The Burials

There are things that I’ve buried so deep that I forgot they once had names. Versions of me that couldn’t survive where I was planted. Feelings that I was told were too much. Dreams I was told were not enough or attainable. I buried them, not to forget-but to protect what was left of me. By the age of 8 me and my mask became one and I couldn’t tell the difference between the two and no one else could either. I liked it that way. Navigating the turbulent waters of my life, their life and the life I wanted was hard, but my mask was one hell of a shield. Life gave me lots of lemons but only for a moment did I allow it to turn me sour. The loss of a parent, homelessness, a parent too busy finding their way to help me find mine, longing needing, begging and pleading for the love and admiration I needed and never got. I gave pieces of me to keep the peace but peace was never offered to me.

The Soil-What Came From the Darkness

Fast forward somewhere between survival and surrender, things began to grow. Not in sunlight, but in shadow. Strength with roots. Love that didn’t need approval. In my womb grew my first-born son, a child I didn’t know would become my mirror. I saw in him what I buried years before him- tenderness, sensitivity, longing and light. And there it was again unearthing, demanding to be felt -whether it be by me, by him or both. He became my turning point. Unconditional love for my son turned me inward. He made the invisible visible. Healing didn’t arrive as a breakthrough- it unfolded like a soft undoing. And I didn’t bloom despite the burial. I bloomed because of it.

The Flowers- What You Carry Forward

The graveyard became a garden. I no longer mourn what I buried- I bless it. Without those losses, I wouldn’t have bloomed with this kind of beauty. Not the delicate kind. The kind that grows in truth, in shadow, in solitude. The parts of me that I gave away to be accepted taught me how to return home to myself. The parts I softened or silences became seeds. And the girl who once begged for peace became the woman who plants it. Now I carry forward a beauty that doesn’t fear being misunderstood and a voice that no longer asks for permission to exist. This is what bloomed over what was lost. And it’s more alive than anything I once tried to become to survive.

Now I know: nothing I lost was ever greater than what I found in myself