Today’s shining light.

While picking up some lunch for the guys, I approached the drive thru speaker to tell the person on the other side of it that I had a pick up order. Her reply…

“Hang on a second, sweetheart.”

🥹

I, of course, waited patiently like she was the teacher handing out graham crackers to our kindergarten class after nap time.

“Okay, sweetie. What’s the name?”

I don’t think I sounded like a child…I hope I didn’t anyway…but the softness was definitely there when I gave her my name.

“I gotcha. Go ahead and pull around, sweetheart.”


And just like that, I loved her. Loved her for the kindness she was putting out there.

This whole week I’ve been forced back into my masculine era where I’ve had to present myself as the strong, stern one and it’s worn me down tremendously. I don’t mind being the tough chick, but having to embody that for years due to my own self-preservation…I was ready for my soft girl era. I was able to feel it and embrace it not too long ago, but I sort of forgot the kind of healing I need to do isn’t linear. That’s a reality that stings a bit.

The softness has been hard to find, let alone embrace when it finds me because I’ve been so rooted in the opposite. But with that little interaction, along with the gentleman who resembled Santa Claus at the grocery store telling me to “Have a good day, hun,” I was reminded how easily the softness could find me and gently hold my hand as I continue to just go along day after day, being whoever I need to be to just get to the next breather where my hand is squeezed a little tighter to remind me that even though hardness exists…sometimes persists…so does softness.