This Choice Makes All the Difference

You don’t “get over” the experiences and people and losses that most deeply alter your heart and soul. You don’t forget the moments where everything changed and you could no longer be the person you’d known yourself to be before. Those experiences and people and losses leave their marks. Scars you’ll always carry and bruises that stay a little tender to the touch.

They become a part of you, whether you want them to or not. The more you resist this, the harder it becomes to move forward.

They shape you, and that shaping gives you a choice: let them define or limit or mold you into someone who’s stuck or bitter or broken… or let them grow you into someone who’s stronger and wiser and more discerning. Someone who trusts themselves above all else, and who learns to find the wisdom in the wounds and the purpose in the pain.

We carry these experiences and people and losses forward with us, but we get to choose whether they’re a burden or a gift.

And that choice makes all the difference.

💛