Self love

 Reflection

I wake before the world and I remember who I am.

Not the stories.

Not the failures.

Not the labels.

I remember the boy my grandmother held,

the one she told to stay honest,

to stay clean,

to stay curious about the universe.

I have lost many things —

a home,

a country,

a wife,

a son,

a past I once thought I needed.

But I have not lost myself.

Every morning I choose breath over despair.

Movement over numbness.

Discipline over collapse.

I walk miles not to escape my life,

but to inhabit it.

I do not measure my worth by money or papers.

I measure it by how gently I treat my own heart

when no one is watching.

I have sat with grief.

I have sat with rage.

I have sat with loneliness.

And none of them destroyed me.

They taught me.

I am not broken because I feel.

I am not weak because I cry.

I am not behind because my path looks different.

I am here.

I am breathing.

I am still choosing to live with awareness.

That is not nothing.

That is everything.

And even when I sit on a bench,

I sit inside a body that knows how to pray,

how to run,

how to forgive,

how to keep going.

Today I honor the quiet courage

it takes to stay open in a hard world.

Yoruba Yogi