9/12/2024 You are not your darkness, but you are just not the light either

When I was younger, I was always called moody. Angry. “Dark.”

I carried those words like wounds, believing they meant something was wrong with me. That my depth was too much, that my shadows made me unlovable. So I learned to hide them. I shaped myself into what I thought would be accepted more light, less weight, more smiles, less truth.

But lately, I have been seen. Fully.

A dear friend, one who has journeyed deeply beside me, looked into the depths of my beautiful darkness and did not turn away. They did not try to fix me, nor did they fear the shadows that move within me. Instead, they loved me there. Not in spite of my darkness, but because of it.

And this has been the deepest revelation: you can be both. You must be both.

The world teaches us to strive for light, to purge the shadows, to cut away the parts of us that don’t fit into the mold of “good.”

But we were never meant to exist in halves. We are the full spectrum—the raging storm and the sunrise, the fire and the ash, the love and the fury.

I am not just my darkness, but I will not deny it.

I am not just my light, but I will not fear it.

I am whole, and I am worthy, exactly as I am.

And so are you.