a rift

You can’t hate yourself into a person you’ll love.

Being whole in your heart, mind, soul, and skin begins with embracing yourself for the beautiful, messy, strong, flawed, imperfect, fragile — lovely human being that you are.

A mirror doesn’t show you how worthy you are. A lover or lack of one doesn’t define how meaningful you are. A grade, a job, a bank account… none of these things decide who you are.

You need to look into your soul and discover what makes you — YOU. You need to peel off all the pretenses and lies covering your heart and figure out what makes you leap inside, what makes you come alive, and what helps you breathe.

Hate will not help you; it will destroy you.

Love, acceptance, gentleness, forgiveness, patience… they will help in the process of discovering what it means to be one of the living.

Be gentle with yourself. Accept your flaws not as limitations but as opportunities to grow. Be kind to yourself; this is your first time living so of course you don’t know everything. Be patient with the questions, the confusion, and the setbacks of life. Forgive yourself, forgive others, not because you have to but because nothing good grows from bitterness and hatred.

Love is the answer. I truly believe with all my heart and soul and I hope and pray that you would stop hating yourself, stop neglecting your needs, stop treating yourself like you are meaningless, stop letting people make you small, stop beating yourself up, stop being mean — start deciding day after day that love is your answer.