I am a firm believer in there being beauty in the contrast.

In the light and the dark days. In the hope and the hurt.In

the fire and in the ash. I am a firm believer in the fall and

in the rise; in sin and in the saving. I am a firm believer in

the broken, the people who hold their pieces together with

belief, who bandage their fear in faith. I am a firm believer

in the souls who have always managed to protect their soft;

who have always known, even when it ached the most, that

their wounds were healing them, that the hardest parts of life

were growing them from the inside. I am a firm believer in there

being beauty in the contrast - you have not lived until you have died.

The world is going to give you beauty,

but it will also give you pain.

The greatest lesson you will ever learn

is that this, too

ia a gift.

It is difficult to move on. It breaks you down in ways

you never expected to be broken before. But when this

happens, do not fear the rebuilding. Do not lament the

pieces of yourself that you have lost, the pieces of yourself

that were left over. Instead, splay them across the kitchen

floor. Look at each and everyone of them. Look at the

memories, look at the sacrifices. Look at it all from a place

of healing, and choose to create to create yourself again.

Shape your spine, stronger this time. Shape your heart,

biggest this time. Shape your eyes, capable of seeing more

than you ever imagined. Shape your mouth; give it the

capacity to say all the words you never allowed yourself

to say. Begin again.

You are the one

who built your walls.

Don't ever doubt for a second

that you have the capacity

to tear them down

Goodbye is hard sometimes because the action of leaving

is so permanent, and yet that person still occupies so much

of the space within your chest. Goodbye isn't final, it isn't a

finish line you have to step over in order to forget. See, you

can't unlove someone. You can't get their scent out of your

pillowcase, can't unlearn their name and forget what it felt

like to be immersed in the hope and beauty of another

human being. People never stay gone. They show up in

street corners, they show up in familiar laughs and the

booth at that one restaurant where you first held their

hand. Goodbye isn't as simple as many make it seem;

goodbye isn't really goodbye, not for someone who atill

cares. Not for the person left in the aftermath of a

hurricane they once loved.

The moment you truly start to believe that you are

deserving of happiness, of love, of something bigger

than what you have been settling for, your heart weeps

a little - as if it is the first in years it has been able to

lay down its arms; as if it is the first time in years it has

been able to rest.