Be still enough to feel it.

We are all grieving something, whether we are conscious of it or not. Even our cells are doing it, they die off and rebuild us a little every single day, which means we are never not losing something. And loss gets a bad rap because it's uncomfortable.

🎧 Listen to this letter on Spotify / Apple — reflection at the end.

And there is nothing like heartbreak to make you feel everything you are capable of feeling, all at once. It doesn't matter if it came from losing someone you love, from leaving a person, a season, or a whole version of your life. It cracks you open the same way. I've been grieving in slow motion this year. My fur baby. My abuelita. My old life. And honestly, all the things I had to overcome just to be here, writing to you.

Most days you'll still find me on my delulu island, insanely optimistic. But if your brain runs like mine, if you have ADHD, if enough never quite feels like enough and you are always reaching for the next thing so you can do more, then you already know the thing I had to say out loud. All that reaching keeps you moving, and all that moving keeps you from stopping. Because if you actually stopped and let yourself feel the full weight of it, what do you think would happen?

And what I've learned is that the busyness works beautifully for your to-do list. It does nothing for your heart. You can out-run a deadline, you cannot out-run grief.

👉🏽 Think about what you do when you're driving and looking for parking with the music on. You turn the volume down. You don't look for a parking spot with your ears, and yet you need the silence to see.

That is the part we get wrong about stillness. The quiet that so many of us are afraid of is exactly where you reconcile, where you take stock, where you finally hear what the feelings were trying to teach you the whole time.

I posted a single photo on IG today, and when I look at it, it somehow holds everything I had to go through this past year to get here.

I think that is the reason we post in the first place. We put up the highlight reel to remind ourselves the good times are real, and we want to be seen in the most favorable light, because some part of us is still looking for the outside to confirm that we are okay. That we made it. That we are enough. I chased being the pleasant one, the supportive one, the giver, because I believed that was how I would earn love and approval. And then I learned that outside approval never actually fills you. The validation I kept reaching for was always mine to give. No one is going to hand it to you, and even when they do, it never lands as deeply as when it comes from you.

You are the one who has to look at yourself on the days you feel unsure and on the days you feel unstoppable and say, I've got you. I'm proud of you. I love you. You don't have to perform anymore.

That is the freedom I'm actually after. The kind where you get to be fully yourself while you are still in the in-between, while you're grieving, while you're becoming, while you're creating, while you're living, while you're loving, even while you have no idea where you're going or what's happening around you. Because regardless of the direction, you are no longer abandoning yourself to get there.

We are all carrying so much while we build something we can be proud of, something that takes care of us and the people we love.

So if you are building and grieving at the same time, congratulations for letting yourself feel. Who you become on the other side of this is absofuckinglutely lethal.

Until the next letter,

Vanessa

P.S. And what I carried, I poured it into Thrive & Lead. It was seen + felt and I'm so grateful for this beautifully written feature! If you want to see what gets built when you stop waiting for permission, read it here.

​Vanessa Santos