Modena Jenkins LSCSW

It's been AGES Since I added to my professional page. Here is the first of 25 chapters. I'm doing this thing (Finally) and want to share the first with you, here.


CHAPTER 1 — MIRRORS
The mirror waits for you the way it always does — quiet, patient, without asking anything. You stand in front of it, not because you’re searching for answers, but because something inside you wants to know if you can stay. Just stay. Just for a moment.
Your reflection looks back, shaped by light and shadow. You don’t rush to interpret it. You don’t try to decide who you are today. You simply breathe.
The glass doesn’t judge the way your shoulders rise and fall. It doesn’t comment on the way your eyes shift or the way your hands fidget at your sides. It only reflects what is already here — a person trying to understand themselves in a world that hasn’t always made room for their becoming.
You lean in slightly, noticing the outline of your hair, the slope of your neck, the way your chest expands with each inhale. You don’t have to name anything. You don’t have to explain anything.
You just stay.
And staying is its own kind of bravery.
You lift your hand and place it gently against the cool surface. Your reflection meets you there, palm to palm, separated only by a thin layer of glass. It feels like a quiet agreement — a promise that you don’t have to figure everything out right now.
You can simply be here. With yourself. With your breath. With the truth that you are still learning who you are, and that learning is allowed to be slow.
The mirror doesn’t rush you. It never has.
You step back, not because you’re done, but because you’ve stayed long enough for today. Long enough to know that you can return. Long enough to know that your reflection will be here when you’re ready again.
You walk away with a small, steadying thought: You don’t have to recognize yourself all at once. You only have to keep showing up.
And today, you did.
Modena Jenkins, LSCSW

“You are comprised of 84 minerals, 23 Elements, and 8 gallons of water spread across 38 trillion cells.

You have been built up from nothing but the spare parts of the Earth you have consumed according to a set of instructions hidden in a double helix, and small enough to be carried by a s***m. You are recycled butterflies, plants, rocks, streams, firewood, wolf fur, and shark teeth, broken down to their smallest parts and rebuilt into our planet’s most complex living thing.

You are not living on Earth. You are Earth."

Words by Aubrey Marcus