Touch Down, Returning Softly

I came home this summer to the same birdsong, same air thick with salt and memory.But something feels different.

And I know it’s me.

For years, I’ve known how to speak my pain.

I knew the shape of sorrow in my mouth, the rhythm of hurt wrapped in words.

But expression is not the same as release.And now—now, something has finally loosened.

Minnesota changed me.

A year away from the islands, and I can feel it in everything.The way I say “I love you” before hanging up.

The way I reach for hugs more than I used to.

The way I eat slower, softer—even that has shifted.

I used to think if I stayed in Hawaiʻi, I would’ve been okay.

But I see now, that version of me wouldn’t have known this kind of softness.

She wouldn’t have known that healing sometimes looks like holding yourself without defense.

Like crying without apology.

Like being gentle with people even when you’re still learning how to be gentle with yourself.

I am softer now.

Not because I broke, but because I stopped bracing for impact.

This summer, as I sit in rooms I once collapsed in, walk roads I once dreaded, and pass places that knew me when I was only surviving…

I feel like I’m finally meeting myself.

The version of me who isn’t hiding anymore.

The girl behind the walls.

The woman who’s still learning how to stand without armor.

And this is where my writing will go next.

Into the letters I never sent.The messages I never found the courage to say.

The apologies that burned in my throat but never left my lips.

This homecoming is not just a return—it is an unearthing.

A quiet reckoning.

A place where grief might meet grace, where wounds might whisper their way toward closure.

To the ones I loved.To the ones I lost.

To the parts of me I buried—this summer is for you.

I’m here now.

And I’m finally ready to speak.

With ʻUhane From Mt to You,

ʻUhane Hawaiʻi