You can’t break a woman who has survived the darkest of nights.
She’s courageous and strong, because she walked through her worst times alone. She faced her own fears in a personal war and made them run screaming back into the shadows.
She picked her own self up off the floor when it was time to start again and again.
She doesn’t fear your monsters, because she was warrior enough to slay her own.
She’s compassionate and tender, because she held her own heart when it was breaking. She wiped her own tears and tended to her own wounds. When she had no shoulder on which to rest her weary head, she comforted herself. When words of empathy and inspiration didn’t come from another’s mouth, she pulled them from from the depths of her own soul.
Her compassion for others is as deep as an ocean, because she had to tap an inner well to grace herself.
She’s painfully honest, because she walked through her own illusions. She’s broken herself open to find her deepest truth over and over and over again. She’s met her own reflection, in its well lit beauty and dusty back corners alike.
She sees through your pretenses because she fought hard to get past her own.
A woman that shone through the darkest night is resilient and fierce like the blazing morning sun. She laughs in the face of adversity, because she knows how far she’s come. She’s watched her own magic at work. She saw herself fall countless times and knows that she always rises again.
She won’t do the work for you. She will remind you of your strength, because she knows her magic came from finding her own.
You can’t break a woman who has made it through.
But neither can you walk away from her the same.
She has learned to trust her inner wisdom, to rise to a challenge without forcing things to go a certain way. She knows what it means to walk through a hall of mirrors; and she is not afraid to shatter the glass.
She will show you things, not by making a point of it, but by recognizing and responding to what they are revealing about herself.
She will give you hope, not through niceties and platitudes, but by continuing to bask in the light of her own.
And if you ever take the chance to meet this woman where she’s at – if you offer her the things that she doesn’t require – if you comfort her and hold her, if you offer her your hand when the road is long and you share your light when the way is dark, she will give you a type of love that has the power to move mountains and a gentleness that can soothe even the roughest of storms.
You can’t break a woman who is has seen the darkest of nights alone and rose above it like the wonder of dawn.
But neither can you walk away from her the same.
