I have been thinking a lot lately about all the pain and heartbreak that I have lived through, and I keep coming back to the same quiet realization that things were never as random as they seemed to me at the time. There were seasons of my life that felt so heavy, so unfair, and so dark that I honestly did not know how to keep going, and yet something kept pulling me forward. I see now that those were not just endings, they were beginnings dressed in uncomfortable clothes, and sometimes that divinely woven thread was not easy to notice. So many people I care about have been sitting in the middle of situations that look painful from the outside, situations where someone is bleeding, hearts cracking open, lives looking like a mess on paper, and I keep thinking about them with so much tenderness. Because I believe these moments are not punishment, they are invitations. An invitation to grow deeper, heal harder, and see love in a way most people only get close to when everything around them has finally become quiet. When you feel like things are falling apart, I want you to consider, gently and without pressure, that there might be something growing underneath all that silence.
Here is the part that matters most to me and probably the thing I wish somebody told me when I was younger and hurting more often, your heart belongs to you first and foremost. What we do with our relationships is not anyone else's story to hold and I have been so guilty of caring too much about how things looked instead of how they truly felt inside, for myself and for others. People get trapped in loops of resentment and fear, and those loops tighten every time they let guilt steer their choices instead of their own inner voice telling them who they are and who they wish to be. I carry a lot of hope in that, because being an older woman who has chosen herself again and again taught me something quietly powerful and radical, happiness was never supposed to sit outside of you. I am genuinely content right now even while the world throws so many things at me, and that peace did not arrive because I found someone to fill every space, it arrived because I became capable of giving love outward without making that the source of my worth or my safety. The moment you understand that you get to be happy on behalf of the ones you love, not in competition with them, a weight lifts and you feel so much lighter. So if heartbreak is what is sitting in front of you today, do not turn your back, let it speak, learn from it gently, and then move in the direction where more love already lives within you, and you might be surprised how quickly joy catches up with you. Keep going. Be kind. Be honest. And spread the love like your whole world depends on it.
