"Do not give up on yourself just because your life feels unrecognisable in your own hands. There are seasons when every step feels useless, when your effort seems to vanish into nothing, when your mind turns against you in the quiet and asks, again and again, what the point is of carrying on if nothing seems to change. That state is not proof that you are failing; it is proof that you are in the middle of something difficult enough to strip you of certainty. Being a woman does not mean moving through pain with grace at all times. Sometimes it means surviving your own thoughts at three in the morning, holding yourself together in rooms where no one can see the strain, and continuing through days that feel hollow, cold, and endless. You may not recognise yourself right now. You may not like who you have become under pressure, under disappointment, under the weight of waiting. But the version of you standing in this hour, weary and unsure and still somehow refusing to disappear, may be the most important version of you there has ever been. She is the one carrying what others never see. She is the one enduring the ugly middle, where nothing is clear and nothing feels kind. She is the one learning how to remain when there is no applause, no reassurance, no visible reward for her effort. One day, you will look back at her with a depth of respect that you cannot yet imagine, because you will realise she was the one who kept your life alive when everything in her begged to shut down. So stay. Stay through the confusion. Stay through the numbness. Stay through the nights that feel too long and the mornings that ask too much. You do not need all the answers yet. You only need to refuse to hand yourself over to hopelessness. Keep going, even if all you can do is continue in silence, because your future may one day rest entirely on the fact that, in this unforgiving chapter, you chose not to give up on the woman carrying it." -Steve De'lano Garcia
![[LET'S PLAY] Tales of Kenzera: Ch. 1 - "Kalunga, God of Death. Hear My Plea."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:elpz2jyyzhaim3fk7twnipx4/bafkreialsn4xmda63q5trcyjxaxivki35fwrcnftv5g4h5dbdbn7n4lah4)
