The letter below marked a turning point for me, a step towards healing after reaching my breaking point. Writing it helped me process and release suppressed emotions and regain my mental clarity - a clarity that inspired me to use my voice, take control, and build a life, brand, and company that I could be proud of. Two days after writing it, I quit my job in a corporate gym and started working on R7 Strength.

to the girl who has fallen out of love,

It’s okay, you worked hard to fall in love. Maybe the love was simply a dream, a transitory moment in which you felt a false sense of peace and tranquility within a new space without recognizing all the wounds you had yet to heal. Maybe the love was short lived. Your work culminated in a single point in time when you could genuinely say you had fallen in love with life again just to watch it slowly slip away. Maybe love was an emotion you sought after for so long that it became but a word, a single-syllable that failed to carry the intimacy and warmth it once did. How can you love when you cannot remember the last time that the word did not carry a connotation of emptiness? How can you love when your head is haunted with the thoughts you worked so hard to eradicate? You cannot love when the word feels lifeless, an abstract notion that only resembles a concept in your mind. You’ve fallen out of love before. Strive to resurrect a once powerful emotion from its cold grave.

To the girl who has found her passion fleeting,

It’s okay, passion is contingent on needs and desires. Our needs and desires are ever changing and echo the state of our environment. Your environment bears an aura of stagnation - the air is still; the energy is idle; and the once constant trepidations of your mind have gone dormant. There is value in the recognition of the dichotomy between growth and comfort. For an ephemeral period of time, this space fostered growth and development. It helped elicit an internal sense of fulfillment as you embarked on a journey that enabled you to pursue passion rather than pure intellect. At some point, that growth was superseded with a sense of comfort. It wasn’t an exact moment in time, but rather a gradual fading as one moment bled into the next until all sense of time was lost in an endless abyss of uncertainty. The only thing to be heard was the monotonous tick of a clock, counting the seconds, minutes, hours that you spent just existing and relaxing into comfort’s warm embrace, blind to the malevolence lurking behind its welcoming arms. You cannot find passion when you are still at the mercy of comfort. Seek the calm of acceptance that your space is no longer serving you. In that moment, that brief period of time, when you are overwhelmed with the feeling of peace that has abated you for so many months, acknowledge your newfound needs and desires. 

To the girl who is afraid to fall,

It’s okay, falling is a very powerful thing to do. We are intrinsically conditioned to think of success in terms of moving forward, climbing upwards, and pushing onwards towards some abstract version of the future. This fixation on progression has culminated in a state of apathy. Let yourself fall. Let yourself breathe as you fall, let the air fill your lungs and rush past your skin and reignite all the senses that have gone numb. Let the moment in time where you feel weightless lift all the burdens that have been weighing you down, feel your spine decompress as the load shifts and your eyes can finally catch light again. Let the brief second between security and obscurity where your heart drops in your chest reignite the beat that has gone silent. Let the beat reverberate through every ounce of your body and echo the silent cries that have been stifled for so long. Embrace the fall and let it give life back to what had become a static ascent.

To the girl who is tired of pushing back,

It’s okay, your ability to heal is not dependent on your ability to endure. You have fallen victim to the voice in your head. It weaves together a fairytale where you can exist in this environment, you can hear the comments, you can put your body on display, and remain unbothered. The voice implores that you aren’t truly healing and recovering until you can tune it out and not react. It ceases to recognize the harsh reality. You exist in a world of fads, misinformation, and vanity wherein your capability to do your job effectively is predetermined upon someone’s evaluation of your body at first glance. Your reflection has slowly morphed into the culmination of endless months of virulent rhetoric. Take a long look at the girl staring back at you in the mirror. Do you know that girl? Do you recognize her? What was once the body of a healing woman, is now a hollow shell, an infernal void filled with the thoughts that plagued the sick girl you thought you left behind. The thoughts have coaxed you back in as they whisper sweet nothings of a time when your body was smaller in size and your health was relegated to a back burner as you sought an aesthetic vice. The mirror is but a manifestation of the voice you cannot get out of your head, one that echoes the sentiments of an environment that preaches the very things you have worked tirelessly to escape. Your healing is not reliant on you enduring this voice to show strength. Heal by creating a new voice, one that embodies the steps you have taken to grow and respects the presence of wounds that still seep and ooze. This voice will be uniquely yours, it will exist as a separate entity that cannot be cultivated and curated when you are constantly pushing back.

To the girl who has found herself at a poignant precipice between safety and the unknown,

It’s okay. You’re okay. We will be okay. Together, we can embrace the unknown and build something beautifully enchanting and strong - something real, raw, and resilient.