I found it.
I found the book I want to hand out to everyone I love, and even strangers on the street. It’s the book I could have written but didn’t. It’s in my voice, and it’s my way of seeing, but a complete stranger wrote it, and it’s amazing to see that someone else in the world feels like me and thinks like me and can write my words.
The book is called ‘A Gentle Reminder’ and it’s written by Bianca Sparacino. Go buy a copy. Consider it my gift to you. Bianca’s writing is also available on Instagram under the handle @rainbowsalt.
She writes about everything- about love, about heartbreak, about what it’s like to walk through this world with your heart on your sleeve, about what it means to be known, to be seen, why we should strive for connection over all else. About grief, about healing, and how we piece ourselves back together after we’ve been shattered.
Below are some excerpts that spoke to me.
On Heartbreak
If you are trying to forget someone who was once a beautiful part of your life, the answer is- you don’t. You don’t try to sanitize your experience, you don’t try to cut the pain from the bone. You don’t downplay it. You don’t try to sweep it under the rug or hide it away. Letting go of someone you thought would be in your life forever is difficult; sometimes circumstance gets in the way. Sometimes, no matter how much love is there, you have to lay it down. You have to walk away. You have to accept that sometimes you get too big for it, or you want different things, or you cannot pour yourself out for it any longer. And that is okay.
But if you managed to find someone who cared for you, who saw you, who heard all of the horrible and haunted things you did in your life and still loved you harder, still thought it all shone like gold- that is special. You shouldn’t forget that. You should be thankful for it.
Be thankful that you got to feel that way about someone.
Be thankful for all of the mornings, and all of the nights, you got to wrap your limbs within theirs.
Be thankful for the way they cracked your heart open.
Be thankful for the way they challenged you and calmed you and made you believe in the person you were becoming.
Be thankful for the fact that they saw you in ways you didn’t see yourself.
Be thankful for the fact that you risked for love, that you unhinged your rib cage and opened yourself up in a world that sometimes favors playing it cool over leaping towards connection.
Be thankful that you found this person, in a world of billions, and for a moment in time, even if it was fleeting, you got to dive into the soul of them.
Just be thankful and walk away with grace. Walk away with gratitude. Walk away knowing that you felt something, that you experienced something a lot of people haven’t, and in that way - you were changed. Love is not meant to be possessed. It is meant to be felt. Be proud of yourself for feeling so deeply, appreciate it for what it was, and let that love go off into the world and change others the way it changed you.
-pages 24-25
Sometimes the most formative way to love another human being is to love them from a distance, is to lay down your hope and your fight, is to know when to wave the white flag and challenge them to show up for themselves. You were not put into this world to fix people who do not want to be fixed. It is okay to walk away from relationships that require you to do so. Forgive yourself for that.
-page 37
Because at the end of the day, if someone does not meet you where you are, you cannot keep asking them to do so. If someone cannot reciprocate your love, if someone cannot give you what you truly deserve, you have to understand that aching for them to do so before they are ready is a form of self-destruction. Your heart is a vast and tender thing; you cannot keep trying to shrink it to be what someone else needs. You cannot keep pouring your love into a vessel that cannot contain it. You cannot keep pouring your love into a soul that has not opened their eyes to all that they are receiving. You cannot keep pouring your love into a heart that is closed off to it. It will only leave you empty. You have to walk away. You have to let this person grow on their own terms, because you can’t love someone into their potential. You can’t love someone into being ready. They have to do it on their own.
-page 43
And when you teach yourself that you deserve to be loved, without having to beg for that love, without having to chase that love down, you open yourself to the kind of beauty that chooses you just as freely as you choose it. You open yourself to the kind of people who see you and immediately know that you are a rare and beautiful thing. You open yourself to new beginnings, to a future that unfolds in ways that don’t hurt or break you down, but rather build you up and show you just how worthy you are of having your heart held.
-page 44
On Love
When you are ready to put your heart into this world again, do not look for the same kind of love you have experienced; resist the urge to compare the human beings that come into your life to the ones that have left. Because the truth is- two loves will never be the same. Love is like a fingerprint, curated between two individual souls, and within that it is always its own rare and beautiful thing, an extension of who you both were within those moments in time. In moving on, in dealing with the breaking and the rebuilding of your heart, you grow. You become a different person and in turn the love you need, the love that will nourish you and inspire you and meet you where you are now- that grows as well. That changes.
