Dear Woman,
Yesterday, squeals of joy and laughter brought a shadow to your smile and pain snuck into the corners of your eyes. You did your best to be supportive without giving away your inner hurt. The women around you were oblivious, absorbed in their own happiness and excitement. They did not witness your pain, they couldn’t hear the truth behind your joking plea for them to go away.
What you don’t see perhaps, is your own strength and bravery as you hold your boundaries, your standards, and wait. Some people are so desperate for someone to want them, they overlook the train wreck that’s barreling towards them. Some people are so afraid to be alone with themselves that they will sacrifice their values, beliefs, and ultimately their sense of self worth and identity.
They’ll lose everything to someone who says all the right things, puts them up on a pedestal, kisses the ground they walk on, until they’ve spun their web, and then the true personality of an abuser crawls out. On the surface, it looks like something to covet, but I promise you, it’s not.
Run as far and as fast as fast as you can, from that kind of trap dressed up as “love”.
It may be lust. It may be infatuation. It isn’t love.
Hold your ground. Stand firm in the belief that real love; bone deep, mutual, healthy love, is out there and it’s worth waiting for. It’s worth the loneliness. Rise above the societal expectation that women need to lower their standards, because it’s better to have a man than to be alone. That’s a lie.
You’re in a unique position in your singleness to find yourself and create the life you want, with no strings attached, no one else to consider as you follow your dreams. Even in healthy relationships compromises must be made all the time, right now you have no one to answer to but yourself. Curate your life, become your best self, heal your generational traumas, overcome the the limiting beliefs that you’re not good enough, or you’re not worthy. You Are, without a doubt, worth all you ever dreamed and more. Do the work. Lean on the strong, supportive women in your life. Learn the red flags of bad men, commit them to memory. Steer clear and keep your eye out for the kind heart that matches yours.
The rest will fall into place.
With Love,
The Heart of a Mare
Amanda Soper 