Good OvercomesSample

We all must make a . . . pivot from “I” to “we” if we want any hope of recovering from setbacks, disappointments, and trauma. I had to be willing to look beyond my personal pride in tackling every obstacle that came my way and understand that some challenges are just too big to take on alone. Accepting help does not make you a burden; it makes you part of a village, a web, a network, a family of people whose lives are interconnected, come good or bad. There are going to be moments and circumstances that disrupt your life in ways you could have never imagined, but you can’t shut yourself off from the rest of the world. Self-reliance is a beautiful trait, but only in moderation. Your journey is your own, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other people who want to make the way easier for you. . . .

Sometimes we go through the unimaginable, but it’s those very experiences that give us the drive, the reason, and the passion to go out and make a true difference in the world. Without that shake-up, we may never gain the perspective or wisdom to live into our full capacity. There’s an old expression: “God never wastes a pain.” I can see now, years down the road, how true that was for me. My trauma was the soil from which something beautiful would grow; I simply had to trust, wait, and keep responding to life with hope. At the time, of course, I was so consumed by the struggle that it was hard to imagine anything good coming from my pain, but that’s because my vision for myself was still hemmed in by past constraints and ideas. When old parameters are stripped away, we often find that our future is infinitely greater than anything we might have dreamed otherwise, and our potential is utterly limitless.