Vibrant, Not Vain

There was a time I questioned myself:

Was it vanity that made me want to glow?

Was it shallow to want my skin to stay luminous,

my body to stay supple,

my eyes to stay awake to the world?

But now I see it clearly.

It was never vanity.

It was reverence.

I wanted my outer self

to honor my inner one —

the one who fought for her vitality,

the one who tended to her own wildness

when no one else knew how.

It’s not youth I worship.

It’s health.

It’s wholeness.

It’s that rare, sacred state

where spirit and body move in tandem,

neither apologizing for the other.

I do not want to look younger than my years

to pretend I’ve escaped time.

I want to look as alive as I feel inside —

free, radiant, real.

And if the world misnames that vibrancy as vanity,

let it.

I know what I am protecting:

Not the illusion of perfection,

but the testimony of survival.

I am not vain.

I am vibrant.

I am not frozen in time.

I am fiercely alive in it