I Was Raised to Be Small — I Chose to Become
by Max Sunflower
I am a very soft person.
Not delicate, but deliberate. I move slowly now. I speak with care. I pick my battles like wildflowers — rarely, and only when the ground calls for it. I set boundaries like candles around a sacred room. I take chances, yes, but only the ones that whisper to me gently.
I’ve learned how to block out what no longer serves me — voices that once shaped me, paths that led to silence, dreams that were never mine to begin with. And somewhere along the way, I found my footing. Sobriety taught me that groundedness isn't a destination — it's a daily ritual. A way of folding yourself back into your body and saying, You’re safe here now.
I’m one year sober. I’ve returned to school to pursue my bachelor’s. I didn’t expect to fall in love with learning — but I have. There’s something holy about watching yourself inch closer to a goal you once believed was too far gone.
But before I could choose this version of myself, I had to confront a haunting truth:
I had been pretending for a very long time.
The Pretending
As a child, I lived in a small room with pale walls and a television that only knew how to speak in reruns. My companions were plush toys lined up like pews, and worn-out VHS tapes of Barney that played over and over, as if the purple dinosaur was the only adult who had time to teach me love.
I spent hours alone, suspended in a world of pastel imagination — drawing pictures of places I’d never seen, creating voices for characters that felt more real than my reality. It was a quiet kind of survival. One without bruises, but heavy with silence. I don’t remember feeling unsafe. Just… unseen.
They say imagination is a gift. For me, it was oxygen.
In that lonely room, I crafted entire worlds in my head. I didn’t know it then, but I was already doing the bravest thing I could: imagining a life beyond what was laid out for me.
I was raised to follow a script. To be obedient. To fit within the smallness of what others could envision for me. But I’ve always questioned things — quietly, curiously, in a way that made people uncomfortable. I didn’t think like my teachers. I didn’t believe that rules were sacred just because they’d always been there.
I could feel it in my bones — that I was meant to bloom wider than the pot I was planted in.
But the blooming didn’t come easy.
The Breaking
Emerging from the cocoon wasn’t graceful. It was clumsy, disorienting — like stumbling out of a fog only to realize the world is louder than you imagined.
Breaking free from that smallness meant feeling everything I had suppressed: the loneliness, the self-doubt, the aching need to be known. I was directionless. My voice felt foreign. I was a grown person who had never been taught how to become.
I had no blueprint. No mentors. No language for belonging.
At one point, I heard someone say, “You can only be as great as your parents.” That phrase gripped me. It rattled around my chest like a threat disguised as wisdom. If that were true — if my destiny stopped where their vision ended — then I was doomed to play a part that never fit me.
But something inside me refused.
The only way I knew how to break the mold was through rebellion — not loud or violent, but sacred. A soft refusal. A tender no. A quiet declaration: I will not become what you imagined for me. I will become what I imagine for myself.
The Becoming
These days, I don’t move through life like someone trying to prove anything. I’m not chasing applause. I’m not seeking permission.
I’m learning to be someone I feel safe with.
That, to me, is the art of becoming: becoming the kind of person your younger self would want to run to — arms open, heart soft, voice steady.
Refuge isn’t a cabin in the woods or a beach far away. It’s sitting in a room you used to feel anxious in and realizing your shoulders aren’t tight anymore. It’s breathing deeply on a Tuesday and realizing your peace is no longer performative.
Refuge is becoming someone who no longer abandons yourself.
The Truth
If you’re still in the cocoon — unsure, aching, watching the world go by through a frosted lens — I want you to know this:
You are not broken. You are becoming.
Your softness is not a flaw — it’s proof that you survived without hardening.
Your questions are not a burden — they are the gateway to truth.
And your rebellion — gentle, sacred, and slow — is not the end of something. It is the very beginning.
You were not made to stay small.
You were made to bloom.
Written by Max Sunflower
A voice for softness, sacred rebellion, and quiet transformation
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