Dear Rejection,
I did not greet you with grace the first time you arrived. You entered uninvited, dressed in silence and dressed again in doubt, and I mistook your presence for the absence of worth. I believed you to be a thief, stealing my hope by the thread and unraveling the hems of my ambition. But time, that gentle and unflinching teacher, showed me something softer in your gaze.
You were never the end. You were the turning.
When I was passed over, turned down, or told I was too much or not enough, I trembled in the dark corners of my own questioning. I held my voice like a fragile glass, afraid it might shatter if I spoke again. But in the hush that followed your arrival, something unexpected stirred. A still resolve. A remembering.
You taught me that every “no” was not a mirror of my inadequacy, but a redirection toward where I was meant to rise. You reminded me that closed doors are not curses, but corridors to rooms I had yet to build myself. You made me sit with my sorrow until it softened into clarity.
Thank you for pulling me back into myself.
Because of you, I began to write again. Not for approval. Not for applause. But for the sacred act of breathing life into truth. I found joy in the rhythm of my own voice, the cadence of my courage returning. I learned that I am not made of glass after all, but of clay and fire. Shaped, broken, and reshaped.
I no longer chase acceptance like a beggar in the cold. I do not plead for belonging. I belong to myself. And that, dear Rejection, is the finest gift you could have given me.
So I thank you for the ache, for the silence, for the sting that woke my spirit. You did not destroy me. You unveiled me.
Still becoming,
