Brave Enough

FIRST PUBLISHED 31st May 2025

You don’t have to roar.
You don’t have to rise with fists clenched,
shoulders squared,
battle cry ready.

You don’t even have to move.

Bravery can look like breath.
Like getting up again,
even if your knees still buckle.

It can sound like silence
when your chest is screaming
and your feet want to flee.

You are brave because
you’re still here.
Still carrying all that weight
the world never sees.

Brave doesn’t mean not scared.
It means scared
and staying anyway.
It means choosing
not to disappear
even when everything in you
is begging for an exit.

And I know you’re tired.
You want soft.
You want safety.
But this path is yours
and yours alone.
You don’t need saving.
You are the storm.

But hear this:
you have walked through every shadow
that said you wouldn’t make it.
You have stood
on days that tried to crush you.
You have already been
the kind of brave
that doesn’t get parades.

So if today
you carry it quietly,
that is brave.
If you hold it together
by threads and grit,
that is enough.

You have everything you need
to be fearless
not because you feel it
but because you are it.

Already.
Still.
Even now.
And in the months,
perhaps years,
still to come.

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