Tag: motherhood

“I know what I have to do now. And, I keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?” – Cast Away (Tom Hanks)

There are still some days I wonder how the hell I got here, how I made it at all. I think if you were to sit and make a list and really tally it all up, you would be shocked that I ever made it to my 21st birthday.

And yet somehow, in spite of all my self-destructive behavior and my bad decisions and my blatant attempts to put an end to my own misery, I survived. My friends and family clung to me and refused to let me go. My heart kept beating. I kept breathing in and out. And life kept moving me forward, pushing me toward something I could neither see nor understand.

Pain is a funny thing. It grabs hold of you. It seeps into your pores and spreads like cancer, burrowing so deeply into your soul that you forget what life was like without it.

I spent a lot of years swallowing my pain, burying it deep. Like many people, I fooled myself into thinking that I could hide it, keep it locked inside and forget about it. The thing about pain is, it always finds its way out. Sooner or later, it always comes bubbling to the surface.

You can’t ignore pain. You can’t fight it. You can’t wish it or medicate it away. It took years for me to figure that out, and I was nearly destroyed (more than once) in the process. The only way to find relief from the pain you carry is to confront it, head on, to stand up to it, face it, embrace it, and let it go.

Pain is shortsighted. It blinds you from seeing anything beyond it. It blurs the bigger picture. And the hardest thing to realize when you’re caught up in it, is that pain is temporary. It won’t last forever. It can’t rain all the time. Wait long enough and the sun will return.

Hold on. Because someday, you’re going to see the bigger picture, and it’s going to take your breath away.

Here’s a glimpse I got of mine…

Yeah, that was worth waiting for. 🙂