The kitchen is quiet, the only sound a low hum from the refrigerator. It’s 3 a.m. and the weight on your chest whispers you’re not safe, not okay, not enough. It’s the phantom limb of a past hurt, an old story playing on a loop so deep you mistake it for the soundtrack of your own soul. You’ve tried to kill it. You’ve starved it, shamed it, plastered it over with affirmations and forced positivity. You’ve meditated for a thousand hours, downward-dogged your way through a sea of yoga mats, and chanted until your throat was raw, all in a desperate bid to “let go” of the thing that has its hooks in you. And yet, it remains. A ghost at the feast of your life. It shows up when you’re about to ask for a raise, whispering that you don’t deserve it. It rears its head in your relationships, convincing you that love is a battlefield and you’d better be armed. It’s the reason you say “maybe” when you mean “hell yes,” the reason you apologize for taking up space, the reason you shrink when you were born to expand. You’re haunted by the echoes of every time you