‘You are the mountain’ 8” x 11.5” print with archival ink on hahnemuhle rag paper.

You are the Mountain.

Not the rivers softly carving lines on your face, not a wave amidst the ocean of your heart, not something soft that bends to the wind of a lover boy who refuses to grow.

How often we forget this—and instead spend our time trying to twist ourselves into something smaller, something more palatable, something that won’t scare him away.

But love is not a shrinking thing. Love is not a lesson in becoming less.

Dating in your 20s and 30s is full of charming men. They will lure you in with attention and praise, and flee at the slightest hint of true intimacy. They will not grow, no matter how much you believe in them…. they will tell you that they’ve never ‘been seen like this’ and then turn around to call you wild, difficult, too much.

Let them. You were never meant to be contained.

I spent years mistaking this turbulence for passion. Mistaking longing for love. But love does not drip with doubt. Love does not make you bend the rocky shape of your spine.

Love arrives when you stop tolerating what we were taught, as women that we were supposed to.

Love stands beside you, hands open, eyes clear, unafraid of the height and depth of you.

When you arrive at love’s door, it is better than you could have dreamed or written, because you couldn’t have imagined it possible. Love does not make excuses, but rises to meet the mountain of you, unshakeable in their own.

Love meets your eyes in the sky and says—I see you. I’m not going anywhere.