Profoundly Human

We are all profoundly human—

a collection of contradictions and contrasts,

light and shadow,

love and fear,

grace and grit.

Each of us doing our best

with the tools we have,

the stories we’ve lived,

and the wounds we carry.

And still—

we dream of what we want next.

I am no different.

I am made of opposites.

The light and the dark.

The fierce and the afraid.

The woman who leads with grace,

and still longs to be held,

and to belong in community.

I am generous and guarded,

soft and strong,

steady and sometimes undone.

I can forgive deeply

and still wrestle with resentment.

I can love fully

and still set boundaries with those who hurt me.

I am disciplined and impulsive,

responsible and rebellious.

I can speak to a crowd of hundreds

and still feel deeply alone.

I crave safety and freedom at the same time,

and I’m learning that both can coexist.

I choose to live with integrity

and still find myself, sometimes,

drawn to scandal.

I am desperately independent—

and still dream of belonging, comfort,

and the kind of intimate support

that feels like home.

I’ve found joy in the everyday

while wearing grief like a second skin.

I’ve failed people I love

and loved people who failed me.

I’ve been both the villain and the healer

in my own story, and in others.

I carry empathy, judgment, and regrets.

All the self-work didn’t make me flawless—

it just made me honest about the mess.

I’ve learned that being human

also means protecting the parts of myself

I don’t yet trust the world to hold.

Wearing the mask of “good” to maintain safety,

showing fragments of truth

to only those who I trust with the right to see clearly.

I've learned,

the more I integrate my light and dark

into that mask—

the more I allow my strength and my shadow

to coexist instead of compete—

the more whole I become

in my humanness.

We all get to choose

the kind of human we want to be.

We can hide behind the mask of “good,”

keeping our shadows buried in the dark—

or we can bring them forward,

reshape them with compassion,

and decide who we’ll become next.

And when I remember this—

that we are all made of opposites,

each carrying light, shadow, and longing—

it reminds me that being human

is creation itself.

We stumble, we rise, we repeat.

We learn, unlearn, and evolve.

And whether we take the invitation

to grow or not,

we remain inherently worthy.

Alive in our shared humanness.