I’ve stopped myself more times than I can count from starting this. Not because I didn’t need it, but because I doubted how much I could need an imperfect healing.

I didn’t exactly plan for it, but didn’t I? Or did I just want it real bad? At this point, the difference doesn’t matter.

Recently, I’ve been inspired by watching Winter move into Spring. Watching everything come back to life from the “dead” of winter, I can’t help but see myself in the changing of the seasons.

I’ve been drawn to the trees, like the flowers do to bees, and watching them bloom has been awe-inspiring.

Here I am, existing in this new soil. Every day, my roots dig a little deeper, realizing that they can. My arms open to meet all the warmth, welcoming me into this new season.

I recognize that there are parts of me still scared to come up from the ground, but they’re practically vibrating from the anticipation of a good thing.

It’s almost like all my healing was waiting for me here. For once, I didn’t feel like it was waiting to jump me into the gang of life, but to embrace me instead.

Here, in this moment, all the things in me that needed to be tended to—patience, faith, boundaries, caregiving, sexual liberation, femininity, family, safety, consumption—have space to be challenged, spoken openly about, and nurtured. I am growing through a grace I didn’t know this life was gonna have for me.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt like a bad thing, a wrong thing, waiting to happen or that already had. I didn’t believe that I could have good things, and if I got them, it felt like I had to pay a very high and painful price, only to have them on loan.

So, forgive me for having a hard time settling into a softness, even one that seems to have waited for me.

I have arrived, and from where I am, I have to believe that everything happens for a reason. If the valleys had to be that low for the mountaintop to be this high, I’d make the journey again, because I know it gets even greater.