RESILIENCE.

What you have endured has changed you, but it does not have the power to indefinitely define or defeat you. Healing is absolutely possible, hope remains, and your TRUTH belongs only to you.

RESILIENCE is not the denial of what or who tried to break you. It does not mean acting as though everything is fine or denying the damage that was done. It is not the absence of pain, fear, grief, or complete exhaustion. It is the courage to keep moving forward while carrying open wounds and hidden trauma.

RESILIENCE does not mean “bouncing back” into the person you were before, that person no longer exist. It does mean rebuilding your life differently and becoming someone stronger, wiser, and more deeply rooted in his/her TRUTH after someone tried to destroy you. It means navigating new beginnings you were forced to accept, learning to trust again, searching for peace, and slowly learning to love yourself after others convinced you that you were unworthy of love. It is the strength to feel those things honestly, extend GRACE to yourself, and still choose...sometimes moment by moment...not to surrender.

I am still rebuilding. I am still healing. It is a daily journey and daily struggle, and I am almost certain, for me, it will be a lifelong one.

I am still learning how to be vulnerable without feeling unsafe, how to protect my peace without closing my heart, and how to believe that a better life is possible when the past has made hope feel so dangerous.

RESILIENCE is the quiet courage to choose healing and to choose rebuilding…even when that includes asking for help, or just simply making the effort to make it through the day. Survival changes you, but change is not defeat and survival is strength. Every step forward counts, including the ones no one else can see. Choosing to keep moving forward one step at a time, one day at a time, that is heroic.