Face Your Suffering and You Will Face Your Strength

Through adversity, we will triumph

I remember internally punishing myself for feeling my feelings. Everything around me seemed to reflect that I should be more grateful, more positive, and even though I was trying my best I always felt like I was falling short.

Back then I fit the definition of a people pleaser and toxic positivity quite nicely.

Though I reached a point where I decided I wanted to change and be better. I decided to surrender to something greater than myself. I knew If I was to change I would have to look at myself and stop living in denial of who I wanted to be and who I knew deep down I was.

I knew I had to stop living in denial of my own suffering.

People were only reflecting small parts of who I was and instead of realizing this, I instead believed I was that person who was being reflected to me- I believed it was all I was.

Now I realize, I’m not that person after all. I am much more.

Those things were only ever glimpses of me.

I choose who I am and who I want to be. I am a mystery, even to myself.

I cannot be defined by my past, because I have outgrown it already. I cannot be what others tell me to be, because I am ungraspable, I am free.

I change every day as I walk my own path. I have learned that everyone has their own path to walk.

Face your suffering and you will face your strength. This sentence popped into my head as I was driving to the shops today. It was a divine message I needed to hear to keep me on track, to ensure I keep following the light in my heart and the rhythm of my song, and I wanted to share it.

I have met the devil already, drown in my darkness, I have been swept out to sea in the arms of the ocean quietly lulled to a peaceful death.

I have felt deep pain and I know the suffering of myself well and that of others too. Feeling others' suffering has been so familiar to me.

I thought I was doing the world a favour.

I wasn’t.

I’m choosing not to live like this anymore, I’m choosing to live in my strength because now I know it. I feel it build in me as I navigate the road ahead. I feel it sparkle in my heart and mind as carcasses of outdated beliefs litter my body.

Through adversity, we receive the opportunity to meet ourselves whole.

We are plunged into emotional depths and on many levels, this reminds us just how alive we are.

The essence of our suffering lingers with us, not to cause us fear, but to remind us of our strength- individually and collectively.

To give us the grit to persevere, the willpower to move forward, the gusto to put one foot in front of the other, the voice to speak our truth, and the courage to live it.

Through adversity, we will triumph.

We will return once more to love.