Faith. Women. Empowerment.

The time to write about the heavy season doesn’t always come on the other side.

It’s not after the waves have settled and you’ve reconciled, found a way through and can embrace again.

On the other side isn’t where you find the strength to fight,

it’s in between the night and the horizon.

It’s where your feelings are a bend of I can’t go on and I must.

It’s where exhaustion tips further than remembering the peace and you have to dig deep to realize where you once stood.

Before being tired, overwhelmed and unable to pour into the other.

Reflect on the stillness, the utter devotion, the time that felt endless.

Write in this moment to hold on to that.

Fight for it. To travel back to that time is to survive in the present.

Because you know it still exists, it’s just been covered with roles and requirements of yourself— and it is within this thinning space, of hanging by a thread, where you find the strength to go on.

And to remember that if you find yourself in the boat of “in the middle” again, center yourself on the compass, the lighthouse— and surely as the horizon will dawn,

so will peace be reborn here, in one another, because you endured here, in this, together.