Close your eyes.

Just for ten seconds.

See yourself at five years old.

Feel that electricity humming in your chest – how you knew without question that the world was huge and open and waiting for you. Remember the big, audacious dreams you had before anyone taught you to shrink. Dreams so massive they didn’t even feel like dreams – they felt like destiny.

Remember how you ran without asking permission.
How you laughed without wondering if you deserved to.
How the future felt wide, warm, and yours.

That child wasn’t delusional.

Picture yourself before the world taught you who you were “supposed” to be.

Before the paperwork.
Before the diagnoses.
Before the shame-smirks in grocery stores.
Before anyone ever spoke bitterness into your name.

That was you – before the world stamped you down.

You haven’t disappeared.
That child’s boundless spirit is not gone.
You’ve just forgotten who you are and what you’re capable of.

Open your eyes.

Now come with me.

THE WORLD TAUGHT YOU TO SHRINK – NOT BECAUSE YOU WERE SMALL, BUT BECAUSE YOU WERE BRIGHT

Maybe nobody knows this part of your story – because you learned to swallow it, hide it, bury it under polite silence. But I’m going to say what you’ve never said out loud:

Somewhere along the way, someone decided they knew your worth better than you did.

Maybe it was a parent.
A teacher.
A doctor.
A stranger behind you in line.
A politician sneering on TV about “lazy people who get free help.”
A caseworker who read your file but never your face.

Maybe you’ve spent your entire life being labeled a burden – whispered about, judged, shrugged at, dismissed, doubted. Maybe you’ve been treated like the cockroach on the laundromat floor while people pretend they’re too polite to step on you.

I know.

Because I’ve lived it too.

I remember standing in a grocery store checkout line with $30 of vegetables and a Food Stamp card in my hand. I remember the woman behind me huffing – loud, intentional, dripping with judgment. I remember the way her lip curled, how her left nostril was turned up, how she scanned my groceries like she was the moral judge of the produce aisle. I remember the disgust, the entitlement, the quiet cruelty of people who think poverty is a personal failure.

And here’s the thing:

It hurts every single time.
And every time, you shrink a little without even noticing.

Not because you’re weak, but because human beings were never built to be treated like they are disposable.

You learned helplessness because the world trained it into you.

And I need you to hear this next part like your life depends on it:

The world was wrong about you. Completely, utterly, devastatingly wrong.

THE LIE THEY TAUGHT YOU

Let’s name the lie:

“You’re broken.”
“You’re lazy.”
“You’re not trying hard enough.”
“You should do more, be more, have more.”
“You’re a burden.”
“You’re gaming the system.”
“You’re worth less.”

Sometimes it’s said out loud.
Sometimes it’s hidden under fake smiles.
Sometimes it comes from the people who should’ve been the safest.

And after years of hearing it, you begin to believe it.

Not because it’s true, but because pain repeated long enough starts to feel like truth.

So let me be the first person in a long time to say this without flinching, softening, or sugarcoating:

You are not broken.
You are not helpless.
You are not worthless.
You are not the problem.

The problem is a world that benefits when you forget your strength.

I KNOW YOU DON’T BELIEVE ME YET – THAT’S OKAY

You might be reading this and thinking:

“I’m not strong. If I were strong, my life wouldn’t look like this.”
“If I had power, I wouldn’t be struggling.”
“If I mattered, people wouldn’t treat me this way.”

I understand those thoughts.

I’ve had them.
I’ve lived them.

When I was eighteen, I was suicidal. I had been told my whole life that I was worthless, unlovable, a nothing who didn’t deserve to live. I believed every syllable. There was a time I didn’t want to exist at all because the world convinced me there was nothing inside me worth saving.

Then I met someone named Tracey.

She kept telling me I had value even when I couldn’t feel a trace of it. She drove me to the Cleveland skyline and asked what I saw. I said darkness, decay, cold stone. She said she saw hope. Possibility. A city full of good people. She planted seeds I didn’t understand for years.

It took time – years – but eventually I learned something:

Sometimes someone else has to hold the light for you until you remember you had your own all along.

So if you don’t believe me yet, that’s okay.
I don’t need you to believe this right now.

I just need you to hear it.

NOW LET ME TELL YOU WHO YOU REALLY ARE

You are not small.
You are not fragile.
You are not your labels, limits, or losses.
You are not the worst thing you’ve lived through.

