It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been betrayed or abandoned by someone you deeply cared about when you needed them the most, if you’ve spent years next to a narcissistic and toxic person, if you’ve been cheated on or if you’ve been through physical, emotional or sexual abuse—the bottom line is the same: you’ve been through hell and back.
You’ve been damaged by other people’s actions and that haunts you to this day.
The bottom line is that sometime in the past, you went through a certain trauma that left inerasable scars on your heart.
A trauma that crushed you into pieces and forever changed the essence of who you are as a person.
However, against all odds, luckily for you, none of the things that happened managed to destroy you.
Even though you were convinced that you are damaged beyond repair, even though you were manipulated into thinking that you are good for nothing and even though you really started believing that you are not meant to be loved, somehow you got the strength to put yourself back together and to run over all the obstacles life has put in front of you.
Somehow, you got the strength to pick yourself up after you fell and to start the process of healthy healing after all the pain you’ve been through.
I know that all of that has happened to you is terrifying, painful and beyond words.
Let’s face it—it would shatter anyone, let alone the vulnerable girl you used to be.
So, the last thing I want to do is undermine the intensity and the significance of the pain and the impact it had on you as a person.
Nevertheless, I just want to ask you not to let it define the person you are.
Yes, the trauma you’ve been through shaped you into becoming the woman you are today.
Yes, it helped you grow and it made you a different person.
But it is not the only thing that matters about you and it’s definitely not the only thing to describe you.
Don’t get me wrong—I am not advising you to repress your emotions or to start acting like those events never took place.
I am not telling you to pretend as if they didn’t have any effect on you whatsoever, nor am I advising you to try and erase them from your memory because that wouldn’t be possible.
Instead, embrace the trauma and the pain it caused you. Accept it, look at it straight in the eye but don’t identify with it.
Do your best not to feel sorry for yourself.
Do your best to stop seeing yourself as nothing but a victim who overcame trauma because you are much more than that.
Remember—you are just an improved, fiercer version of the girl you used to be.
You are still a woman, a daughter, a friend, a girlfriend…
You are still someone who has a lot of potential, a strong woman who is capable of doing whatever she sets her mind to and a badass girl who has a lot to offer to the world.
You are still entitled to be happy and you have the right to feel other emotions besides sadness and anger.
You are allowed to have faith in a better tomorrow, allowed to be optimistic and to believe that someday, your life with turn out just right.
So please, don’t let this past trauma haunt you to this day.
Don’t let it control you even now that you’ve successfully overcome and defeated it.
I know that your path of recovery seems endless.
I know that there are times when you are convinced that you won’t make it and that everything you’ve been through in the past will get to you and eat you alive.
Nevertheless, every time similar thoughts go through your mind, remember that you’ve made it this far.
Think of all the progress you have made and continue pushing yourself forward, even when you feel like you can’t do it.
Every time you think of giving up and backing out on yourself, remember that you are not a victim.
Instead, you are a survivor, a hero and a winner. And you will make it out of this stronger than ever.
