When I’m asked why do I love myself, I felt my eyes start watering and my throat closing. I am a child that has been asked to stand up in front of the class and introduce myself on the first day of school and all of a sudden I don’t know my name or fun fact. I can’t decide which part of me I love the most, the detachment issues I developed at 16 or the anger issues I inherited from my bloodline. I’m supposed to be writing about all of the things I love about me and I came up with the list of what I learned to hate until I heard her.
I hear a seven year old girl running home from the bus stop dodging the sticks and stones boys were throwing at her. She’s crying. They called her stupid, telling her she’s ugly and hitting her. I see her. Caramel skin, curls braided up into two pigtails with purple bobos, a heart of innocent gold. I kneel to her and tell her how beautiful she is and there is not a single thing I wouldn’t do for her. I wipe tears off of rosy cheeks and hold her, turning sniffles into soft smiles.
I hold this girl so tight hoping if we mend into one person then she never has to feel alone or unwanted.. She never deserved to feel alone or unwanted. Sometimes I still have to hold that girl today. I have to sit and tell her she’s pretty when the world around her is throwing sticks and stones. I have to hold my little girl tight even when the stones are thrown from inside the house. I have to remind her she is smart, she is successful, she is loved by many …but especially by me.
I may be a result of my trauma but I am the hug, love, and comfort that my little girl needed and how could I ever hate that.

On January 1st of 2024, I found myself making a vision board for the year.
I had done the same last year and looking back and seeing all that I had accomplished and followed through with gave me closure to the depressive episode I experienced in all 12 months of 2022. I had learned to ask for help, I learned to speak up, and place fresh soil under my feet to ascend me from the hole I had dug for myself. The hole a part of me planned to die in turned into a place for me to plant my feet and give myself flowers.
My flowers have blossomed for this new year… and vision board… my goals are going to help me water them.
For the first time in 10 years, I felt connected to a Bible verse. God and I’s letters have gotten mixed up in the mail and I eventually stopped writing him. I hated what he had put me through and the way he watched me suffer for years, but I realized… in moments when I sat on the floor of my bathroom, unable to breath, sleeves salty from crying into them, I spoke to him. I wanted someone to listen and he did, and now I know it’s time to break my “no- contact”. The night of January 8th I wrote to him for the first time. I apologized for my absence, explaining why I had been away for so long, and I felt… forgiven. In a moment where I expected ridicule and mercilessness, I was forgiven before my ink dried. I want to forgive myself in this way, learn to forgive others the same. I want to heal this year. This is the focus of my vision board. I want to express the kind of love I used to when I was growing up, the unknowing, the unconditional, the innocent. My goal is closing chapters from my childhood that felt unfinished. Stories I cannot rewrite for an outcome that better suits who I am today, but instead MAKE me who I am.
So, in 2024 I ask God to grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.