I Rose Like a Phoenix

There was a time I counted coins to buy bread.

A time when silence wasn’t peaceful — it was survival.

A time when the future felt too expensive to dream about.

But I didn’t stay there.

I rose.

Not in a blaze of glory.

But quietly. Consistently.

I rose by choosing hope when hope had no reason.

I rose by loving myself through invisibility, through exhaustion, through shame.

I didn’t become someone else.

I returned to myself — stronger, softer, wiser.

The fire didn’t destroy me. It forged me.

Now, I walk with grace that only deep hardship can teach.

I create, not to prove myself — but to honor the woman who never gave up.

My beauty now? It’s not in what I wear or what I own.

It’s in the dignity of having risen.