where there’s wing-shaped air to stretch into all around me…

there is
nothing i could lose
that i would miss
as much as i have missed
the feel of my own soul
when i wasn’t listening to it,
and i’m listening now…
and it’s telling me
that i am meant to be
where my lungs can breathe easy
and where there’s wing-shaped air
to stretch into all around me

– butterflies rising

i’ve apologized for myself for so much
of my life… and i’m still learning how to take
up space without feeling like i’m holding an
“i’m sorry” under every breath.

– butterflies rising

it’s one of the darkest feelings
i’ve ever known… unworthy.

and maybe i want to learn to start
questioning it when i feel it.
like… is it always even mine?

because if it’s from someone else…
someone else’s unkindness, or judgment,
or their own unworthiness they’re projecting…
then i want to learn to say no.

i think maybe my own battles would get a little
easier to face if i wasn’t also fighting the
ones that aren’t even mine.

– butterflies rising

for so long
i thought if i could just become. enough.
that it would be enough for him to be good to me
until i finally realized that wasn’t what he wanted.

he wanted me to be pretty enough
to be beautiful in his eyes,
but my eyes better not be too bright,
and that dress better not be too short,
and those lips better not be too full of lush and love
or talk of too much life for anyone else to see
something beautiful in me…
or heaven forbid,
for me to see something beautiful in myself.
and those dreams i had to find my voice and to spill
all the wild from my heart out into the world…
if i was chasing those dreams,
then i wouldn’t be small enough or sitting still enough as
the sure thing there waiting while he was chasing his.
the more i tried to be. enough. the more i became too much.

because underneath all the ways he needed me to be small,
“enough” is what he felt like he wasn’t.

– butterflies rising

for so long
i thought if i could just become. enough.
that it would be enough for him to be good to me
until i finally realized that wasn’t what he wanted.

because underneath all the ways he needed me to be small,
“enough” is what he felt like he wasn’t.

– butterflies rising

i’ve been letting go
of heavy things

– butterflies rising

i’ve been letting go
of heavy things

and i’ve been healing
a spirit, and tending to a soul, and
listening to a heart. and i’ve started to
exhale. and to breathe in… and to
breathe. in. a life

…and i’ve been letting go of
so, so many heavy things

– butterflies rising