Dear Friend,
The other night, I completely lost it.
Everything I’d been holding in, every little frustration, every quiet disappointment, every “I should be further by now”, came spilling out all at once.
When I finally found myself alone, sitting in the stillness of my room, I sent a message to a friend. They’ve always been the one to tell me the truth, even when it’s not what I want to hear, and I waited for their response.
I stayed up for hours, thinking about my life and all the places I thought I’d be by now in my career, in relationships, in who I am as a person. I felt behind, like somehow everyone else had it figured out except me.
When my friend replied the next morning, the first thing she said was, “You’re being too hard on yourself.”
I took a deep breath and let her words sink in. And the more we talked, the more I realized how often I treat myself with a kind of quiet cruelty. The kind that hides beneath “motivation” and “discipline,” but really comes from fear.
Ever since I was a kid, I can remember this voice inside me whispering that I had to be perfect. Perfect grades. Perfect behavior. Perfect everything.
If I wasn’t achieving, then I wasn’t enough.
If I wasn’t doing something, then I was falling behind.
If I wasn’t put together, then people wouldn’t respect me.
So I filled every hour, bottled down every feeling, and told myself that rest was weakness.
But somewhere along the way, all that striving chipped away at my softness, my self-love, my confidence, my peace.
It’s taken me twelve years to understand that being hard on yourself doesn’t make you stronger. It just makes you tired.
My friend said something that stayed with me: “How you treat yourself is your greatest power, but it can also be the thing that ruins you.”
That hit me.
Because it’s true.
The way we speak to ourselves becomes the way we move through the world. If you constantly see yourself as not enough, you’ll start to believe it’s true. And the world will reflect that belief right back at you.
So this is your reminder, and mine too:
You are doing more than you think you are.
You don’t have to have it all figured out to be worthy of love or rest or peace.
You can still be soft and strong at the same time.
Softness isn’t weakness. It’s courage.
It’s choosing to be gentle in a world that tells you to be harder.
It’s believing you’re enough, even when your mind tries to convince you otherwise.
Be kind to yourself.
You deserve that kind of love, especially from you.
With love,
Grace Street