Dear Insecurity,

Hello, old friend. We’ve been together for so long. I feel it is time for us to finally have a heart-to-heart.

Allow me to reintroduce myself. My name is Carrie, and I am a giver and receiver of love. I am curious. Hopeful. Passionate. I delight in connection and community. I am tender, and also fierce. A giver of some of the best hugs around, I’ve been told. Some days, I believe these things more than others. Some days, I hear your voice more loudly than my own.

I realize that you are trying to be helpful, in your way. I recognize that you are attempting to shield me from being hurt, and that you want to hold me close to keep me safe. I understand that it challenges you to your core when I lean into vulnerability, raw and risky and tenuous. It scares me, too.

But here’s the thing: in your efforts to protect me, I feel that you are keeping me small. And I’ve come to understand that it is not my highest commitment to myself or others or the world as a whole to be kept small. When you try to hold my hand so tightly, really I feel you are holding me back. While I respect your loyalty all these years, the time has come for us to part ways. It is time for my own voice to rise above yours. It is time for these words to be amplified from a hesitant whisper to a jubilant roar:

I am Strong.

Capable.

Enough.

With love and compassion,

Carrie Wren