Thank you Jeanette for reassuring me what I have known all along, to the very bottom of my soul, that I am exactly the way I am meant to be.
This is for anyone who has been told they are "too much".
This piece should be spread, like honey, over everything....
Listen to me. Right now.
You are not too much. You have never
been too much. You will never be too much.
The very idea is preposterous.
Because you were born to be you. All of you.
Not a tiny acceptable sliver. Not
a watered down version with colors dulled and edges softened.
No. You were meant to be every last
pulsing-bleeding-loving-crying-feeling bit.
And if someone tells you that you
are too much for them, the only truth you need to remember is this:
It is highly likely that they are
not now, and never could have been, near enough for you.
Because you, my girl, are the sun
and the moon and the stars. You are the force that pulls the tides.
You are the
unrestrained howl under a wide-open moon. You are the essence of what it is to
dance into ecstasy.
You are the heat and the sex and the sweat and the burn and
soft and the grace and the grit and the ocean of tears.
You are all of everything.
You are the mother of us all and the
daughter of the Universe.
You walk through shadows and light.
You burn down and rise up and hold
captive the pulse of the world.
You make the gods tremble.
And that, my dear, is bound to make
some people crazy uncomfortable. It will make them pull back and push away.
Because the way you dance with your shadows and your steadfast commitment to
your light will push them into spaces that are fascinating and compelling and
utterly terrifying.
Your very being asks them to step
into places they may not be near ready to visit, let alone stay.
Because like the depths of the ocean
that calls you home, you will never be easy.
But darling, you were not brought
here for easy. You are here for so much more.
Because you are a boundary-pusher.
You’re a truth-seeker.
You’re temptation and seduction and
heat.
You’re a mirror and a sorcerer, and
inside you swirls the power of the ancients.
So no, you are not easy.
But in the space of that truth,
please also know this.
Do not get this confused with the notion that you do not
deserve the deepest ease.
Don’t, for a minute, let them
convince you that you will not know the grace of a lover who does not require
that you constantly translate yourself or diminish yourself or quiet your storm
or tone down your extravagant Love.
Because that, my girl, is bull*
Because out there somewhere there is
a Love who will never dream of calling you too much. Who speaks, like you, in
poetry and candlewax and stardust. Who runs outside on stormy nights to howl at
the Moon. Who collects bones and sings incantation and talks to the Ancestors.
And that Lover, when you find him or
her, will see you and know you — just as you are and just as you should be.
And they will say Yes. Yes, you. I
will go there with you. I have been waiting for this.
And so while you are waiting, I want
you to do this. For me, and for every last too much girl out there.
You take all that too much and you
channel it. You gather every last ember of your too much broken heart and you
light that flame. And in doing so you will call forth the others and sing the
song that brings us home.
And then you — in your infinite,
perfect too-muchness — unleash it all on the world. And you go and love too
much and you cry too much and you swear too much. Fall in love to fast and get
sad too often and laugh too loudly and demand with clarity the exact terms of
your own desired existence.
Don’t you dare consider doing
anything but that.
Because we need you. Every one of
us, man or woman, who has been called too much. You are our reminder, in the
most desperate of moment, that we are exactly as we should be.
Every last too-much bit.
Author: Jeanette LeBlanc
