FRAGMENTS OF ME

Grace

Grace didn’t come to me the way I imagined it would.

It didn’t arrive as forgiveness wrapped in certainty.

It came quietly, in moments when I was too tired to keep fighting myself.

For a long time, I thought grace was something you earned.

Something you received after you became better, stronger, healed.

I didn’t know Grace could meet you while you were still messy.

While you were still unsure.

While you were still becoming.

I was harder on myself than anyone else had ever been.

I replayed my mistakes like they were lessons I hadn’t learned enough from.

I punished myself for not knowing what I know now.

For staying too long.

For loving too deeply.

For choosing survival over courage when I didn’t yet have the tools for both.

I thought being gentle with myself meant I was excusing my failures.

But grace taught me something different.

It taught me that you can take responsibility without cruelty.

That growth doesn’t require self-hatred.

That healing doesn’t bloom in environments where you are constantly at war with yourself.

Grace was learning to stop asking,

“Why wasn’t I stronger?”

and start asking,

“How did I survive?”

It was realising that the version of me I resented

was once the version of me that kept me alive.

That every decision I made was made with the information, capacity,

and emotional resources I had at the time.

Grace meant allowing myself to be human.

To stumble.

To change my mind.

To admit that some lessons hurt more than they teach.

There were days I needed grace not as a concept,

but as permission.

Permission to rest without guilt.

Permission to feel proud of progress that no one else could see.

Permission to stop explaining my healing to people who benefited from my silence.

Grace didn’t erase the pain.

It softened my grip on it.

It reminded me that I am allowed to move forward

without dragging every version of myself into the future.

I learned that grace is not passive.

It is an active choice to stop abandoning yourself.

To stop using shame as motivation.

To stop believing that suffering is proof of worthiness.

Grace is choosing compassion when punishment feels easier.

It is choosing patience when you want to rush your healing.

It is choosing to speak to yourself

the way you wish someone had spoken to you back then.

And maybe this is what grace really is:

The moment you realise you don’t need to be harder on yourself

to become better.

Maybe grace is how we finally come home.

And maybe grace is this: choosing to stop measuring your worth by your wounds. Letting yourself be held by the truth that you were never broken, only learning. That you don’t owe perfection to anyone, especially not to the versions of you that did their best with trembling hands. Grace is no longer asking your past to justify itself. It’s thanking her, releasing her, and stepping forward lighter. And for the first time, not rushing who you are becoming, because you finally believe you deserve the time.