When did the purpose of being human become getting better at things?

When did success become a pre-requisite to being lovable?

When did classroom standards begin to standardize our souls?

Inform how we relate to our bodies?

To our spiritual and emotional well being?

To our healing journeys?

To our relationships?

When did we begin to craft our journeys with tools made by hands that have harmed us?

When did we begin to believe that growth is an individual journey?

That our therapists are our friends?

That a lifetime of pain can and should come undone in fifty minutes?

Why do I feel the need to be smart?

To express qualities that I may not possess?

To be “pretty”?

To present myself well?

To present myself at all?

Why do I perennially wish that I was less sad?

Less serious?

When did I forget that I don’t have to be anything specific to be lovable?

Was I ever taught this?

When did I forget how to be myself?

Was it when I taken from my land?

From my mothers hands?

Was it when I was told my name was Annie?

Maybe the highest risk investment we can all make in this lifetime

is giving ourselves the time we need to tend to our life’s most pressing questions.

To begin speaking truthfully about what it’s really like to be here.

Admitting to ourselves that as humans,

we will all experience anxiety,

self-doubt.

Say and do mean things we regret.

Get depressed.

Lose and gain weight.

Will be unable to work.

Will be unable to care for ourselves.

Will be unable to care for our children, our partners, our parents, our dearest friends, our families – the one’s that we love the most.

Not because we are failures, not because we are unlovable,

but because we are humans and

not machines.

We will all experience inconceivable pain and loss.

Become sick.

We will all internalize insecurities that have been created

by a country that continues to mask itself as a caretaker.

An abusive parent that needs us all to hate ourselves and each other

so that we work harder to earn its love.

It will insist that we change ourselves to become “better” children.

To forget our lovability

and the lovability of everyone else around us.