the kind of beautiful i want to be

“at first, i only wanted to be wildly beautiful in looks—
but now, i want to be beautiful in how i stay,
how i love, how i rise, how i bloom.”

i only ever wanted to be beautiful in looks. it was the first kind of safety i recognized, the first kind of praise the world offered me before it ever saw my heart. i thought if i could just be beautiful enough—thin enough, soft enough, small enough—maybe i wouldn’t be left. maybe i wouldn’t be hurt. i learned how to pose for approval. how to dress in performance. how to disappear behind someone else’s gaze and call it love. i taught myself to take up less space, to be easier to hold, easier to choose, easier to abandon without guilt. for so long, i tried to turn myself into a painting—pretty to look at, quiet on the wall.

but that kind of beauty never kept me warm when the grief hit. it never caught me when i fell apart in the shower. it didn’t sit with me in the middle of the panic, or help me mother through the days when my own body felt like a stranger. surface-level beauty doesn’t tend to wounds. it doesn’t hold your hair back. it doesn’t tell you you’re still worthy when everything inside you is unraveling.

now, i want to be beautiful in ways no mirror can hold. i want to be beautiful in how i stay—when it’s easier to leave. when discomfort rises in my chest like floodwater. when everything in me is screaming for silence or escape. i want to be beautiful in how i breathe through it. in how i choose presence anyway. in how i let the hard moments crack me open without hardening me in return.

i want to be beautiful in how i love—not for what i give, not for how well i perform, but for how deeply i hold space. how i listen with my whole body. how i make room for people to be seen in their mess, not just their shine. i want to be beautiful in how i forgive—not just others, but myself. for every version of me that didn’t know better. for every moment i shrank. for every time i begged for less so i wouldn’t be left behind.

i want to be beautiful like wildflowers are—rooted in impossible soil. not because they were planted, but because they refused to stay buried. i want to bloom where i was never meant to survive. i want to be beautiful in my boundaries. in how i say no and mean it. in how i let go when it’s time. in how i love without losing myself.

i want to be beautiful in how i mother—holy and human and full of contradiction. i want my children to remember the warmth of my arms more than the tidiness of the house. i want them to see softness as strength, to know that being held doesn’t mean being tamed. i want them to feel safe in a love that doesn’t flinch when things get loud. i want them to see that their mother rose from wreckage and still chose tenderness.

i want to be beautiful in how i create. in how i turn ache into ink. in how i speak to people’s shadows without needing them to be fixed first. i want my words to feel like a hand held out in the dark. not an answer—just a presence. a permission. a quiet knowing that says, you’re not alone.

at first, i only wanted to be beautiful in looks.
but now,
i want to be beautiful in how i stay.
in how i soften.
in how i rise, unpolished.
in how i bloom, unapologetically.
in how i carry my story—not as shame,
but as proof that i was here.
and i loved.
and i didn’t give up.

with ink + bloom, 🌻