I had hoped one day to find someone who loves my monsters, the wolves that I feed, the demons I sing to sleep, the tiger that is my caged heart, the parts of me I do not talk about. I prayed and wished and yearned until I realized that I had already found her within me.
Every time a man takes from a woman’s body without her permission, he is disrespecting the womb from which he was born, he is defiling the place that protected him when he was at his most defenseless.
The worst story I know is my heart. The best story I know is my heart. Both these truths know how to exist together in ways I never thought I will learn. This is the quietest of victories.
She takes her life and starts turning it into something beautiful without him. She learns how to love herself in the most intricate of ways. She goes out and spends time with her friends when she is lonely. She learns to love her alone.
Some people survive and talk about it. Some people survive and go silent. Some people survive and create. Everyone deals with unimaginable pain in their own way, and everyone is entitled to that, without judgment.
Listen to me girl, you have castles inside your bones, coronets in your heart, if he threatens you with a battle, you raise him a whole war, the last time I checked, queens cover before no man.
Love yourself loudly, dangerously, everywhere people have been afraid to love you, afraid to ask the way to cherish you, afraid to hold you. Love yourself most in these places, because who can be a better teacher to others in how to love you than yourself.
If you think the value of a woman is only in the curve of her hips and the shape of her breasts, you do not understand how to read beneath her jagged lines, the sacred geometry that make up her glorious heart and her beautiful mind.
There is an old saying that when you meet your soulmate, your heart will not palpitate. Your body will not grow hot. Instead, you will feel like suddenly, you understand everything, and the tranquility of a thousand moons will grow between you. That was how she felt when she saw him.
