Growing up is an unbecoming. My healing has been a peeling away of costume after costume until here I am, still and naked and unashamed before God, stripped down to my real identity. I have unbecome. And now I stand: Warrior. Undressed for battle. Strong and benevolent. Both yin and yang. Complete, not in need of completing. Sent to fight for every

She knew, then, that this solemn form of joy, so pure because it had no content, so reliable because it relied on nobody else, was the state for which she would henceforth strive.

Perhaps this was not my life to hold up in the first place. Perhaps I wasn’t really who I thought I was. Perhaps true freedom had nothing to do with being a better wave in the ocean, with perfecting my story of myself. Perhaps freedom was all about waking up from the dream that we are separate waves in the first place and embracing all that appears