When the rain falls.

You look out the window and see a sky full of grey where the sun should be. You become curious and open the blinds covering your view of the vast sky above. A few seconds go by, and suddenly, you hear something hit the ground.

It is the rain.

Ever so soft, yet loud in its own way.

Soft, yet loud. I think that is another way I would describe my heart. An organ necessary to keep us alive, but spiritually and emotionally, a part of our soul that carries stories, love, memories, and scars of its own.

The kindness I carry and the love I have to give surprises me in many ways.

Because choosing to remain soft when life has taught you one too many times that softness can cause you pain is not easy.

Choosing to remain soft when life has given you every reason to become hard is not easy.

To become cold.

To stop caring.

To stop loving so deeply.

To become just like the people who hurt you.

But somehow, I haven't.

My soul is soft, yet loud, like the rain that falls.

There is something beautiful about rain when you really think about it. It falls so gently, drop by drop, yet over time, it can nourish entire fields. It gives life to flowers. It washes away what has collected on the ground. It makes the earth smell new again.

Maybe softness is like that too.

We live in a world that sometimes makes us believe that being soft means being weak. That caring too much is something to be embarrassed about. That loving deeply makes you naive. That after being hurt enough times, you should learn to care less.

But I don't want to care less.

I don't want the pain others have caused me to determine the kind of heart I carry into this world.

I don't want someone else's inability to love me properly to take away my ability to love.

And I don't want the storms I have walked through to convince me that I need to become a storm myself.

There is power in remaining gentle.

There is power in choosing kindness when bitterness would be easier. There is power in allowing yourself to feel when shutting everything out would hurt less. There is power in protecting your heart without turning it into stone.

And maybe that is what I am slowly learning.

Staying soft does not mean allowing people to hurt you.

It does not mean endlessly forgiving what continues to break you or giving pieces of yourself to people who do not know how to hold them.

You can be soft and still have boundaries.

You can be kind and still walk away.

You can love someone and still choose yourself.

You can have a gentle heart and still know when enough is enough.

Softness is not the absence of strength.

Sometimes, softness is strength.

I look back outside.

The rain continues to fall against the window, each drop leaving its own little trail before disappearing. Above it, the clouds are still grey. For a moment, it almost feels as though they have swallowed the sun completely.

But the funny thing about storms is that the sun never actually disappears.

It is still there.

Hidden behind the darkness, patiently waiting for the clouds to pass.

And eventually, they do.

The rain slows. The clouds begin to separate. And somewhere between what was once grey, a little bit of light finds its way through.

Maybe life is like that.

There will be storms that make you question everything you know about yourself. There will be people who make you wonder if your kindness is worth keeping. There will be moments when becoming cold feels safer than continuing to carry such a tender heart.

But I hope you stay soft anyway.

I hope I do too.

Because after all the storms I have survived, I refuse to believe that the greatest thing they could teach me is how to become harder.

Maybe their greatest lesson was showing me just how powerful it is that I remained soft.

So let the rain fall.

Let yourself feel it all.

Let the storms come and let them pass.

But never forget that somewhere beyond those dark clouds, the sun is still there.

And perhaps the most beautiful thing about a soft heart is that, just like the sun after the rain, no matter how many times the world tries to cover its light, somehow, it still finds a way to shine.