“So, several of your friends have told me the exact same thing in the past few weeks. Its interesting,” my husband said.

I waited, wondering what advice for growth I was about to receive…again.

“I’m not even sure I should tell you this,” he was obviously stalling.

“Now you’ve brought it up, so you have no choice,” I answered in my standard no-nonsense tone.

“Just please try to understand its supposed to be a good thing.”

The angle at which I raised my left eyebrow must have said what I intended, namely that I was willing to listen, but I was really not excited about hearing more criticism of how I have been handling the 3-year rough patch I’m still going through.

He dove straight in, “its nothing you don’t already know, because I know you’ve been working hard on your mental health, but I guess its starting to pay off.” He’s never really been one for quick and direct communication, so I let him wander his way to the punch line. “They just told me that you seem happy. Like, not trying-too-hard or making everything look good on the surface like you used to be, just…happy.”

My eyebrows changed position, right-side now raised in incredulity. Happy? I guess maybe I am. Some days. Others are still an intense struggle.

I suppose you could accurately say I’m legitimately happier, and more patient and accepting of my life and my self both specifically and in general these past few weeks than I have been for the majority of the past few years.

Down in the Trenches

I’ve had my fair share of struggles. Some days it feels like that’s the only thing I’ve ever known. 2020 was a special case of extra struggle. It started with bankruptcy, and wound its way through a pandemic, a couple of job losses, some legal trouble, and a botched surgery to boot. Throw in some family and marital drama, and one could say I’ve been handed more than my allotted amount of shit to shovel.

Its like I’m living in my own personal soap opera…and I really need to fire my writing team. This week, in the latest episode of Kait’s Crazy Life, something else really stupid and painful is about to transpire. Stay tuned to find out: Will she pick herself up again, or will she finally just go ahead and keep laying down there in the metaphorical dirt??

I guess I’ve gotten stronger over the years and the various instances of “ouch…again”. I used to make herculean efforts to lock away the pain and the broken pieces of myself, as if by keeping them out of sight they might just go ahead and disappear. Humans aren’t really good builders of leak-proof boxes though, especially not those that have as much painful emotional data in our hard-drives as I do. When you start mixing metaphors like a drunken sailor who can’t quite speak any of his 6 languages, its a good indication that your cracks are showing.

Perspective is Everything

Drunken sailors, metaphors, hard-drives, and leak-proof boxes not withstanding, there are some good takeaways from all that disfunction. I used to think of myself as broken, but over this year and all the soap-opera-worthy drama that has ensued, I’ve come to see it differently. I like to think I’ve come to see myself more clearly.

I’ve come to realize that a human being can never be “broken”. We are, by definition, a creation of a being higher than ourselves, and who are we to say what is right or wrong about us? That doesn’t mean there isn’t pain, or that we don’t have to work to create a way of being our version of “whole”. That, too, is the definition of being human.

We are all of us carrying around our own broken pieces. Some are very visible, and some are less so. What makes us feel and appear “broken” is how we relate to those pieces. Healing truly starts, not with fixing what is broken, but by accepting all the jagged edges and wobbly bits as a part of our own unique whole.

I may never be able to react with the same emotional equanimity to tough situations as someone who has not been dealt the childhood turmoil and emotional pain I was dealt. I don’t think that makes me “less” than someone who can deal with the tough stuff without feeling more pain, it just makes me different. It might even make me more, because ultimately I am called upon to work my way through past, present, and future pain with every new drama. I’m learning to love my fragile, broken spots in a way I never used to think was even a good idea, much less a feasible one.

To heal, you have to learn to love.

It falls to you as an individual to figure out what pains are reasonable to carry, and which ones you need to let go. Just wanting to be rid of them isn’t enough, there are some parts of yourself that, no matter your will, are as easy to get rid of as a lung or a kidney. You’ll lose something intrinsic to your survival by cutting them out. Even if you survive the surgery, you’ll never thrive without them.

Its been pointed out to me (not just my husband), that without my emotional fragility, my brokenness, I would not be the dynamic and creative thinker that I am. That my creative energy comes from the fact that I tend to feel more intensely than many people do.

Other causes of individual pain, as it turns out, are as easy to shed as a few inches of hair. Cut out the toxicity and the negativity that you don’t need to carry around with you, and you’ll suddenly have a lot more room and ability to deal with those things that need to remain a part of you. You’ll suddenly be free to see that you’re not “broken” so much as you are unique and in need of unique solutions to go about your very individual life.

Creative Solutions for Forward Momentum

I have defined a few of my own unique solutions to my “brokenness” over the past months, and if you trust the reviews of my husband and my friends, you might even say they are successful. Some of them are frighteningly obvious, advice you can find on every self-help Instagram account and Quora post. The rub with these is they are much easier to read about than they are to implement. The last less obvious solution is also hardest to achieve. Do it, and you will be unstoppable, no matter how many jagged and broken edges you have showing.

1 Acknowledge the Positive. In everything there is always a balance of good and bad. Many of us find it easy to fixate on what we haven’t accomplished or what has gone wrong. You can’t change these things, and dwelling on them only gives the negativity more power. Look at what was good. Maybe it was major, maybe it was only that you wore your favorite pair of shoes to the shit show. But if you look for something positive you’ll always find it, no matter the situation. I know this, because I do it, and I’ve never failed to find a piece of sparkle good even in my darkest moments.

2 Stop Forcing Goals on Yourself. I didn’t say don’t dream, plan, or look to the future. I am asking you, for the sake of your sanity and your self-worth, to stop creating concrete, time-bound, pass/fail milestones by which you judge your success.

If I look at the past 5 or so years of my life, I have literally failed at every “goal” I set out to accomplish. Yet, somehow I have kept moving forward and making waves in my life, personal and professional, that have created great positive change. I finally stopped judging myself by individual milestones and started assessing forward progress. Is it on a strict timeline? It isn’t. But it’s still forward and that is worth celebrating.

3 Learn Your Lessons. Struggle and pain are not meaningless. There is always something to take away that is bigger than the experience itself. One caveat here though; don’t force yourself to learn from every experience immediately (Seriously, pay attention to lesson number 2. That’s why I put it up there above lesson number 3). There are things from my childhood and my young adulthood that have caused me too much pain to address as they happened or even years afterward. I tried for most of my life to shut them away, which was the wrong thing to do, but it certainly served a purpose at the time, insulating me somewhat from the feelings until I was strong enough to face them. Now, with a little distance, I am finally learning from what happened and starting to trust who I was as my younger self. It gives a sense of peace to know that it may have taken decades, but that pain that I experienced wasn’t completely senseless. It’s part of my forward progress at this age and as I am now. It gives me hope that whatever I will encounter in the future, there will be a reason for it and understanding will come in its own way.

4 Truly Love Your Faults. Don’t fix them. Don’t rationalize them. And for F*k’s Sake, don’t ignore them. Once you have learned to love, you can decide for yourself which ones are worth keeping, and which are worth letting go. You are all of your parts, in whole and in pieces, and its up to you to make something beautiful of yourself. You can’t do that without love, you can absolutely trust me on this. Until you’ve learned to accept your faults, you will continue to feel and act broken.

Happy? I guess you could define me that way. If for no other reason than that I’m learning to be entertained by the ups and downs of my little lifetime drama. If it becomes entertainment rather than tragedy, its a lot easier to work with. After all, who doesn’t love a good soap opera??

XOXO,