The Wild Woman

She entered the Garden carrying everything she had been taught to be. The agreeable woman. The useful woman. The quiet woman. The woman who gave until there was nothing left of her. But the Garden did not ask her to become someone new. It asked her to remember. To listen when something inside her began to stir. To shed what had grown too tight. To grow thorns around what deserved protection. To return to the woman she had abandoned. To reclaim her hunger. To open her hands and receive. And somewhere between the roots and the wildflowers, she realized she had never needed permission to belong to herself.