I Wouldn’t Wish the Pain, But I Would Wish the Perspective

I wouldn’t wish this ache on anyone—not even on my worst enemy.
But the clarity?
The way grief sharpens everything until only what truly matters remains?
That… I’d wish on the world.

Because when you lose someone you love—truly lose them—
life is never the same.
There’s the world before.
And then there’s the one after.

Grief strips away the unimportant.
It silences the noise.
It burns through the pretending.
And what’s left standing is raw, sacred, and painfully real.

You see time differently.
You speak more honestly.
You stop saving joy for later.
You take the trip. You say “I love you.”
You hold people tighter and forgive more freely.

Loss teaches you how fragile everything is—
and in that fragility, you find the courage to live more boldly.
Not perfectly.
But purposefully.

I would never wish the pain,
but I’d give the perspective to anyone willing to receive it.
Because it wakes you up.
And if there’s anything this grief has taught me,
it’s that presence is everything.
And time… is the most precious thing we’ll ever hold.

Writer unknown

I sent this to my son once and he said “Mom that is me in a nutshell”.  It can be a blessing and a curse to feel more than others.  Your expectations can always be let down.  I miss you Billy and all that you were.  You were my favorite human .

Someone wrote this and it really sat with me ❤️

“The child you once were does not disappear. They do not fade into the past like an old photograph or dissolve with the passage of time. They live within you still woven into your fears, your longings, your habits of self-protection. They are there in the way your body tenses at a raised voice, in the way you hesitate before asking for what you need, in the ache you feel when love seems just out of reach.

Healing is not about leaving this child behind. It is about turning toward them with the love and presence they were once denied.

Trauma is not just what happened to us it is what did not happen. It is the touch that never came, the safety that was absent, the soothing voice that never told us, You are enough just as you are. When we experience wounding at a young age, we do not just lose a moment in time. We lose trust, we lose connection, we lose the full expression of who we were meant to be. The child learns to survive, to adapt, to become small, quiet, or pleasing anything to maintain attachment. And so, they remain trapped in us, frozen in time, waiting for someone to come back for them.

But no one is coming except you.

Healing is not about discarding the past, as if we could simply will ourselves into a new story. It is about remembering. Not in the sense of reliving pain endlessly, but in the sense of reclaiming what was lost. To truly heal, we must become the very presence our younger selves longed for. We must speak to them gently, hold them in their sorrow, let them grieve the love they never received.

We do not heal by rejecting the child within us. We heal by turning toward them and saying:

“I see you. I know how much it hurt. I know how alone you felt. But I am here now. You are no longer abandoned. You are no longer unseen. You are safe with me.”

This is the work: to break the cycle of self-abandonment. To stop running from the echoes of our past and instead meet them with tenderness. Healing does not mean forgetting it means integrating. It means that the child who once felt unworthy of love is finally given the love they always deserved. It means that the pain that once defined us becomes the doorway to our deepest wisdom.

And so, the question is not whether the child within us still exists. The question is whether we will have the courage to go back for them.”

Connected By Nature
Altar Of Earth
@highlight

Ernest Hemingway once wrote: “The hardest lesson I’ve had to learn as an adult is the relentless need to keep going, no matter how shattered I feel inside.”

This truth is both raw and universal. Life doesn’t pause when our hearts are heavy, our minds are fractured, or our spirits feel like they’re unraveling. It keeps moving—unrelenting, unapologetic—demanding that we move with it. There’s no time to stop, no pause for repair, no moment of stillness where we can gently piece ourselves back together. The world doesn’t wait, even when we need it to.

What makes this even harder is that no one really prepares us for it. As children, we grow up on a steady diet of stories filled with happy endings, tales of redemption and triumph where everything always falls into place. But adulthood strips away those comforting narratives. Instead, it reveals a harsh truth: survival isn’t glamorous or inspiring most of the time. It’s wearing a mask of strength when you’re falling apart inside. It’s showing up when all you want is to retreat. It’s choosing to move forward, step by painful step, when your heart begs for rest.

And yet, we endure. That’s the miracle of being human—we endure. Somewhere in the depths of our pain, we find reserves of strength we didn’t know we possessed. We learn to hold space for ourselves, to be the comfort we crave, to whisper words of hope when no one else does. Over time, we realize that resilience isn’t loud or grandiose; it’s a quiet defiance, a refusal to let life’s weight crush us entirely.

Yes, it’s messy. Yes, it’s exhausting. And yes, there are days when it feels almost impossible to take another step. But even then, we move forward. Each tiny step is proof of our resilience, a reminder that even in our darkest moments, we’re still fighting, still refusing to give up. That fight—that courage—is the quiet miracle of survival.

What’s the hardest lesson you’ve had to learn as an adult, and how has it shaped who you are today?

Don’t make yourself small.
Not for anyone.
If someone tells you
you’re too much…
too loud, too sensitive,
too fierce, too caring,
too intellectual, too optimistic,
too realistic, too logical, too emotional…
just smile and move on, my friend.
Clearly, they aren’t enough for you.
–L.R. Knost (written by)