Dear Katherine,

How to gain confidence when everything about me and around me falls apart.
How to walk with heads up when everyone around me is saying shit about me and judging me.how to be happy for what I am .

— Lily

Darling,

Three questions, and they're all the same question. You just asked it three different ways because you're not sure anyone has an answer. Fine. I do.

The people saying things about you. Five centuries of experience here, thank me later. It stings, yes, obviously, you're human (it stings even when you’re not!), but it does not get to become the story of who you are. That's non-negotiable.

When everything is falling apart, the mind goes on high alert. It starts looking for danger everywhere, and it is not a precise instrument. Some of what you're hearing out there may be real. And some of it might be your own mind filling in the blanks. Right now, when everything is hard, it might not be filling them in politely. Right now you probably can't tell the difference, and that's its own kind of exhausting. I know.

But here's what's true about all of it, real and imagined: it is not about you. When people judge and gossip and tear down, they are narrating themselves . . . their fears, their insecurities, the things they can't look at directly so they aim sideways at someone else instead. You are a mirror they'd rather not look into. Inconvenient for you, deeply revealing for them. And the words your own mind puts in other people's mouths? Those belong to you, which means you can take them back. Their words belong to them. Hand them back and walk away like you have somewhere better to be. You do.

Now, everything falling apart inside and outside, all at once. I'll be honest, that's a lot even by my standards. But here's what it doesn't mean: it doesn't mean what you think it means about you. The collapse is a season. Seasons end. They have an honestly remarkable track record on this. Walking with your head up has nothing to do with feeling steady. It's about deciding, while the ground is still moving, that you are not this moment. That's it. Shoulders back, not because you feel like it (you don't, and we both know it) but because you're making a choice about who shows up today. The body leads. The mind follows eventually, complaining the whole way (like a vampire turned mortal and suffering the indignities of aging and exhaustion). Confidence isn't a feeling you wait for. It's a decision you make before you're ready. Every time. Whether you feel like it or not. Especially then.

And then there's the one underneath all of it. How to be happy for who you are.

Darling. I spent five hundred years running from that question. New names, new cities, new faces to become the moment someone got too close to the original. And I will tell you what all that running taught me: the version of yourself you're so convinced is the truth? You built her. Out of hard seasons and other people's opinions and every moment you decided what you were worth. She is not a fact. She is fiction. A story you've been telling so long it stopped feeling like one.

When everything falls apart, the mind gets very small and very loud and absolutely convinced it's being objective. It isn't. A frightened mind narrating your worth is about as reliable as Damon Salvatore narrating his own heroism. What it tells you when things are hard is not the full picture. Who you are is more — more complicated in the best possible ways, more powerful, more interesting, more worthy of your own time and consideration than what a bad season can see.

Let's try a little experiment. Think about the people you love. Your best friend, your sister, someone you actually like on a Tuesday. Now imagine walking up to them and saying out loud every charming little thing your brain serves up about who you think you are and what you think you're worth. All of it. Just letting it rip. You wouldn't. You'd never. Because you'd hear immediately how cruel it sounds. So why, exactly, is it fine when the person on the receiving end is you? I'll wait.

You already know how to be kind to someone who deserves it. Could you possibly extend that same kindness to yourself? Could you possibly consider that you deserve it? 

Not all at once, love is the long game and we will get there, but here is your one thing, starting today: catch yourself mid-prosecution and stop. You don't have to believe you're wonderful yet. You don't have to feel it. You just have to notice when you're piling on and stop adding to it. I will not add to this today. Say it like you mean it. Do it every time you notice.

Happiness for who you are doesn't arrive all at once like a verdict reversed. It comes in small moments of not flinching from yourself. You collect enough of those and something shifts, quietly, irreversibly, like a door that's been stuck for years finally opening an inch.

I have built entire lives from less than an inch. You can start there.

And if the weight of it is more than you should carry alone right now, let someone help. There is no weakness in that. Even I have had my allies.

With all my wicked little heart,
Katherine 🖤