Brave Heart | ✔️

Author's Note

Assalaamu 'Alaikum (peace be upon you).

This story is pretty sad, but it's about growth and realization. It's about love and loss and heartbreak. If you don't think you have the stomach to read it, that's okay. I myself had a very hard time writing it because I like "happy endings", but I have realized over time that happy endings are very subjective and are poor ways of describing a story's worth.

That is why I want to characterize this story as a "satisfactory ending" because the protagonist learns her lesson, albeit painfully. She isn't necessarily jumping up and down in glee at the end, but she is at peace. She has learned her mistakes and has become stronger from them, which to me is the most important thing of all.

Brave Heart consists of revival. Which, for the protagonist of this story, is everything.

I had a very hard time writing this story, not only because it was painful but because it teaches a lesson I'm not even sure I have fully learned yet. It is something I am trying to tell myself constantly, something I want other girls and women to hear, but that doesn't mean it was easy for me to hear myself say it. That doesn't mean I have learned my lesson.

I hope that throughout this story, you (as a girl/woman) are able to learn that despite everything, you are just as strong as you are soft.

And I hope this story can teach you what I have been trying to teach myself for a long time.

That you will always be enough.

.   .   .

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