I have never wrestled with a post more. I have written, rewritten, thrown away, went on contemplative drives, yelled at my computer, tried to make sense of it all and I have come to realize one thing: I am not fighting the post, I am fighting myself. Such is the process of writing from the middle…

My dear friend, Audrey, often says something to me that sometimes irritates me but I know she’s right:

“The only way out is through.”

I never wanted to be that person who had days where I was immobile, fragile, or debilitated. I never wanted to be the person who cried through every church service, in the middle of small groups, during coffee conversations. I didn’t want to be someone who carried pain.

We have this way of trying to escape our pain. Inside us there is this desire to learn to live outside of, away from, or past our pain. We think if we can resume normal life, it’ll somehow dissapate on its own.

My darling, this is not true.

I’ve been emoting my way through Cheryl Strayed’s book Tiny Beautiful Things where she answers letters from people who are troubled, scared, hurt, betrayed, lost, etc. So many of the writers ask the same question: how do I move on from here? Her answer is often so simple: You find a way to live in your new world where these things have happened and become part of you.

I recently had a similar conversation with my counselor. I get in this rut of thinking if I can just get things to look and feel the way they did before the storms ruined them, we would all go back to normality and somehow I could live outside of the after math.

That’s not going so well.

Last year, before the storms hit, my hair was long, my body was fit and healthy, my brain was sharp. Since then, all these things have changed – I cut 15 inches off my hair, had multiple surgeries, a concussion, pain in relationships, loss of friendships, deaths of dreams. I find myself fighting to feel normal. I will my hair to grow back and my body to be fit. I think that somehow, if I can physically feel normal, my insides won’t hurt so bad.

But the truth is, darling, my insides hurt. I cry through the church services and the small groups. I come late and leave early. Coffee dates are filled more with broken stories than with laughter. I don’t feel at all like myself. And yet, somehow I feel more like myself than ever.

Through the wrestling, the crying, the yelling, the pouring out of my heart, and the now tattered pages of Tiny Beautiful Things, I found a truth that struck to my core. I’ve been fighting it but every day it creeps in a little more.

I am, at this moment, a culmination of all the things I’ve experienced – what I’ve done, what has been done to me, what has happened around me. Who I am at my core is shaped by each of these things. It influences what I belive about myself, God, others, the world, life, death, light, and darkness. There is no getting around it. Experience shapes us.

Pain shapes us. There is no moving on.

We don’t move on. We don’t leave whatever happened to us in the past as if it doesn’t affect us. Of course it affects us. We cannot act like it doesn’t matter. It matters, or we would not hurt. There’s a difference between holding grudges and being scarred.

There is no pretending. There is no unloving someone, unfeeling hurt, unlosing something or somone of immeasurable worth. There is only finding your place in your new world that includes new pain, new loss,new scar, and most importantly: new growth.

There’s a deep honesty that comes with learning to accept our stories as reality and realizing that trials, pain, and loss have changed us. And there’s a treasure to be found in the place where we look at ourselves, battle scars and all, and see the warrior fighting within us – the warrior who continues to press on.

I believe the best thing I can do in life is find who I am now, and learn how I am going to live a full life not inspite of my hurts, but with my hurts. Many of those hurts came with invaluable lessons. This is me. This is what I have to work with. It is my choice to keep fighting her off or make her as beautiful as I can, right here, right now. I want to keep learning to find that person and love her to bits. I want to be kind to her, gentle in the pain, joyful in the triumph.

If I could tell you one thing right now it would be this: Find your “You”, culmination and all, and love them well. You’re worth it. Your insides are worth it. Your story is worth it.