Dear Sensitive Soul,
You know who you are. You feel everything so deeply it aches. When you were 10, your dad yelled at you for being too sensitive and you remember the crinkled crease in his forehead and the pain of betrayal as if it were happening now. You remember the throbbing stab of someone you love condemning you for being you and you remember your firm resolve to try to be different because who you were wasn't good enough, who you were was wrong.
You know who you are. You absorb the suffering of the world down into the marrow of your bones. When you see Alyssa Milano's face pop up on TV, you knock your kids over as you scramble desperately to reach for the remote and change the channel before the haunting images of malnourished children and neglected dogs seep into your soul and hijack your heart. But it's too late. You've seen those eyes. Those big brown desperate eyes of the starving child boring a hole into your heart and it will take you days, weeks even, for the image to fade out of your soul's mind.
You know who you are. You carry the eternal scars of fourth degree burns from your breakups, betrayals and let-downs. You're a self-help workshop, webinar and e-course junkie, you've shed more tears on your therapist's couch than the books you've read about forgiveness. You've written enough soul-searching journal pages that if you laid them end to end, they'd reach the moon and come back to pierce your heart.
To all you sensitive souls, the broken ones, the wounded, weird, quiet and different ones. The ones who can't stop crying. The ones exhausted at the end of the day because the emotional weight of the world is too much to bare alone. The ones who are made to feel wrong, defective and flawed. The ones whose souls yearn for a little more kindness and a little less criticism. The ones who can't seem to get life right, who can't seem to find their happy place no matter how many gratitude lists they've written, who can't seem to turn off that fake smile even though they abhor it. The ones who can't fathom why or how people can be so cruel, how the world can be so unjust, and how they can be born so different than everyone else. The ones who inherently know life itself should be different, that something's upside down, inside out and wrong side up with the world, and that people are desperately, deeply starving for meaning, purpose and love.
Love, above all else. Yes, love, the elusive love.
Where is it?
To all you sensitive souls, you know who you are. Love is here.
Love exists smack dab in the middle of all the shattered pieces called you.
In the midst of the betrayals, the wrongness and the cruelty, love exists.
Love is here. In you. As you. Through you.
You are the love the world is seeking.
You are the love you are seeking.
In all your brokenness, all your pain, suffering and self-abandonment, you are love.
You're not broken, you're love.
Or maybe you are broken. And yet, you're still love.
Carry the love inside you as if your life depends on it. Because in a way, it does.
But if you forget, if you drop it one day in your pain, don't worry, it's always inside you, because IT IS YOU.
So dear one, no matter what you've been through, what you're going through and what you will go through, know that you're perfect, just the way you are. Broken, not broken, hurting, healing or haunting, you're fine exactly as you are.
It's OK to be you, sensitive, tearful, empathetic, emotional you.
You are exactly perfect just the way you are.
Why? Because YOU ARE LOVE.
And one day, you're going to boldly wrap that love around the world like a warm, soft blanket on a cold, frigid day.
But until then, you're exactly where you're supposed to be.
Lovely broken pieces and all.
Tree Franklyn is the author of The Ultimate Emotional Survival Guide for Empaths and Highly Sensitive Women Who Feel Deeply. You can get her free guide here and learn how to transform your sensitivity into an empowered gift.