Soft Within The Fray

I wasn’t raised in a traditional format, in fact, very far from it.

I was born out of trauma. Not metaphorically...literally.

And that trauma didn’t end at birth.

It was stitched into my upbringing, laced into my memories.

I was surrounded by love, but not from the places it should’ve come from.

And that does something to you.

It sharpens you.

It teaches you to expect disappearance, to never fully relax.

And there was so much freedom and no structure for me.

No one was there to really guide me or hold my hand.

No one was there to encourage or take notice of my actual gifts and talents.

I had to learn on my own,

how to move through a world that didn’t pause for me,

how to build something steady without ever seeing it modeled.

And I am still learning how to be brave.

I’ve had to push for softness, even from my mother,

but never from me.

But it made me hyper independent.

And despite it all, I've always chosen love and have managed to break the most toxic patterns, in myself and my family line, while completely and honestly understanding things no child should ever have to accept.

I still did, heartbreakingly so, I understand the past and I accepted it.

But in new recent trauma, I feel guarded again.

And I look for truth in people, but have learned the hard way that most are still hiding,

even from themselves, especially from others.

And to know that people can try to tear down and weaponize the pillars of love and acceptance you have built is brutal.

And this last year, I started hiding too, in a literally isolated way.

But not anymore.

This space, this blog, is me refusing to disappear into a toxic pattern again.

It’s me choosing radical, painful, necessary honesty.

Not performative vulnerability.

Truth doesn’t need to be palatable to be real.

Because softness, for me, is not always comfort.

It’s courage.

It’s a rebellion against everything that tried to harden me.

It’s choosing to remain open, even when everything I was taught says to close.

The softness I’ve found isn’t gentle because life was.

It’s being tender in spite of the pain.

It’s mine. And I'll protect it like gold.

xxxo,

Ci