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your devotion.

as you return to yourself, you will finally be able to belong to yourself. your body will free itself from the world’s gaze, from its judgment and even its admiration; your body will belong to you. your efforts will naturally disentangle from serving duty, guilt and obligation; your efforts will belong to you, and to you alone. your love will be unavailable for use as a bargaining chip that tethers you to a game played only for crumbs; your love will belong to you.

as you integrate all parts of yourself, every part that was ever “too much” or “not enough” or “making everyone uncomfortable,” you will finally be able to hold yourself. you will stop giving yourself away to be held carelessly or contemptuously by anyone else. you’ll remember that you are held by God, by the universe, by a divine agreement that gave you a self that would one day be able to hold you and love you perfectly.

what’s important about “for the first time” is when it’s good, clean and healthy, that you make it “from now on.” when you finally taste your own freedom and sovereignty, or how it feels to protect and drink from your own well, you don’t need to go back to the ones that have dried up or that were always closed to you. you stop journeying for charity and begin the devotion to your own garden.