your past,

She is your foundation,

And she is rising.