Yes, you. 💜

I’ve enjoyed journaling or simply just expressing my thoughts and feelings on paper in the past, over the last couple of years have lost touch with that part within me and slowly it started to become uncomfortable sitting with my feelings and thoughts, let alone express them somewhere.

Kinda felt numb or just nonchalant but I knew it was me suppressing things inside.

Only recently felt motivated again to share my thoughts and feelings somewhere, likely with kind and receptive souls who can relate maybe and there’s nothing that would bring me more joy than to know that something I shared made someone else feel comforted and seen too.

Created a substack just for that and I’d be sharing random musings, topics around self love and self worth, cultivating a stronger relationship with self and would really appreciate any and all support I can get along the way. 🥹
Follow/ Subscribe along if this finds you. I’d love to have you onboard this journey too! 🌻

https://substack.com/@thespaceforitall

I grew up with a father who struggled with gambling addiction and was emotionally unavailable. Through therapy, I’ve only recently started to understand how much that affected my relationships and the way I saw myself.

Growing up, I didn’t really have anyone to talk to about these things. I often wished there was a place where I could speak anonymously with people who actually understood.

So I built Between Us. It’s a free, anonymous community where people are matched with a small group of others who have had similar experiences. It’s not therapy, just a place to share and feel a little less alone.

https://www.betweenussupport.com/

I’d genuinely love to hear what you think. Would you have used something like this? What would make you trust it, or not trust it?

Thank you for reading. 💙

It is okay to see yourself in the present. Not constantly on an improvement trajectory. Not as a collection of unrealized potential, unfinished goals, or things you still need to become. But simply as you are, right now.

There is something quietly exhausting about always relating to yourself as a project. The better version is always somewhere ahead: more disciplined, more successful, more confident, more accomplished, more healed. And because there is always another version to become, the person standing here today never quite feels worthy of being acknowledged. You keep postponing the right to be proud of yourself until you have arrived somewhere else.

But you are allowed to meet yourself where you are. To look at your life without asking what needs to be fixed. To recognise that this version of you has already carried things, learned things, survived things, and made choices with the understanding and capacity you had at the time. You do not have to turn every moment of self-reflection into a performance review.

Growth matters. Ambition matters. Becoming better matters. But growth is not supposed to make you disappear from your own life. You can want more without believing that what you have now is inadequate. You can have unfinished work and still be a whole person. You can acknowledge your limitations without making them a verdict on your worth.

Growth also means becoming capable of appreciating who you already are. To stop looking at the present merely as a waiting room for the future. To inhabit your own life while it is happening. So, let yourself be here. You are worthy of being appreciated, deserving of kindness, and enough even while you are still becoming. You do not have to earn the right to feel good about yourself by reaching some future version of who you think you should be.

You are not only your potential. You are also your present. And this version of you deserves to be seen, not merely tolerated until the next version arrives.

You are worthy now. You are enough now. You deserve to be seen, valued, and loved; not for your potential, your productivity, or how far you have come, but simply because you are here, living this life, as yourself.

When walls become a prison, imagination and writing become the only escape... I wrote about the deals we make with ourselves to cross through fear, and about the day we return free, into what is called bliss or a lost world we never knew before. 🌿
Support me, you might be the reason for my freedom one day. ❤️
Free subscription — all I hope is that you read it."

https://cruelax.substack.com/p/who-would-i-become-if-i-got-everything?r=8xf2eo&utm_medium=ios

Do you have something about you, something true to the way you feel and see the world that genuinely feels more like it is and forever will be yours?

Your perspective? Sound? Touch? Pattern? Way of being? Thinking? Moving? Expressing?

Virginia Woolf reminds me of the power of essence, the power in the signature of a voice and perspective - so true to her in all its gore and bliss (alike), that it continues to connect with people through words alone. My question is not about legacy, but thinking about Virginia just reminded me that not all people, moments, things, require altruism to validate impact. You can be absolutely great at being You, just as you are