Sometimes, out of nowhere, a memory will rise. A version of you before all the heaviness. Before the survival mode. Before the walls you didn’t even know you were building. Maybe she laughed easier. Maybe she believed people quicker. Maybe she danced without needing a reason. Maybe she didn’t carry so much.
And maybe now… you do.
Maybe now you’re the one who holds everything together. The one who thinks five steps ahead. The one who gets it done because no one else will. The strong one. The one who doesn’t fall apart, even when she’s aching to.
And while that strength is real and fierce and hard-won, sometimes there’s a quiet grief underneath it all—a missing of the softness. Of the lightness. Of the girl you once were before the world demanded so much from you.
Let that missing be okay.
Let it be tender.
Let it remind you that she’s not gone—just buried under years of coping and proving and surviving.
She’s still in there. She didn’t disappear.
She’s waiting. For safety. For rest. For you.
You don’t have to go back to her completely. You’ve grown. You’ve evolved. But you can let her hold your hand again. You can give her space to breathe. You can honour who she was without dishonouring the woman you had to become.
Missing her is not weakness.
It’s memory.
It’s love.
And maybe, just maybe—it’s the beginning of coming home to yourself again.