What a Small Woman I Was
It took me a long time to find my power.
My life had become one apology after another: The apologies I spoke aloud And the ones I breathed internally, quietly I no longer even noticed them They were a part of me
I apologized for needing things I apologized for feeling sad I apologized for feeling angry For being too pretty For not being pretty enough For being too androgenous For being too strong For being too weak For being too different For not being interesting enough For not making enough money For not letting others do what they wanted to me
But mostly I apologized for taking up space
Almost 44 years of apologizing What and who I was had become like a wisp of air in the wind
To say I felt lost is an understatement
When you’re lost in the world, it’s one thing When you’re lost within yourself, it’s quite another
The light within me finally started to glow When one who had no right to Almost snuffed me out
It was only then I realized that Not only did he have no right to take my light No one does It was then that I woke up
Healing from a lack of self has been like the slow knitting together Of a ragged, layered wound You must use the needle and thread with painstaking precision You must clean the wound and pat it dry Repeatedly And stay very, very still Barely breathing While you watch your hands fix the place where you once Haemorrhaged your worth Your essence Your “you-ness” You must feel love while you do it You must use care And reverence
Loving yourself for the first time does not come like a bucket of water On your head Nor an avalanche Nor a volcano It comes like the flow of water through a crack in a dam That’s slowly crumbling away
The crack breaks open perhaps by accident And you finally notice How strong were the walls that kept you in You notice how the walls had become you
Loving yourself does not come like a jailbreak It is a series of slow steps toward the sunrise Where all feel warm and like it was waiting for you all this time You want to smile more and more And can’t believe you ever allowed yourself to live anywhere else
Loving yourself sometimes comes with casualties In order to inhabit your life You must make room Some people will no longer fit Now that your dam is breaking
The woman you see in the picture here Has seen things and done things That you may never know She has broken apart and comes back together Again and again and again She has allowed things And take things into her heart That never belonged there That never had a right
How strong she is now From leaving all of that How strongly she says “No.” now to others How powerfully she says “Yes.” to herself.
Melissa Raise is the owner of Raise the Bar Wellness. She is a CPT, CHC, and LMT with 18 years of experience helping people better themselves. Working with the tools of behavior change, positive psychology, non-violent communication, motivational speaking, nutrition, meditation, affirmation, and movement recommendations, her intention is to touch and elevate as many people as possible.
