The Beginning of Harvest Love

Harvest Love Journal

There was a time when being in my body didn’t feel safe.
Not just because of the world outside me—but because of the words spoken in the place that was supposed to be home.

Words that made me feel too much.
Too wide.
Too soft.
Too emotional.
Too female.
Too me.

I learned early how to brace for criticism that came dressed as "care."
How to disconnect from myself to avoid being picked apart.

The one who was meant to protect me taught me to doubt myself instead.
Said I was lazy when I was depressed.
Mocked my shape when I was hormonally raw and unraveling.
Called me manipulative for crying.
Told me how I should feel, should act, should look.

And slowly, I turned that voice inward.

I thought, maybe if I take up less space—
If I make myself smaller, quieter, thinner—
Maybe I’ll be safe.

So I chose control.
Restriction.
I stopped feeding myself in more ways than one.
I stopped believing I was worthy of care.
Disorders, in a way, became my armor.
Not because I wanted to disappear—but because I was tired of being attacked just for existing in a woman’s body.

I turned to self-destruction…
Because it felt gentler to disappear than to be broken again and again by the voice that was supposed to keep me safe.

But that ends now.

Because the truth is:
That voice was never mine.
That shame was never mine.
That story—of being too much or not enough—was never mine to carry.

So I’m laying it down.

I am no longer available for shrinking.
No longer available for shame.
No longer available for survival that costs me my spirit.

✨ Harvest Love was born from this reckoning:

From years of being told who I was supposed to be—
and finally choosing to become who I actually am.

It’s not about aesthetics or performance.
It’s not about doing life the “right” way.
It’s about coming home to your body, your breath, your cycles, your softness—and building safety there.
On your terms.
With your truth.

This is for the women who’ve been gaslit out of their own knowing.
Who’ve had their emotions labeled as manipulation.
Who’ve been made to feel that their sensitivity is weakness,
that their hunger—for comfort, for love, for life—is too much.

This is for the ones who’ve spent years trying to be palatable, invisible, acceptable…
And are now ready to take up sacred space.

I’m rebuilding now.
Not the house I grew up in,
but the home within my own soul.

I’m planting gentleness where there was once fear.
I’m sewing truth where silence used to live.
I’m speaking to my body like she’s someone I love.

This is my reclamation.
Of self.
Of safety.
Of womanhood.
This is how I harvest love, Ilda