The Breaking That Lets The Light Out

The morning light hits the mask and makes it look solid, like armor you can survive the day behind. You hold your breath in meetings, terrified that if one tear escapes, the whole structure will collapse into shards no one can sweep up.

But there is a kind of breaking that is not destruction — it is the only way the light gets out. When the woman with twelve years of bleeding reached through the crowd, trembling and exposed, she did not shatter beyond repair.

She was made whole in the very moment she stopped holding herself together. The panic says you will fall apart if you cry.

The truth is that you are already held, even in the falling. Your tears are not the end of you; they are the water that washes the dust from your eyes so you can finally see who is standing right there, ready to call you daughter, son, beloved.

The mask was never meant to be your face.