You Are A Story Worth Loving

Scars are the wisdom where our wounds have healed.

The thing you rarely recognize about healing is those wounds become scabs and those scabs become scars. Eventually, the scars start to fade and one day you realize they’re not at the forefront of your mind—or perhaps you forget they’re even there at all. The scar is a gentle reminder that it happened, but you no longer allow it to affect you the way the open wound once did.

For me, the day I looked my spouse in the eyes and said, “I do,” was never a day I imagined him hitting me. I never imagined him throwing me on the couch and punching me in the head or dragging me out of bed and kicking me between the legs while my child was sleeping next to me.

I never imagined myself being married and having a child of my own yet finding myself standing outside of an abortion clinic. Having to choose between keeping my family together or losing it all and becoming the single mother of two tiny babies. The truth in that story still haunts me.

I never imagined myself being arrested and behind bars, accused of the very things my husband did to me. After my arrest, it took another four months before I asked anyone for help—before I contacted the Army and found my voice to utter the words, “Domestic violence.” My voice had long been replaced with his voice telling me, “No one will ever believe you.”

The “happily ever after” I clung tightly to was not normal. Abuse, in any form, is never normal.

Over the years I have unraveled my story of shame, unworthiness, and guilt. It used to be a daily battlefield in my mind, and honestly, there are times the betrayal still shakes me. That’s the thing about trauma, PTSD, grief, and pain. When you hit rock bottom, those feelings demand to be felt.

And then there are times when rock bottom doesn’t hit back. A rock bottom where you know there is no possible way you can fall any deeper but you keep falling. You get sucker punched in the gut when you least expect it and are forced to look at yourself in the rubble. The mess. The chaos. You realize there are so many more mirrors at the bottom with shattered, jagged edges forcing you to look at a reflection with no idea who is staring back at you.

I am not here to cover up my rock bottom.

Looking back on the last ten years of my life, I never imagined one where I could stop pretending. A life that allowed me to show up simply as I am.

I never imagined there would be a day I understood what it feels like to no longer breathe toxic air. To feel that flicker of light that warms my heart and gives power to my voice. That I would tell my story and my story would resonate within the hearts of so many others. The very stories that kept my voice silent and my truth wrapped in fear.

I never imagined I would eventually be strong enough to get through it all and come out stronger on the other side. That trauma, grief, shame, pain, anger, hurt—this rock bottom that never hit back-—was the very thing that would propel me forward and allow me to grow.

I know there are days you feel the weight of carrying your own body. You feel the pressure of rock bottom when you simply want to be able to exhale. But the truth is: You are made up of story. You are made up of so much more than your broken, messy, pain, scars, and shame.

There is beauty to be found in the rubble, and the healing is found in the rebuild. That brokenness you feel? Those stories you carry? Let them crack you open to expand into something bigger.

Hitting rock bottom does not mean you’re broken. Instead, let those scars tell the stories where rock bottom became the very foundation upon which you rebuilt your life.