you cry a lot, she said.
i can’t take your tears seriously.

did i cry too much? i trusted her, so i wondered if she was right.

but whether or not they were related, the years during which i stifled my tears were followed by the years during which i struggled with what i later realized was chronic depression.

stifling my tears was not an option.

instead, i felt ashamed of them.

so many stories of being too much.

maybe you have your own stories?

i am tired of caring about being too much when, it seems, too much is a cage.

a cage designed to keep us small.
a cage that has somehow become normal and accepted.

we cage ourselves.
we cage each other.

consciously and unconsciously.

i love watching my niece and nephew; they are a beautiful example of too much.

not in the way we think of it: we’re too much and we should be less.

i mean in the way that everything spills out of them in an unrestrained exuberant expression of unapologetic & honest aliveness.

too much feels closer to enough.

i am reminded of something the mad hatter said to alice.

“You used to be much more… “muchier.” You’ve lost your muchness.”

i am writing this in celebration of too much.

here’s to too much.

here’s to liveliness & boldness & joyful abandon & joie de vivre.

here’s to grabbing life with both hands and living with gusto.

here’s to loving too much & laughing too loud & dreaming too big & shining too bright.

here’s to being too much of anything and everything.