Summit

To my team,

I will not exhaust the well of my self-sufficiency to quench the drought of your unbelief. What you hold in your hands, fragile or strong, is yours to tend. How you regard yourself is a covenant only you can keep. I see you with the dignity of the mountains, high, resolute, already whole, and I hope one day you see yourself in the same altitude. But I cannot climb that summit for you. I began with nothing but a stubborn breath of faith, a seed pressed into the soil of uncertainty. From that barren ground I built, not to be above you, but among you... knowing, perhaps, one step sooner where the road breaks, where the path narrows. All I have done, in the trembling clarity of my humanity, was meant as a lamp in your night, a compass when your maps blurred.

I understand why you believe I should know it all, do it all, carry it all. And I have carried each one of you, often without your seeing that I am human too, fragile in my strength, faltering in my perseverance. The wall I built was never to keep you out, but to guard the vision and standards that mattered. Yet I see now, it may have risen too high for you to climb, too hard for you to break through.

You never saw how often I bent under it, praying that my cracks would not show, praying that the vision would still stand taller than my weariness. Maybe my strength looked like perfection, when in truth it was only discipline holding my heart together. And if it has been difficult for you, have you thought it has always been easy for me? Do you believe I have not wrestled with doubt, loneliness, or the ache of being misunderstood? I wore the weight of the crown like armor, and you never saw how heavy it was.

So here I am, writing this in the slow courage of release, unarmored: letting go of the guilt for the times I could not fully show up for you, forgiving myself for choosing the task over the tenderness, because I believed the work must be done for everyone. But no, your life is not my task. I do not need to get things done for you. You must choose to rise for yourself, to shine not because of me, not despite me, but because you have always been capable of that light. I will not carry this alone anymore. While it is easier to put blame, I have accepted it with the quiet hope that one day you will look inward and not toward me. And yet, I understand the weight of the crown, still hoping someone will carry it with me.

Your life is your own, and I refuse to be accountable for the weight you place upon yourself. For if you truly love yourself, if you truly believe in your becoming, then no one- not me, not anyone- should have the power to make you stop building your dreams. It is not mine to climb your mountains or hold your dreams. That was always, only, yours.

And yet, I want you to know this: I saw greatness in you when you could not see it. I believed in you when you wavered. I carried you not out of duty, but out of love...because your victories felt like my own, and your struggles cut into me like my own. But I cannot be your mirror forever. You must learn to love yourself enough to rise without me holding you up. You must learn to believe in yourself the way I believed in you.

Your life is your life. Your dream is your dream. And though I cannot carry you anymore, I will always, quietly, be rooting for you, hoping you one day realize that everything I did, even my silence, even my sternness, was because I loved you enough to want more for you than you ever thought possible.