Crow and Flame

Dear little crow,

Don’t hold yourself back.

Not because you are afraid of what might happen.

Not because someone told you that you are too much.

Not because your dreams make someone else uncomfortable.

And certainly not because you have learned that being smaller is sometimes easier for everyone around you.

Don’t force yourself into a box simply because someone handed you one and told you that was where you belonged.

You were never meant to fit neatly inside the expectations of other people.

You are not a shape that needs to be trimmed down until you are easier to hold.

You are allowed to grow crooked.

You are allowed to change your mind.

You are allowed to become someone you have never been before.

Don’t dim your light because it hurts someone else’s eyes.

Let them squint.

Let them look away.

Let them find their own shade.

Your brightness is not an apology.

Your joy is not an offense.

Your ambition is not an act of selfishness.

And your healing does not require permission from the people who were comfortable with you hurting.

Don’t force yourself to stay where you have outgrown the walls.

Don’t force yourself to keep loving what keeps breaking you.

Don’t force yourself to say yes when every part of you is whispering no.

Don’t force yourself to be agreeable when what you really need is to be honest.

And don’t force yourself to remain the version of you that someone else learned how to love.

People will sometimes miss the old you.

Let them.

The old you did what she had to do to survive.

But survival is not the only thing you were made for.

There is a difference between being grateful for the cage that once kept you safe and deciding you must live in it forever.

Little crow, you are allowed to leave the cage.

You are allowed to spread your wings.

You are allowed to take up space.

You are allowed to want more.

You are allowed to become loud after years of being taught to whisper.

And if someone tells you that you have changed, perhaps you can simply smile and say,

Yes.

That was the point.

The world does not need another version of you carefully edited for someone else’s comfort.

It needs the strange, stubborn, scarred, beautiful creature you have become.

So stop folding your wings.

Stop apologizing for the space they take.

Stop asking whether you are allowed to fly.

You don’t need permission.

You never did.

The sky was always there.

You simply forgot it belonged to you, too.

Until next time, little crow—

Keep your feathers messy.

Keep your fire burning.

And whatever you do,

do not make yourself smaller just so someone else can feel bigger.

—An old crow