Can I be tender? Can I admit to my doubts and the ways I feel I have failed and continue to fail and the things in my life that feel like a struggle, and still have a shot at achieving my goals? If I don't keep up an illusion that I am doing well, all the time, that I am already making the kind of impact I hope to make, that I am succeeding at everything I set out to do, then am I getting in the way of my own potential success? I struggle with these questions a lot.
And I think the answer is, I HAVE to be tender. This is the way I am built - to question. To pull back the veils. To ENCOURAGE the kind of world in which we share with each other who we really are, so that we can be truly seen. I don't wish to perpetuate the kind of world in which one NEEDS to hold up a veil, to craft an illusion, in order to be appreciated.
And so this is me in the infrared; believing in my own worth, but leaving room to attend gently to my doubts. Embracing both sides of all the stories I tell. The success and the struggle. The lovely and the brutal. The thrill of the highs and the grit in the wounds and everything in between. Life requires all of it.
When our heroes are human and breakable, we feel like we can be, too. And if I might be a hero to anybody, I'd like to be the soft and breakable kind.
