Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m falling apart.

I feel incapable of pushing against life, against my body, or being as productive as I used to be before the beginning of this month. Something in me has stopped — not in a destructive way, but in a truthful way.

And today, as we celebrate the Day of the Dead, I feel that it’s not just about honoring the dead — it’s about honoring the parts of ourselves that are ready to die.

The parts that need to be seen, accepted, and integrated, so they can finally rest.

The death I am saying goodbye to now is the death of separation — the separation between me and the part of me that never knew unconditional love.

The part that lived 37 years and 29 days in a state of lack — lack of love for herself.

The part that believed she had to earn love through constant doing, proving, pleasing, producing, and surviving.

I pushed and pushed and pushed…until the body finally said no — and collapsed.

(And is it ironic that I’m reading “When the Body Says No” by Gabor Maté right now?)

And I couldn’t figure out why I had been feeling so sick and so tired.

I was calling my friends, thinking about going to the doctor, pulling cards, looking for answers… until today it finally dawned on me:

I’m not sick — I’m resisting my own state of being.

I am not letting myself be as I am.

I am not accepting myself in this moment — exhausted, non-productive, unable to push, unable to perform.

And I realized:

I have never accepted myself in moments of weakness.

I have never allowed myself to be worthy when I wasn’t doing, trying, proving, or holding things together.

I didn’t know how to love myself when I had nothing to offer — not even energy.

And now…

I’m starting to see what the Universe has been trying to show me. I couldn’t understand it before, because I had never felt unconditional love.

I kept running away from this man because he was giving me love — real, unconditional love. And I couldn’t receive it, because love without conditions felt unfamiliar, unsafe, even threatening. So instead of opening, I went into fear — as if love itself was too much.

How do I love and feel loved just because I exist?

How do I receive without performing, fixing, proving, or deserving first?

How do I sit in love without having to earn it through suffering, effort, or sacrifice?

This is my journey now.

A journey through the underworld — the same underworld I walked as a child, but this time with consciousness, with presence, with choice.

I never knew what unconditional love felt like. So now it must begin with me. I am learning to give myself the love I was never taught, to offer myself what my mother could not offer herself, to live not from survival, but from remembrance.

I already saw the truth when I was sitting in the bathtub — but now I need to feel it:

How do I love myself in a way that requires no proof — not to me, not to anyone else?

How do I love in a way that gives and fills at the same time?

How do I love in a way that allows me to receive what I desire simply because I exist?

Because I am a creation of God.

A miracle.

A body.

A mind.

A consciousness.