The challenge? Write a story in exactly 6 sentences based on Denise’s one word prompt: LINK. Visit, comment, and write & post your own on  Six Sentence Stories  

Well, what shall I have on this mostly fine morning, to remind myself of how loved and deserving I am, even if don’t always feel it? 

Annamarina had been on massive self-improvement protocols for more years than she could shake a stick at, much less remember, and Atkins, Love Languages, Five Minute Meditation, Thirty Minute Thigh Busters, Speak Your Truth and Mean It, Snail Trails, Brain Ballooning, Scream Therapy, Let Go With Lego, Vivacious Volunteering, Sexual Revolutions With Sammi, Red Hot Horticulture, Gothic Grammas & their Gyrating Gargoyles, Martha’s Money-making Muffin Tops, Wholly Angelicus Heavenly Potions, Tad’s Brews and Bro’s, and Bertha’s Blessed Book Club hadn’t done a thing for her; they’d never provided that essential magic, missing link that connected her to an identifiable and stable group of “Her Peeps.”

She’d met a lot of interesting people along the way, and found she could talk, and especially listen, to just about anybody, and one or two from each group had kept in contact with her over the years.

She’d finally had enough and decided to not really care anymore, but instead, fill her remaining years loving and supporting herself, starting today.

So when Annamarina got up this morning, her cat knew something had changed for her mistress: she wore the red dress and silver gladiator sandals with no pantyhose and no panties, she let her hair flow free instead of tying it up in a tight topknot, she grabbed the sparkly scarlet purse instead of the sensible brown that was large enough to fit her laptop, and her smile as she breezed out the door was relaxed and sparkled, ready for adventure.

She finally knew what the kitty had known all along: Annamarina was perfect and imperfect, just as she was, and was meant to be.

© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2023)