At the end of May, we quietly honored the birthday of Walt Whitman—a poet who didn’t just write about freedom, he embodied it. Not the kind of freedom that fits neatly into patriotic songs or Instagram quotes, but the wild, unapologetic freedom of being fully, complicatedly human.

He gave us this line—one that has echoed through generations of seekers, misfits, creators, and contradiction-laden souls:

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

And maybe that’s exactly what we need to hear right now.

We live in a world that constantly asks us to choose:
Be soft or strong.
Be ambitious or nurturing.
Be spiritual or sensual.
Be clear or complicated.

But what if we’re meant to be all of it?

What if our contradictions aren’t failures of clarity—but proof of our wholeness?

In my work—what I call soul work—I’ve sat with women who feel like they are falling apart simply because they can no longer fit themselves into the roles they were taught to perform. Roles that made them shrink, split, abandon, or silence the parts of themselves that didn’t “make sense.”

And I know that ache intimately—because I’ve had to work on reconciling these things too.

The part of me that wanted to be held and be free.
The part of me that craved stillness and wanted to set the world on fire.
The coach who guides others while still navigating her own becoming.
The mother who loves deeply but sometimes longs for the silence of her own breath.

For a long time, I thought I had to choose.

But healing isn’t about fixing who you are.
It’s about reclaiming who you were before the world told you to edit yourself.

The angry part? She has something sacred to say.
The sensual part? She holds power you’ve been taught to fear.
The quiet part? She may be the one who hears your truth the clearest.
The wild, chaotic, not-all-tied-together part? She is the bridge back to your essence.

In soul work, we don’t shame these parts—we invite them home.

Because you are not meant to be tidy. You are not here to be explainable.
You are here to be whole.

Whitman knew what the rest of us are still learning: that integration is messy. That the soul doesn’t ask for consistency—it asks for truth. And the truth is, we are fluid, evolving, contradictory creatures. We are not meant to be pinned down. We are meant to be known—by ourselves most of all.

So this is a love letter.

A love letter to Walt.
For saying what so many of us have struggled to believe.
For modeling the kind of spiritual wildness that gives the rest of us permission to be.

And also—

To the version of you who was loud and unapologetic until life taught you to quiet down.
To the one who feels too much, wants too deeply, or doesn’t know who she is today—and maybe won’t tomorrow either.
To the girl inside you who once knew how to hold it all—before the world convinced her she had to choose.

You don’t need to choose.

You get to be all of it.
And you don’t need to explain.
Your contradictions are not inconsistencies. They are clues.
They show you just how alive you really are.

Very well then, contradict yourself. You contain multitudes.

And maybe that’s your most sacred truth.

~