How I Turned the Worst Season of My Life Into the Thing That Set Me Free

Pain is not the end. Sometimes it is the doorway.

I was not always the woman you see now. There was a season, not so long ago, when I was not sure I was going to make it through. Not in a dramatic way. In the quiet, grinding way that no one talks about. Where you wake up every morning and put one foot in front of the other and tell yourself this cannot be all there is.

I was changing my son's nappy. My daughter was mid-tantrum. The person I trusted most was in the background making my life harder, not easier. And I looked at the situation and said out loud, to no one in particular: this is not how my story goes.

That sentence changed everything.

Pain Is Information

The worst seasons of your life are telling you something. They are showing you what you have been tolerating, what you have been pretending was fine, what you have been staying small to accommodate. They are showing you the gap between the life you are living and the life that is actually available to you.

That gap is painful. I know. But the pain is not the point. The point is what the pain is pointing at.

The Moment I Stopped Being a Victim of My Story

I want to be careful here because I am not dismissing what happened to me. What happened was real. The pain was real. The betrayal was real. I am not going to dress it up in spiritual language and pretend it was a gift.

But I did make a decision. I decided that I was not going to let what happened to me become the defining story of my life. I decided that the rock bottom was not where the story ended. It was the floor I was going to build from.

What Turning Pain Into Power Actually Looks Like

It looks like sitting with what happened long enough to actually feel it, not performing okay when you are not. It looks like getting honest about what the pain is showing you about your life. It looks like making one decision, just one, that says: I am choosing the woman I am becoming over the wound I am carrying.

Then it looks like doing that again the next day. And the day after that. Until the choosing becomes who you are.

The version of you on the other side of this season is not damaged. She is forged. There is a difference.

Recommended: Turn Your Pain Into Power (Book)  |  Available on Amazon

If you are in the middle of a hard season and you need a guide out, my book Turn Your Pain Into Power was written for exactly this moment. It walks you through releasing what broke you, reclaiming who you are, and rising into the most powerful version of yourself. Seventeen chapters. A whole new story. Find it on Amazon.

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