Growth is an ache, not a gentle stretch,
a breaking open, not a quiet bloom.
It is shedding skin that clings too tight,
the sting of air on what was once concealed.

You tell yourself to swallow it down,
to press the weight of feeling into silence,
as if strength is the absence of pain,
as if numbness is wisdom.

But the dam cracks.
A flood will always find its way,
rushing through the spaces you ignored,
drowning the quiet you mistook for peace.

You cannot rise while buried alive.
You must sit in the mess of yourself,
let the grief, the rage, the joy, the longing
unfold their lessons in your hands.

For to feel is to know,
and to know is to grow—
not in comfort, not in ease,
but in truth