It’s okay to be struggling, even when things are going well. It’s okay that the bad days cast a shadow over the good ones, that the dark memories are hard to forget, that pain has a kind of hangover that takes the sweetness from the new dawn.

It’s okay to be hurting even when others feel you should be grateful, to notice the bitterness of loss, the empty spaces, the shadows at the edges.

It’s okay to be scared. To have trouble believing that momentary joy will stay. To doubt. To feel doomed and unworthy. To be numb. It’s okay to cry, to wrestle, to want to feel differently, to try and fake it and feel exhausted and alone.

It’s okay to crawl away broken somewhere in the night and confess the things that have become secret, shameful, impossible to share. To feel the shattered pieces of your heart pass into your throat and spill out of your mouth like shards of thick, smoked glass. To let go of the bright, unsullied image of who you might have been if you had not been hurt. To stop trying to become them. To be wounded. To grieve.

It’s okay to find peace there, to find hope there, to feel more than one thing. To find the candles that burn down in the deep darkness are beautiful, that life is complicated and bitter sweet, that we are all wounded and all hiding our own pain from the unbearable light. It’s okay to laugh again, to love again, to be hurt again. To face the world with a battered heart. To show up, even if you can’t feel anything. To be brave with broken dreams. To live, even if your story is not a triumph, not a happy ending, not a guide for others. To live anyway.

For all those who are hurting xxx