Dear Sensitive Soul,
You know who you are. You feel everything so deeply it aches. When you were 10, your dad yelled at you for being too sensitive and you remember the crinkled crease in his forehead and the pain of betrayal as if it were happening now. You remember the throbbing stab of someone you love condemning you for being you and you remember your firm resolve to try to be different because who you were wasn’t good enough, who you were was wrong.
You know who you are. You absorb the suffering of the world down into the marrow of your bones. When you see Alyssa Milano’s face pop up on TV, you knock your kids over as you scramble desperately to reach for the remote and change the channel before the haunting images of malnourished children and neglected dogs seep into your soul and hijack your heart. But it’s too late. You’ve seen those eyes. Those big brown desperate eyes of the starving child boring a hole into your heart and it will take you days, weeks even, for the image to fade out of your soul’s mind.
You know who you are. You carry the eternal scars of fourth-degree burns from your breakups, betrayals and let-downs. You’re a self-help workshop, webinar and e-course junkie, you’ve shed more tears on your therapist’s couch than the books you’ve read about forgiveness. You’ve written enough soul-searching journal pages that if you laid them end to end, they’d reach the moon and come back to pierce your heart.
To all you sensitive souls, the broken ones, the wounded, weird, quiet and different ones. The ones who can’t stop crying. The ones exhausted at the end of the day because the emotional weight of the world is too much to bear alone. The ones who are made to feel wrong, defective and flawed. The ones whose souls yearn for a little more kindness and a little less criticism. The ones who can’t seem to get life right, who can’t seem to find their happy place no matter how many gratitude lists they’ve written, who can’t seem to turn off that fake smile even though they abhor it. The ones who can’t fathom why or how people can be so cruel, how the world can be so unjust, and how they can be born so different than everyone else. The ones who inherently know life itself should be different, that something’s upside down, inside out and wrong side up with the world, and that people are desperately, deeply starving for meaning, purpose and love.
Love, above all else. Yes, love, the elusive love.
Where is it?
To all you sensitive souls, you know who you are. Love is here.
Love exists smack dab in the middle of all the shattered pieces called you.
In the midst of the betrayals, the wrongness and the cruelty, love exists.
Love is here. In you. As you. Through you.
You are the love the world is seeking.
You are the love you are seeking.
In all your brokenness, all your pain, suffering and self-abandonment, you are love.
You’re not broken, you’re love.
Or maybe you are broken. And yet, you’re still love.
Carry the love inside you as if your life depends on it. Because in a way, it does.
But if you forget, if you drop it one day in your pain, don’t worry, it’s always inside you, because IT IS YOU.
So dear one, no matter what you’ve been through, what you’re going through and what you will go through, know that you’re perfect, just the way you are. Broken, not broken, hurting, healing or haunting, you’re fine exactly as you are.
It’s OK to be you, sensitive, tearful, empathetic, emotional you.
You are exactly perfect just the way you are.
Why? Because YOU ARE LOVE.
But until then, you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.
Lovely broken pieces and all.
You wrote these words as if I had written them myself. Every single word spoke to me on such a level so deeply, that it left me feeling understood for the first time in a very, very long time. And the real kicker is, we have never met. How do you do it? How do you write the very words that have been etched inside of my soul for the past three decades? It’s as if you were channeling me in some way as you wrote this…and for that absurd reason alone, I am forever grateful that I came across your website and found you. For years, I have thought something was “wrong” with me because of how deeply I have felt everything my entire life. While others are capable of brushing things off, I have never been so fortunate. It wasn’t until recently that I started to accept the fragile soul I have and view it as a warrior instead of a martyr. Thank you for sharing your truth with us and for giving me the words I so desperately needed to hear on a day where I felt like I didn’t belong for the millionth time.
It has been really rough couple of weeks and I needed just these words. I am surrounded by insensitivity and it is too too much! Thank you! Love and light to you fellow sensitive soul.
Thank you, Tree. Your message lifted me up today.
thank you so much for this letter my dear! you’ve made me cry! (again!). i send you many sweet thoughts!
Wow. Thank you.
I always need to see this. Thanks for sending this in my email again. This speaks true to me and who I am.
I never comment on things, but I wanted to say this is really beautiful and reached me at the right time!
This message helped inspire me to keep soldiering on when I am exhausted and wondering what is the point since I feel I am on the wrong planet and that this one has little use for types like me. That is just the despair talking.
I just got this in my email and it came on a day when I really, truly, did need to read it. Thank you for the uplifting positivity in this crazy day I’ve had.
When I read this I though am not really a sensitive soul but kept reading and pondering and no matter how much I have tried to numb my self and try to embrace this phony image it never really comply took and it cost me bad. now I realize I am a sensitive soul. It is going to be a mess to undo all the damage I did to myself if I ever really comply do this which I kind of know is impossible but I got to try and be who I really am deep down.
Oh, lovely Tree, you had me blubbering at the first paragraph ! Love you bunches !!
Thank you so much. Words my soul needed today!
Thank you, it was like your spying on me. Appreciate your love.
😉
Thank you, Tree! This is wonderful! At last! Someone to encourage me to be ME! Now that’s something new!!!
you’re very welcome, Claire! xoxo
Thank you for sharing your letter. It helped me understand being a HSP.
I needed that! Thank you for writing that, you are awesome.
Thanks Melody! You’re pretty awesome yourself! 😉
Thank you. This came at just the right time. This sums it up completely and it is so beautifully and honestly written. This was a gift.
Hi Dawn. Glad you enjoyed it 🙂
Brilliant. Thank you so much. You can read my mind, it seems.
You’re welcome, Douglas! And thank YOU. Mind reader…. just one of our many superpowers as an HSP. 🙂 Here are some more.
Exactly me. Thank you. Have shared it and will share further with my vegan friends. Sometimes I feel like we are all collected in that group. x
Thank you mj! 🙂
This is the first of your writing that I have read. Thank you. It lifted my heart to see what is inside of me (my thoughts and feelings) reflected in your words. I am not alone. Thank you.
You are definitely not alone. Welcome to our family, Katharine.
Thank you so much for the letter. I’ve not read anything so beautifully written about the absolute depth of “me”. Stick Girl made me realize that, indeed, I AM LOVE. Always thinking my being sensitive was a flaw due to all the pain, hurt & being totally misunderstood, I now see that differently. I do love. I do hurt for others. I do cry out of sheer emotional distresses in my life. Everything leaves a footprint in my mind & soul out of love.
Email incorrect in my comment above.
My pleasure, Dorothy! Stick Girl knows best. 🙂
Thank you ,I am all those things but my father was murdered when I was 9 ,very rough life but right now you helped me realize something I’m not changing a thing about me for a other person who doesn’t understand empathy and he really doesn’t and it’s sad to me ,Thank you again Marti
What a beautiful letter , thank you 🙂 xo
You’re welcome, Emma!