You won’t break. You’ll bend and return.
Let the ache be part of the process.
Some seasons test your shape.
Moments that stretch your heart in ways you didn’t expect. Days that feel heavier than your spine can carry. Conversations that undo what you thought was certain. Losses that leave you standing in the rubble of what you loved.
And in those moments, it’s easy to think: I will break.
But here’s what’s true, even when you forget it:
You are more flexible than fragile.
You won’t break, you’ll bend.
And you’ll return.
Not to who you were but to who you’re becoming.
Resilience isn’t the absence of struggle. It’s your relationship to it. And sometimes, resilience looks like crying in the middle of a sentence. Sometimes it seems like taking a breath before answering. Sometimes it looks like not answering at all, because silence is the only honest thing you can offer.
You don’t need to “bounce back” quickly.
You need to stay with yourself in the bend.
That space between who you were and who you’re becoming?
It’s sacred.
And yes, it will ask more of you than you planned.
It will ask you to release the illusion of control.
It will ask you to unclench from the version of your life that no longer fits.
It will ask you to soften into uncertainty and trust that the ground will meet you when you land.
But through it all, your shape holds.
It changes. It stretches. It shifts.
But it holds.
Because bending is not the same as breaking.
And recovery is not the same as returning to before.
Recovery is becoming.
So let yourself bend.
Let the ache be part of the process.
Let the stretch become strength.
And trust that when the moment passes and it will pass, you’ll still be here.
Different.
Deeper.
Wiser.
Still you.