You Don’t Look Like What You’ve Been Through

It’s a phrase my friends and I often say to one another - women who have faced some of life’s hardest challenges. We say it as encouragement, but also as truth. We really don’t look like what we’ve been through, and I’m so proud of that.

But how does that happen?
How is it that some people seem to wear their pain for years? The sadness worn on their faces, the bitterness that spills into their words. While others emerge softer, wiser, even more radiant than before?

It’s a billion-pound question, with no single answer. Yet it’s something I find myself pondering often when I meet new people, or reflect on my own journey through hardship.

For a long time, I believed I would become the sum of the difficult things that had happened to me, that I’d grow cold, guarded, maybe even resentful. I remember praying that my hair wouldn’t fall out from the stress I was under. It sounds superficial now, but in that moment, it symbolised my awareness of just how much the weight of my circumstances could impact my health.

So I made a decision early on: to support myself through what I could control; exercise, good food, and sleep (which, as a solo parent of two small children, was relatively out of my control!).

Now, looking back over the past two years, I can confidently say this: I am not the sum of the hard things that happened. I am the sum of the healing that followed. The resilience that grew. The new experiences and miracles that took root in the aftermath.

Recently, I heard a historian speak about surviving the Holocaust. He said he never took on the identity of a Holocaust survivor, even though he was one. Instead, he viewed his life as a constant evolution, shaped by every experience, both good and bad. He admitted he’ll never truly know how much the Holocaust affected the course of his life, just as he can’t measure the impact of moving to England in his twenties.

His words struck me.
We don’t have to take on the identity of the hard things that happened to us. They are part of who we are, but not all of who we are. Each experience, joyful or painful, continues to form and reform us.

So if you’re struggling with where you are right now, pause for a moment. Ask yourself how you want to feel. Then gently explore what new experiences might begin to bring about those feelings. You are not bound to your past, you are free to move toward what is new.

You are wiser now.
And you carry within you a deep, powerful resource: the strength that comes from having lived, healed, and kept going.