Dear Broken Girl,
I know you because I am you. Although we’ve never met face-to-face, I know you. I know what makes you laugh, cry, worry, fear, and overthink. I know you as well as I know my mother, my sister, and my best friend.
See, Broken Girl, you and I share a bond. Perhaps it’s not a bond many women particularly want to share, but we do. I know we’d much rather be bonding over crazy schedules, weddings and baby showers to attend, and who is having a baby next. However, our bond is through the brokenness us Broken Girls share. Not an elite club by any means but its membership requirements do ensure we each know why we are, well, a member.
We bond because we know. We just know. We know the deepest of cuts, the purest of wounds. Our aches and moans are sobbed into the very pillow we go to bury ourself in just to escape even a brief moment of this brokenness. We bond through the overthinking we are doing, um… yet again. We bond through the rejection by ‘friends’ and amidst being isolated by family members because well, “You’re just too much.” Too much.
The words that send the gut punch of anxiety straight into a Broken Girl’s stomach. We bond through each painful, unplanned goodbye we’ve ever had to force ourself to say. We bond from the running off and pushing away of yet another attempt at love.
So many doors have slammed in our face while we naively stand there, feverishly knocking, “Hey! You closed the wrong door! I am behind it.” And foolishly, we wait. And we wait some more. We wait until, alas, the reality of the situation hits us. We wait for the door to ever so slightly budge its way back toward our security, stability, and self-worth.
And then we look down. We look down and see what remains of our shattered heart, scattered on the ground as if an act of war had just transpired in that very spot. The shock sets in. The panic. The ‘how could I have been so stupid and foolish again?” sets in. Each takes its oh-so-familiar spot in our self-esteem, daring us to allow its settlement there, yet again.
And then, we begin. We begin to rebuild. By this point, we are master carpenters, delicately placing each piece of our shattered heart back together once more. The comfortability this routine task takes is so automated, we barely realize we are repairing ourself again. But we do.
We do this because each Broken Girl knows how tragic the story would be if it didn’t offer some sort of victory. And because we are Broken Girls, we share yet another unique bond: the sisterhood of understanding one another better than anyone else can. As we begin our journey of returning to self-love, we notice one another along the path.
We wave a friendly hello to Hope. We nod to Warrior as she leaps over the hurdles that once knocked her down. We pat Resilience on the back as we see her going back over her steps, memorizing each one so as to never walk them again.
And then, we are stopped suddenly in our tracks as Reflection wraps her arms around us and says without speaking, “I’ve got you. You will survive this. This is who you are.”
So Broken Girl, take comfort in the community of your fellow sisters. We cheer each one on as she bravely jumps with faith toward finding her inner strength to trust again, and maybe… just maybe, love again.
by Rhonda Brown