You Are Much More Than What Ever Broke You

You are much more than what ever broke you. Much more than your wounds, those that from time to time bleed again because you have not managed to heal them completely, those that are part of the seams of your memory and that have a bad habit of appearing to remind you that bad days also exist.

You are much more than everything that made you suffer and that even unintentionally marked your life history. More than the bitterness of your tears, the feeling of suffocation in which you sometimes submerged yourself and the pain resulting from your effort to continue fighting each day more and more.

Because although suffering cannot be erased and is part of your journey, your strength also characterizes you, even if there were times when it disappeared or staggered. Believe me, you are braver than you imagine and more incredible than you think, you just have to learn to look at yourself.

Your great strength: resilience

Although life has not always been easy for you and your path is full of obstacles, holes and traps, you cannot define yourself solely from your wounds, from that pain that enslaved you for so long and that anguish that invaded every pore of your skin.

You know why? Because you are much more than what ever broke you. Your ability to recover also counts. Have you ever thought about the effort you put into getting out of that situation? In your ability to carry on despite the storms and put your pieces together one by one?

Beyond the fatigue, the exhaustion, your desire for nothing and that stabbing pain that you were dragging, you were able to continue without really knowing where, but with the faint hope of reaching solid ground at some point. Or at least to alleviate the suffering that prevented you from seeing beyond the darkness.

It’s true, there were moments of all kinds. Sometimes the surrender was one step away and other times the courage pushed hard, the truth is that you are here today and if it is due to something, it is your great capacity for resilience. You knew how to emerge despite the difficulties because deep down you knew that behind each one of them, you could find an apprenticeship.

Perhaps at that moment you did not understand it and why they hit you hard, but instead of immersing yourself in a spiral of responses that cleared them, you plucked up your courage and chose to move on.

The wisdom behind suffering

Perhaps you have not yet been able to fully heal your wounds or perhaps you are in the process of rebuilding. No problem. The path that goes through painful experiences does not involve fast walking, quite the contrary: it requires slowness, patience and awareness.

Or maybe yes, maybe you find yourself on dry land, after sailing through storms. Be that as it may, the important thing is that you see beyond everything you have experienced, that you delve into it and be able to extract learning. 

Often we flee from suffering because we know, or rather fear what it entails, the problem is that we are not immune to it and we cannot free ourselves from its clutches. We all suffer to a greater or lesser extent. So instead of focusing on trying to live without suffering, you should learn to experience it differently.

It is not easy, it is true, and more when it involves facing unpleasant circumstances and emotions, but what is the use of staying in ruins? Your reconstruction is possible. You just have to learn to integrate suffering into your life story as one more chapter, the one that is part of your story, but that does not only define it, because it needs the rest of the episodes to make sense.

Now, what does it take for this?

• Acceptance. Recognizing your pain and giving it a space is necessary so that you stop condemning yourself, to avoid that your day to day is marked by the ghosts of the past and you can illuminate everything that you keep inside you and that also defines you, such as your strength, your ability to fight, your will to live and continue to hope.
• You can also help yourself with the “why”. They often involve more learning in their responses than you might imagine.

The important thing is that you do not stay on the surface of your pain, that you navigate through it and keep in mind that you are much more than what broke you, that your life is full of chapters that only make sense together. Because your story is more than your wounds …