There is a fire inside you that poverty didn’t kill.
Illness didn’t kill.
Trauma didn’t kill.
Shame didn’t kill.

There is a part of you older than fear, older than failure, older than every person who ever looked down their nose at you. You were born with a light the world has tried – and failed – to extinguish.

The world sees “disabled,” “low-income,” “burden,” “dependent.”

But underneath all of that?

There is a force that refuses to die.

You are the light you’re looking for.

You’ve forgotten that.
 

But forgetting is not losing.

YOU WERE NEVER MEANT TO KNEEL

They want you quiet.
Grateful.
Embarrassed.
Invisible.
Ashamed.
Helpless.

They want you to believe your survival is shameful.

But hear me clearly:

You were never meant to bow, cower, or kneel.
Not then.
Not now.
Not ever.

You were meant to rise – slowly or suddenly, loudly or quietly, painfully or triumphantly – but rise all the same.

And maybe rising for you doesn’t look like it does in the movies.

Maybe it’s:
Getting out of bed.
Opening that scary envelope.
Making a phone call.
Asking for help.
Breathing through a panic attack.
Feeding yourself today.
Showing up when it feels impossible.
Trying again tomorrow.

That’s not weakness.

That’s courage in its purest form.

LET ME BE CLEAR ABOUT ONE THING

This is not a “your disability is a blessing” speech.
This isn’t toxic positivity.
This isn’t me pretending you don’t face limitations, pain, exhaustion, trauma, or barriers others will never grasp.

This isn’t about pretending your reality isn’t hard.

It’s about reminding you that hard is not the same as hopeless.

You are not finished.
You are not defined by your hardest chapter.
You are not stuck – even if the ground feels like cement.

There is a future version of you waiting, watching, rooting for you – because they know what you cannot see from where you’re standing:

You are still able.

Maybe not in the way the world measures ability.
Not in the way society assigns value.
But in the ways that matter:

You are able to rise in spirit.
You are able to reclaim your dignity.
You are able to take one step – even a tiny one.
You are able to carry a light that never fully went out.
You are able to rebuild belief in yourself, one fragile piece at a time.

You have no idea how much strength you’re still carrying.
How many people you can touch.
How deeply your survival matters.
How much more is still possible for you – even now.

I REFUSE TO WRITE YOU OFF

The world may treat you as disposable.

I refuse.

The world may see you as a statistic.

I see you as a story still unfolding.

The world may judge you by your income.

I judge you by your survival.

The world may tell you you’re weak.

I know you’ve carried storms that would have crushed others.

You’ve endured things that would have broken most people in half.
You’ve lived through nights that would have swallowed them whole.
You’ve rebuilt yourself after collapses that would have ended them.

Don’t you dare call that weakness.

That is power.
Raw, unglamorous, unfiltered power.

FOR TODAY, YOU DON’T HAVE TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE

I’m not asking you to transform overnight.
I’m not asking you to become a hero.
I’m not asking you to suddenly “get motivated.”

All I’m asking is this:

Stay with me.
For one more paragraph.
For one more breath.
For one more moment of remembering who you were before the world told you otherwise.

You don’t owe me anything.
You don’t owe the world anything.

But you owe yourself this:

A few seconds of truth.

THE TRUTH IS THIS

You are not done.
You are not defeated.
You are not who the world says you are.

You are the flame they could not extinguish.
You are the spark the stars remember.
You are the quiet storm that keeps returning – rising – refusing to die.
You are stronger than the noise around you.
You are the light you’ve been searching for.

It was never out there.
It was always you.

WELCOME TO STILL ABLE

This place exists for you:

• even if you never buy anything,
• even if you never earn a dollar,
• even if you never “fix your life,”
• even if you’re exhausted, discouraged, broke, ashamed, or lost,
• even if you’ve been told your whole life that you don’t matter.

You matter here.
You belong here.
You are not alone here.

And no matter what you’ve been told, no matter what you’ve lived through, no matter what the world says about people like us –

You are still able.

And I’m going to remind you of that until you can finally feel it again.

Let the words sit.
Let the truth sting.
Let the light flicker.
Let the memory of who you were – and who you still are – rise to the surface.

This is where your new beginning starts.

Not with perfection.
Not with motivation.
Not with willpower.

But with remembering.

You are not small.
You are not broken.
You are not done.
You are the light you’re looking for.

And you were born to rise.