please heart, lead me home...to myself

If my whole life has amounted to anything, let it be this: let it be me, living as authentically as I possibly can. If this whole life is about choosing it, shaping it, stumbling through it, then it's about cycles too. A life lived through births and rebirths, deaths and re-deaths. Constant. Unfolding. Unraveling. Becoming. It demands a funeral for every version of you that no longer fits, and a midwife for the one still crowning, not yet formed.

I keep calling this my journey to the heart. But it's not some romantic little phrase for the headlines. It's real. It bruises me in the best ways. Because the closer I get to my own heart, the more I meet the terrifying beauty of what it means to be me.

Authenticity. That bitch. That holy, unrelenting force. Just like vulnerability. They are sisters. Loud-mouthed. Inconvenient. They sit across from you at the table and demand you say grace before you eat your own soul. To be honest with yourself, even when you don't know who you are yet. To speak truth into your own becoming, even when your throat feels like it’s closing.

Who are you, really, when no one else is watching? When there are no expectations, no curated reels, no projected personas? Who are you in the dark, just you and your bare, shivering self?

Earlier this week, I was brought to my knees by the test of vulnerability. And now, like a relentless coach, life is throwing the next pitch: authenticity. I imagine myself on a field somewhere, spitting into the dirt, planting my stance. Here, batter batter. I'm ready.

I was on the phone the other day with my good friend Emily, one of those people who sees you in the spaces between your words. I told her how I feel about someone. Yes, that someone. The one I wrote about. The one I regretted admitting anything to. Tomato, tomato. Boo me.

The truth I’m struggling with? I think my life might be too "vanilla" for him. Too calm. Too soft. Too healed. My days are filled with books, coloring books, writing in silence, holding myself through C-PTSD healing, picnics, deep naps. I crave a life that doesn’t threaten my nervous system. I crave slow.

And isn’t that the core of it all? I worry that my soft life, my self-devotion, my careful quiet is boring. I think, "maybe I have to become someone else to be liked, to be loved, to be worthy of merging with a life like his."

But that’s not love, is it? That’s performance. That’s an audition for a role I was never meant to play. And this is why I love connection. With every connection we encounter, it invites us to take the pledge to go deeper into our own being to heal.

So here we are: what does it mean to live authentically?

To me, authenticity means living in honor of your inner child. That little one who dreamed wide and loud and unfiltered before the world started stuffing her into cages.

That version of me still lives in me. And she craves softness. She craves safety. She craves a life that is simple but full, not of things, but of meaning. And if I can keep choosing her, again and again, then I know I'm on the right path.

Would she feel safe with the woman I am now? If the answer is yes, then I am living authentically.

But still, it hurts. It hurts when people don’t get it. When people don’t get me. It hurts to constantly feel the urge to explain my peace, to justify my joy. But I remind myself, again and again: no one is owed an explanation. Your life doesn’t have to be legible to anyone but your own soul.

Living authentically is choosing the life your child self prayed for. And not apologizing for it. Not shrinking it. Not filtering it through the expectations of others. This is your freedom.

So, little Kendra, I make this promise: I will live for us. I will give us the slow, sacred days. The softness. The books. The songs. The long talks. The naps in the sun. I will not trade our peace for someone else's definition of excitement. I will build us a life that feels like home.

If I am to keep walking this pilgrimage to my heart, I must keep choosing me. Even when it feels too quiet. Even when it feels too small. Because it is ours.

This is my authenticity. This is my coming of age. This is my vow.

This is my life. And finally, it is mine.