The Be Loved Season Manifesto

This season, I choose hibernation without apology.

Not from my work. Not from my creativity. Not from my inner world.

I withdraw only from people, expectations, and open conduits that drain rather than give. I close the channels through which energy once leaked simply because I was taught to leave myself open.

My holidays want solitude. Theirs may want access. I honor mine.

On Availability

This season, I am unavailable to anything outside of myself. I do not explain why.

I no longer orient my life around the needs, nostalgia, hunger, or projections of others. I am not here to reassure, coddle, perform, or pretend. I am not responsible for managing anyone’s discomfort with my truth.

When I say I am unavailable, my body anchors. That steadiness is not selfishness. It is gravity returning to where it belongs.

On Energy

I have given enough.

I have poured love into cups that never filled, into hands that never held me, into traditions that asked for sacrifice but offered no repair. I will not continue to empty myself to preserve appearances, families, or stories that injured me and refused accountability.

This season, my energy stays with me.

Creation remains. Extraction ends.

On Creation

I create first for myself.

I am the first to love what I make. I am the first to hold it, feel it, and be nourished by it.

Beauty does not need an audience. Art does not need to be useful. Love does not need to be earned through depletion.

I gather what feeds me: color, texture, lace, baubles, fabric, paint, glitter. I build beauty with my hands because beauty is allowed to exist without justification.

If something is shared later, it is because it is full, not because I am empty.

On Guilt

Guilt is old programming. A compliance slogan dressed as morality.

“Family is everything” was never a truth for me. It was a demand to endure harm quietly and call it love.

I refuse that lie.

I do not soften my truth to make others comfortable. I do not shove down my feelings to preserve tradition. I do not reenact harm for the sake of appearances.

Resentment, allowed to exist without interrogation, becomes peace. I no longer defend my boundaries. I live them.

On the Past

As a child, my safest holiday moments were solitary. Under trees. With ornaments. With beauty as refuge against chaos.

I honor that child now by giving her what she never received: safety, choice, gentleness, and love that does not demand repayment.

I am capable of being loved. I am capable of receiving myself.

On Beloved

Beloved is not performance. Beloved is not reconciliation theater. Beloved is not giving beyond desire.

Beloved is chosen.

Chosen stillness. Chosen refusal. Chosen self-attention without witnesses.

If no one else can meet me with truth, care, and reciprocity, then I will. I owe my love to myself before anyone else, and I owe it to no one on demand.

On This Winter

This is a season of sacred refusal.

I step away from expectation. I step away from obligation that harms my well-being. I step away from pretending I was supported when I was not.

I turn inward without guilt. I rest without explaining. I dream without asking permission.

At the end of this season, I will be able to say this with certainty:

I did not sacrifice my energy, my love, or my healing to fill greedy cups while mine ran dry.

I stayed. I chose myself. I was not abandoned.

Closing

This is the Be Loved Season.

Not because anyone else finally learned how to love me, but because I did.

And this time, I am keeping it.

Happy moments as a child, dreaming under a bauble tree.