Testing Frameworks

I'm about to say something that would've made me cringe a year ago: I started wondering if my worst struggles taught me things I couldn't learn any other way.

I don't know if I believe this yet. It feels too convenient, too designed. Like the kind of meaning-making people do when they need trauma to make sense. But the pattern kept showing up, and I couldn't ignore it.

Every breakdown, every limitation, every time my body forced me to stop—something opened up afterward that I wouldn't have chosen but couldn't dismiss. Not immediately. Not in some Hollywood transformation moment. But weeks or months later, when the acute crisis passed and my nervous system settled enough to process what happened.

Maybe it's just that crisis creates space for change by destroying what wasn't working anyway. Maybe it's that when everything falls apart, you finally have permission to rebuild differently. Or maybe struggle really does teach things that comfort can't.

I'm trying this framework on like a new jacket—seeing if it fits, if it helps me make sense of my experience without bypassing the real pain or pretending everything happens for a reason. Because I don't believe everything happens for a reason. Some things just happen, and then we decide what to do with them.

What I can say is this: the parts of me that feel strongest now weren't built through easy times. They were forged in the spaces where I had no choice but to find different ways of being. Not because suffering is noble, but because limitations force adaptation.

I'm still testing whether this is wisdom or just another way of making trauma bearable. The jury's still out. But I'm living like there might be something to it because the alternative—staying bitter about everything that went wrong—wasn't sustainable.

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*Peer reflection, not therapy advice. Your healing journey is uniquely yours.*