I’ve outgrown the things I once cried over,
but I haven’t outgrown the softness inside me.
That girl — the one who wrote pages and pages of aching words,
who waited for calls that never came,
who believed every smile was a promise —
she still lives somewhere inside my ribcage.
She’s quieter now.
Wiser.
More careful with who she lets close.
But she’s still here.
And I’m proud of her.
Because she survived the kind of heartbreak
that could’ve hardened her completely —
yet she chose softness anyway.
She chose hope.
She chose love.
She chose becoming.
If you’ve ever loved too deeply, too young, too honestly…
you know what it means to keep your softness
after the world tries to take it from you.
And that’s its own kind of victory.
Reading Trauma Mama: Velvet & Taboo 