This is for the grief that’s silent but lives loudly in a ball in the back of your throat, in your chest, your belly, your legs, your lungs, scrunched at the base of your spine.

This is for the crippling anxiety that has kept you from being yourself.

This is for the rage you’ve crumpled up and shoved down—only because, love, you didn’t know what else to do with it. And you had to survive somehow.

This is for the river of stuffed-down tears that you don’t think you’re strong enough to cry.

The painful, vivid memories that flash through your mind late at night.

This is for all those times you felt awkward and ugly in your own body.

This is for every moment, hour and millisecond you’ve ever felt humiliated. Shamed. Silenced. Betrayed. Left out. Neglected. Abused. Disgraced.

This is for the pain you think you cannot face.

You can face it all.

But more—

You can honor it.

You can light a thousand white candles and honor it all. Every teardrop. Every stinging piece of slicing-hot anger. Every betrayal and lacerated heartbreak.

You can feel the pain—

And you can heal.

For you don’t need to hide the thrashing universe of lava-hot emotion under the surface anymore, love—it only smothers and suffocates the brilliant light you are.

But make no mistake. Your traumas and terrors are also your gifts.

They have opened you up, peeled you to the core, and made you more sensitive, more empathic, more able to give, to appreciate, to write, to dance, to paint, to sing, to heal, to love.

Yes.

Your traumas and terrors—they are gifts. They bring you to your knees, for they are beyond brutally humbling.

But they can also bring you to your heart.

They can bring you right to the splashing, ripe edges of your juicy ruby heart. And force open your eyes to your bursting creativity—

The spark of magic in your soul.

The rivers of jade-like joy inside you have not even tasted yet.

Your ability to heal.

Your downright delicious talent to love.

And care.

And to fling open the doors of destiny

And be a force of complete and utter magic in the world.

So honor your pain, love.

Feel it.

There is no shame—absolutely zero, nada, none—in feeling what you need to feel.

There is only celebration in the raw painfulness of your beautifully honest humanity.

So place your hand over your heart and have a sacred ceremony with your naked self and the swaying willow trees to welcome every hurt, fragmented part back to yourself.

I won’t lie, I won’t make pretty—it might hurt. It might be utterly excruciating. It might feel like death, like being chopped up into thousand bits and pieces. It is life flooding back into your bones, muscles, sinews and tendons.

It is wholeness. Healing. Divine, streaming tears.

It is all the puzzle parts of yourself—that you’ve been so badly missing.

It might hurt. A lot.

But you’ll soon see that you’ve only forgotten how strong and courageous you really are.

‘Cause holding onto all these frothy seas of emotion—holding ’em back daily—that’s the hardest thing of all.

And you are a warrior for carrying so much. But you don’t need to carry it anymore.

Remember your strength, you beautiful soul. Feel it whisper like wind on your cheek in the scariest, most terrible, rock-bottom, excruciating moments.

Remember it when you are curled up, shaking, in messy ball on the cold bathroom floor.

Remember it when repressed memories come flooding back into your awareness and haunt you to the core.

Remember it when facing the day feels like a fate too hard to endure.

Remember it when you feel exhausted, frozen and hopeless, covered in glorious, salty tears.

It is hard, oh, I know this healing is hard, I know it like back of my hand. It is messy and shocking and bewildering in the best of times.

But we need not make pretty of it, because we are strong.

Yes, love—you are strong. 

You are strong because of your heart. You are strong because of your willingness to be vulnerable and face this pain.

You can heal.

And your healing, it is messy and beautiful—

It can light up the entire world.

It will light up every crack and crevice of the universe.

Our healing brings such brilliant beads of shimmering light, not because we are perfect human beings—but exactly because of all our cracks and bruises and soft spots. Or hot, pouring tears.

The light comes from your messiness. Your flaws. Your raw, crumpled wounds. Your sadness and fear.

The light comes, most of all, from your vulnerability. 

There is no shame—absolutely zero shame—in feeling what you need to feel.

There is only celebration in the raw painfulness of your beautifully honest humanity.

~

Author: Sarah Harvey

Image: flickr/Francesca Diani

Editor: Ashleigh Hitchcock