When Your Pain Finally Finds Purpose

I want to begin today's episode with a thought that completely changed the way I viewed every painful experience that I had ever been through.

It's a realization that didn't come quickly though, and it certainly didn't come while I was in the middle of surviving the abuse.

It only became clear after years of healing, reflecting, and learning, and asking myself difficult questions.

And the thought is this, the moment you take more from the hardest thing that has ever happened to you than it took from you is the moment your life truly begins to change.

And I want you to let that sink in for a minute because on the surface, it almost sounds impossible.

How could I ever take more from something that nearly destroyed me? How could I ever say I gained something from years of manipulation, betrayal, gaslighting, lies, heartbreak? fear, and psychological abuse.

If someone had to ask me that while I was living through it, I probably would have laughed or cried or both.

Because when you're in the middle of trauma, all you can see is what it's taking from you.

It has an incredible way of making your life feel like a list of losses.

You don't sit around counting what you've learned.

You count what you've lost.

You lost your confidence.

You lost your peace.

You lost your ability to trust people.

You lost your sense of safety.

Some of you lost years of your lives trying to save someone who never intended to change.

Some of you lost relationships with family members who believed the narcissist's lies instead of believing you.

Some of you lost financial security.

Some of you lost your health because your body spent years flooded with stress hormones trying to survive in an environment that never felt emotionally safe.

Some of you lost careers, homes, friendships, marriages, or even relationships with your own children because of parental alienation.

Whatever your story is, trauma has a way of convincing you that your life can now only be measured by everything that was taken away.

And if we're being completely honest, that's exactly how it feels for a long time.

Healing doesn't begin with purpose.

Healing begins with survival.

When your nervous system has been living in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn for years, or for many of us decades, It isn't asking profound philosophical questions about meaning.