A Gentle Reminder

by Bianca Sparacino

You tried for something, you risked, and even though it did not work out, you in return learned how to set boundaries, how to go forward with your heart and protect it — not in a way that is guarded and hardened to the world, but rather in a way that is informed, that helps for it to be preserved and nurtured, that doesn’t let it settle for things that aren’t for it. Now you know what you do not want. Now you know what you do not want to feel. Now you know the kinds of things you crave, the respect you deserve, and you won’t settle for the opposite any longer. Forgive yourself for how you got to that understanding.

Please, do not put your happiness, or your self-love, or your belief, into the hands of other

people or their validation or understanding of you. Do not make it contingent on their acceptance of you, or their willingness to love you or care for you or choose you. All you have to focus on is building the kind of life that is yours, and yours alone. All you have to do is focus on building yourself into the kind of person you are proud of. You are in charge of your worth. Nothing can externally dictate that, nothing has that power, unless you give that power of yours away. Don’t give that power away. Make yourself happy on your own terms.

You have to be unapologetic in the way that you exist here. You have to believe that your ideas, and your hope, and your being, deserve to take up space. You have to believe that you have purpose.

It is quite simple — nothing that is meant for you will ever get away. Love deeply and without the need to possess or own; let beautiful connections pass through you without attachment, slam your heart into the people and the places and the things that ignite something deep inside of your soul, and I promise, I promise — the right things will stay. You will never lose what is for you. Please don’t ever forget that.

And then connect with the fact that you are still here. You are still alive. You are still breathing. Life challenged you, love bruised your heart, certain experiences left an ache in your soul, certain things along your journey made you question your capacity to heal or grow or twist your losses into lessons, and yet — you survived. Nothing, not even the heaviest moments, not even the situations that made you lose sight of your faith, had the ability to shatter you. And there is hope in that. There is strength in that.