To the Woman Who Battles

To my friend,

the mother,

the woman searching desperately for her place,

wandering through shadows and sunlit corners,

caught between the tide of self-love and self-hate.

You are the warrior who fights for her friends

but lays down her sword when it’s for herself.

The one who has weathered storms

no one saw brewing,

who has walked through the fire of hands meant to harm

and words meant to break.

You survived what tried to erase you,

but survival came at a cost

a war inside,

a constant reckoning with the parts of yourself

you wish you could silence.

There are moments when you see a mirror you cannot escape,

when you wrestle with the reflections of a voice

that fights too hard to defend,

that demands too much to protect.

You hate this version of you,

the one shaped by scars

and the armor you had to forge,

but you are not defined by it.

You are more than the jagged edges

of what the world tried to make you.

By day, your head is high,

a beacon for those who look to you.

By night, you curl into yourself,

a prayer whispered in the darkness,

a longing for something

anything

to change.

You are loved.

You are beautiful.

I wish you could see that in the mirror

you so often avoid.

No man, no woman,

no arms but your own

can hold the love you truly need,

the love you so richly deserve.

You are human.

You err not with malice,

but with the fumbling grace of someone

who has known too much of survival

and not enough of ease.

To you, I offer these words:

You are more than the battles you fight,

more than the nights you break.

You are a soul deserving of rest,

a Soul deserving of peace,

and a soul deserving of love

but this starts and ends with you.