Once upon a time there was a girl who regarded herself as a “rainy day girl”, because she only felt she was good enough when she was standing in the sun. When the sun hid behind the clouds, she pretended the clouds were not really there, developing a fake world which became built on anxiety.

Sometimes the sun would be clouded by slow progress in achievement, her deep fear of rejection, being conditioned to believe that she was not allowed to experience strong and negative emotions. She always had to be happy, calm, even toned and then she would be accepted and loved. She had a storm of resentment building inside of her from pure lack of implementing boundaries, everyone leaned on her for help and that made her feel worthy. Even if she saw she was being used, she put it down to her duty in this world to help others. Seeing people pleased with her made her feel really wanted, even though it was a fickle material to build her self-worth and self-love from. She plainly ignored the thunder which was rolling in.

She kept herself busy, not allowing herself any time to think about the rejected fragments of herself which kept tapping her on the shoulder. She continued to brush these aside, promising to deal with them later. It was never really her intention to look at the parts of herself she felt were worth hiding from the world. These parts looked like jealousy, anger, grief, disappointment, unhappiness with her lot, emotions a person like her just could not allow herself to feel.

When people did not like her approach, she pretended to ignore the pain of their rejection, when actually it ate away at her like a hungry plague of rats. She truly believed that their approval was all she had, all she was worth, all that she needed. She never once thought to question if their approval went as deep as to approve of themselves. She never thought to enquire if their rejection of her made them feel less distressed about their rejection of themselves.

She eventually lost her shine, the sun had set and felt like it would never rise again. For the first time ever she acknowledged her depression and burn out. All those people who she had tried her best to shine so brightly under the sun for, had left her alone and cold in a dark pit of despair. It seemed she would never find the strength to climb out of it.

She felt a tapping on her shoulder, and there stood all her rejected parts, watching her. She felt afraid they would swarm over her, devour her. Instead they sat down beside her and held her closely to them. At first it was painful, the tears flowed freely, and then a sigh of relief as each piece of self-rejection felt less intense. She began to float. As she worked on the pain of each piece of herself that she had turned her back on, she found that she floated higher and higher.

Most of the rejection seemed to have happened during childhood, these were emotional children who were stuck and needed love. She could see how their existence actually served her wellbeing. She began to understand that she had rejected them for survival, the rejection did not stem from a place of weakness. This enabled her to find the courage to put down the knife she had been using to carve her-sensitive-self up with.

She started to see the light from the sun shining down, it had risen again. The dark night had shown her the light of real, painful self-love. Once she felt that comforting warmth, she doubted she could ever reject parts of herself so easily again. Charity begins at home, and all the parts of who she was were actually her family.

She still sometimes goes back into the pit, but not to wallow. She goes in there to rescue the little girls who she had condemned to die down there, starving them of the love they needed, never realising it was actually herself she was sentencing to death.

She takes time to write them all to life on the pages she has been gifted with. They deserve to feel the warmth of the sun too, and she can give them that in sharing the stories their purpose holds.

She has dusted off the crown that can only be given to rainy day girls, and now very proudly wears it for all to see. She finds it absolutely beautiful in its very strange and ugly design. <3