You Were Not Born To Live Small

You were born to blaze bright, in all your glory.

By

averie woodard

You were born to shine.
Not as a faint flicker.

You were born to blaze bright, in all your glory.

You were born to turn your face to the sun and see your radiance looking back at you.
You were born to be a force to be reckoned with, crushing inertia and defying the very laws of physics.

You were born to feel every cell of your body pulsating with all of the promise and possibilities the universe has to offer.
You were born to exist loudly in earth-shattering waves of sound.

You were born to breathe fire at those who constrain and oppress you and do your part in making this world a better place.
You were born to pour your vibrant colors over everything that is black and white.
You were born to channel the stirrings of your soul into existing larger than your physical self.

You were not born to love small.

You were born to follow your heart.
Not with tentative steps.

You were born to chase what makes your spirit sing, with reckless abandon.

You were born to turn your face to another and see your tender wild passionate over-the-top romantic respectful honest true love looking back at you.
You were born to risk your own pain for the joy of someone else.

You were born to tear words out of your chest by the teeth of your courage in order to ensure they won’t be the one that got away.

You were born to go down in flames torched upon you by someone you care for deeply, in order to be the spring bud peeking its verdant head bravely up toward the sky from these same ashes as you grow back to try again – with someone new.

You were born to cherish and be cherished by a person so phenomenally phenomenal that you dare conceive the idea of conceiving another life, together.
You were born to bear gratitude to those you were born to, in the same way you will teach your unborn child to bear gratitude to others.

You were born to stare hate in the eye until it cowers under the fortitude of your evil-eradicating compassionate empathetic soft strong all-encompassing open-armed big, big love.

You were not born to learn small.

You were born to walk through shadows and terrors of the night in order to appreciate the light shining out of your chest like stars.

You were born to be destroyed and fractured into strange shapes and unrecognizable pieces in order to discover the power of the glue you use to weld yourself back together.

You were born to wake up one day and look in the mirror, noticing the quiet beauty of your smile and realize that in order to live tremendously and love like it’s your last day to live, you had to first learn to love and live for yourself. Thought Catalog Logo Mark