We got caught in the rain coming back from the beach.

While walking up the path it began to downpour.

The water hit me like soft pellets – what seemed torrential from the blackened sky was actually warm and soothing as it hit my skin.

A strange dichotomy of between the threatening landscape of dark clouds, and yet the water made it all seem safe: like the bad on the outside was being washed away as the pellets dripped off my skin – my hardened skin – afraid to get smooth – to feel the safety in warmth or cold – using leather and doc martin boots to shield from any pain.

As I made my way up the path, I realized that there really isn’t anything that can really take what’s inside away from me unless I let them.

In that moment with the rain and the threatening skies and the lightening and distant thunder – nature was telling me that torrents will always be there – they will reel around my head and forever saturate and yet also nurture the ground in its swelling rains.

I am part of that ground to be saturated and nurtured by the waters cascading off my body.

I am nurtured – and I kept saying that word over and over in my head like in some way that word would make me into something I had not become before.

My own woman.

Standing strong on my two feet.

Unafraid.