Do Not Abandon Yourself | April Leavenworth | Substack

summer goal: trying not to ruin the moment by thinking about how I’ll remember it.

Please Mistake My Kindness for Kindness

Writing this piece sort of made me laugh in all those tricky, grief-driven ways. Being Adopted Fucking Sucks.

How do you move through the world when your first imprinted memory, perhaps even in the womb, is of being abandoned? It’s actually diabolical.

on rescuing an opossum (and other things, of course)

I wonder if her suffering is the one someone feels right before dying or right before coming back to life.

a brilliant piece by a brilliant friend

making everything about me!! (positively)

happy poetry month ♥️ (and my name month but nbd)

THE PARADOX OF SELF-AWARENESS: grateful for life’s blessings + depressed as f*ck about the state of the world

hard lesson on not ignoring your intuition

Moving back in together was my prize for keeping my mouth shut. For not telling LTE how much he’d hurt me, how much I struggled, how alone I’d felt in the midnight truth of a boyfriend who wanted me but wasn’t sure how much. I had made the sacrifice. I believed it would lead me to my dreams in the end.

it turns out i really AM that bitch

on creating safety for the ones you love

Building any relationship out of love is to create safety, to grip the rope of the well. Sometimes you are the one sitting at the top of the well and throwing ropes down to the one(s) you love and want to love, and sometimes you are the one at the bottom feeling around for the rope. This love, (oh it’s giving me the feels), this love works when the one at the bottom keeps climbing, no matter how many breaks they need or the distance they cover with each effort, and the one at the top refuses to let go, even when the rope gets heavy to hold—especially when the rope gets heavy to hold.

I’ll embarrass myself until the end of time if it means I’ve said what I needed to say.

On the cocoon phase and listening to your body. 🫶

It’s a commitment to actively resist damaging self-soothing mechanisms that give temporary relief but ultimately solve nothing. It’s a commitment to sitting in the feelings and letting your body tell you what to do and not the other way around.