And Yet, I Rise: A Poem for Beginning Again 

I lost myself slowly—

not in one great collapse,

but in the quiet places

where I kept choosing everything

before I chose me.

I became so accustomed

to carrying, giving, adjusting,

that somewhere along the way

I forgot the sound

of my own becoming.

For a while,

I thought I had to find my way back

to the woman I used to be.

But she was never gone.

She was waiting—

beneath the noise,

beneath the expectations,

beneath every version of me

I had created to survive.

And then,

something awakened.

A whisper.

A knowing.

A quiet voice within me

saying,

Come back.

So I did.

I came back to my own voice.

Back to my own rhythm.

Back to the woman

who knew what she wanted

before she learned

to make herself smaller for it.

I remembered my laughter.

My curiosity.

My tenderness.

My fire.

My vision.

The parts of me

I thought I had outgrown

were simply waiting

to be reclaimed.

And I began to see myself

with new eyes.

Not as someone

who needed to be repaired,

but as someone

who was being restored.

Not starting over—

starting deeper.

Not becoming someone new,

but becoming more fully

who I have always been.

I reclaimed my boundaries.

I reclaimed my voice.

I reclaimed my time.

I reclaimed my joy.

I learned that peace

could live in my body.

That freedom could feel quiet.

That softness could be strong.

That choosing myself

could be an act of love.

And slowly,

my life began to feel like mine again.

The mornings felt different.

The light felt different.

Even my reflection

looked like someone

I was finally meeting

for the first time.

There was no grand announcement.

Just a woman

standing a little taller,

breathing a little deeper,

trusting herself

a little more.

This was restoration.

This was reawakening.

This was reclamation.

And I realized

I had not been waiting

for my life to begin.

I had been returning to it.

Returning to wonder.

Returning to possibility.

Returning to desire.

Returning to the sacred truth

that my life belongs to me.

And now I know:

I do not have to chase

what is meant for me.

I do not have to convince love

to stay.

I do not have to abandon myself

to be chosen.

I am no longer looking

for someone to complete me.

I am whole.

And because I am whole,

I can receive.

I can open

without disappearing.

I can be held

without becoming smaller.

I can give

without emptying.

I can love

without losing myself.

I can welcome a love

that feels like peace—

like warmth,

like laughter in the kitchen,

like sunlight through an open window,

like breathing deeply

and realizing

there is nothing to fear.

A love that meets me

where I have finally arrived.

A love that sees me

and does not ask me

to become less.

A love that allows me

to remain fully myself

while becoming fully ours.

I waited.

I learned.

I survived.

And yet, I rise.

Not from the ashes,

but from the remembering.

Not because I found someone,

but because I found me.

And now—

I am awake.

I am restored.

I am reclaimed.

I am becoming.

I am home.

And I am free to love.

 

Today I begin again.

Not because I have to. Because I choose to. Because ninety days of unweaving produced the clarity, the courage, and the conviction to name what I am building — and to build it publicly, with intention, without urgency, and without apology.

The 100 Days of Alignment begins today — October 1, 2026. One hundred days of documenting what it looks like to build the life that was always meant to be mine. In wellness. In purpose. In the work I was born to do.

The Poem That Started It

Several months ago I wrote an essay. Then I reshaped it into a poem. I did not know at the time that it would become the opening of something larger — a declaration, a framework, a one-hundred-day public commitment to alignment. The poem is called And Yet, I Rise: A Poem for Beginning Again. It is mine. Every word of it came from a real season — the returning, the restoration, the slow accumulation of evidence that the work was real.

What the 100 Days Will Be

Joy is the vantage point. Victory is the frame. Every piece of content in the next one hundred days will be written from the place of what I am gaining — not what I survived. W.E.B. of Wisdom. The Return Before the Ready. And a manuscript in progress — Peace, Joy, Love and Abundance — being written from the lake, in the stillness, at the pace of alignment.

Welcome to the 100 Days. Stay close. 🕸️

W.E.B. of Wisdom · The Return Before the Ready — Available on Amazon and at DrShanelle.com. 

Book Signings and Speaking Engagements:

[email protected]  ·  (800) 803-2095  ·  DrShanelle.com

Educator | Author | Systems Thinker

Systems That Empower. Strategies That Last.

Every system begins with a decision. Every strategy begins with a purpose.