Rohini Moradi | روحينى

How interesting is it that, for so much of our lives, we are an accumulation of what we’ve been told we are… until one day we realize we get to tell ourselves?

And selective hearing can really get the best of us.

For most of my life, I heard all the ways I wasn’t enough.

Through media. Through the chatter of peers who couldn’t quite accept the foreign student. Through beauty standards, expectations, comparison, and all the tiny messages we absorb without even realizing we’re absorbing them.

And somehow, we tend to remember the cruel things more than the kind ones.

But here’s what I’m learning:

Other people’s perception of you is not reality.

Sometimes you will shine in a way that makes someone else uncomfortable. Sometimes people will project their own fears, insecurities, limitations, or ideas of who you should be onto you.

Your job isn’t to become smaller so they can feel bigger.

Your job is to keep shining. With love in your heart.

To keep creating.
To keep being strange.
To keep taking up space.
To keep becoming whoever the hell you want to become.

Because eventually you realize something kind of incredible:

You don’t have to spend the rest of your life being who the world told you that you were.

You get to tell yourself now.

So, in case nobody has told you today:

You are fabulous.
Keep that light bright.

I’m cheering for you. 🤍

All photos from a fabulous shoot with @gingerfphotography about two years ago. Ginger and I are about to collab again so I’m going through old photos and getting excited. She is so talented and I love what we create together. A gem of a human.

And favorite gloves by @tessa_perlow

And we’re in Halloween season and I couldn’t be more excited!! 🎃