When you are ready to put your heart into the world again, do not look for the kind of love you recognize, for the kind of love that mirrors something that did not beat the odds. Instead, search for the kind of love you need- as you are, in this season of your life. Do not compare it or doubt it when it arrives, because it will be different. It will always be different. It will hold you differently, and it will say your name differently, and it will laugh differently, and hope differently, and you will make different memories within it; you will feel it in your bones in a way that you won’t be able to express, in a way that will feel new and somewhat scary, but right. Do not seek familiarity, do not keep searching for your past in your future. Trust what comes.
-pages 12-13
You deserve to be loved the way you love others. You deserve to feel seen. You deserve to sleep beside someone who does not try to quiet your heartbeat, or your passion, or the way you show up in this world. You deserve to be with the kind of person who loves all of your twists and does not try to unite them. You deserve to love someone who does not judge you for the ways in which you had to kill your sadness, someone who does not hold your past against you. You deserve to be chosen and to never be loved in halves. You deserve someone who is sure of you; you deserve someone who stays.
-page 22
We want to protect the people we fall in love with. We want to nurture them and hold them were they are their most tender; we want to make sure that they know we are not revolted by their broken pieces, that we do not recoil at their damage. We want to hold it all, we want to whisper into the cracks, “It’s okay to be who you are with me.” We do this because we see so much of ourselves within those we give our hearts to. We notice the ways the fragments of their personalities and their experiences and the way the characteristics life has given them glint in the light and catch our attention, most likely because we see within them a familiarity. We may not have been broken in the same way, weathered in the same way, but we still feel a sense of belonging to them, a sense of being understood. In a way, it is through loving these broken pieces within another human being that we are kinder to the pieces that ache in the same ways within ourselves. We may not always call it by its name, but in the quiet, almost eerie, understanding that hangs in the air when you are in the presence of someone who sees you in ways the others don’t, something deep inside of you is affirmed. Maybe, just maybe, it is okay to believe that you can be loved there, too. Maybe, just maybe, it isn’t such an unthinkable thing to have faith in.
-page 41
On Being Soft
The kindest people are not born that way, they are made. They are the souls that have experienced so much at the hands of life, they are the ones who have dug themselves out of the dark, who have fought to turn every loss into a lesson. The kindest people do not just exist- they choose to soften where circumstance has tried to harden them, they choose to believe in goodness, because they have seen firsthand why compassion is so necessary. They have seen firsthand why tenderness is so important in this world.
-page 22
You can do hard things. You can do hard things, and not because you will be unaffected and bulletproof within your growth, not because you are immune to breaking down, not because you will find it easy to navigate all that is healing within you. No, your journey is never going to be faultless, is never going to be devoid of pain, but you can do hard things, because you show up to do them, even if it is imperfectly. Even when it hurts. Even if you break down. Even if you feel tender. No matter how weathered you feel, no matter how lost you feel, you can wake up in the morning, you can do whatever you have to do in order to tuck the light between your bones, you can do whatever you have to do in order to remind yourself that goodness exists, that you are capable of finding it, that things are always going to be okay.
-page 68
In a society that has taught us to favor being cool over being connected, promise yourself that you will always choose to be the person who cares. to be the person who does not desensitize themself, to be the person who slams their heart into the people who appreciate it without hesitation, without worrying if it is too much or too intense or too loud. Trust me when I say that you will never scarer off the souls that will fully understand you, and nurture you, and celebrate you, by being open to this world, by being honest, by being the kind of person who loves deeply. Do not water yourself down, do not silence the parts of yourself that leap towards the beauty you see in another human being. Be all that you are. Be all that you are.
-page 79
There’s one excerpt Bianca wrote that resonated the most deeply, because I know this one is true. I live this one.
The love you deserve will love you unapologetically, and that beauty, that softness, will inspire you to believe in the human being you are becoming. The love you deserve will see gardens within you where you see cemeteries. It will reflect its visions into your eyes, it will show you the way the world sees you. The love you deserve will support you, it will ruthlessly believe in your mind, it will celebrate your depth. The love you deserve will be proud of you- not just when you are a shining example of yourself, but also when you are not. The love you deserve will love you, even when you do not deserve it.
-page 70
The love you deserve will see gardens within you where you see cemeteries.
So live this way. Live passionately. Live with your heart on your sleeve, running full-tilt at life, joyous, broken, bruised as you may be. Be kind. Be soft. And be gentle- including with yourself.