You are a Light in the World
I love that you wake up singing.
That even before you knew the words, you knew the song in your heart and you wanted to hear the joy.
You wanted to share the joy that lived in you.
You are a light, my child.
A beacon in the cloud-stricken fog that is life.
I envy your unabashed joy.
That joy that lives in childhood, and the world slowly pulls at its edges-unraveling its existence.
That audacity to live in that joy, worrying not for thes before or living for the after.
But just now and nothing else.
You share your song for all who listen, unafraid of judgement or fear but living in the joy- sharing of it to the world.
Let no one take your light, not even those that love you.
Your beauty is all it’s own.
Sing that song.
Sing with all your might.
Let those who hear, listen and also feel joy.
You remind me of my light before it was bruised and hidden from sight.
You remind me it never goes away- it’s always there just beneath the surface of the skin I’ve learned to wear to hide it.
But not you. You carry that light above the skin for all to see.
That unabashed joy in the way you giggle, find amusement in all things, marvel at the light through the window that’s splashed a rainbow against the wall- it’s beauty illuminated in you.
You have yet to learn the boundaries of can and cannot. Don’t.
Never learn to hide.
Never learn to stifle that which deserves its joy in the sun.
That which makes you- you.
Sing with joy, untainted joy, unabashed joy.
Do not hide it.
Your mother,
Even when they ask you to.
Your mother,
Jessy Santana
Opposite But The Same 