When we feel like our dreams have died, we can’t help but to feel hopeless and stuck.

It feels like things will never get better, like we will never heal. But sometimes when we let go of something that meant so much but was so detrimental to our spirit, we get back everything.

If we are lucky, we end up in exactly the same place we were before life bottomed out.

Life gives us a kind of a “do over.” We find ourselves surrounded by the people we hid ourselves from for so long. Important people. Maybe we end up back in this spot right now where all those amazing people can be our mirrors and remind us of who we are.

And they will.

They will remind us of who we left behind when we gave up on ourselves. They will remind us that we are amazing.

Maybe right now, sitting in that awkward healing place where everything still hurts and the pain is vivid, we can begin to feel just a little stronger. It’s a shaky strength. Because being strong doesn’t mean we never feel weak. It doesn’t mean we aren’t vulnerable.

It doesn’t mean we don’t want to crumble along with the things that fall apart.

It means we are brave enough to allow ourselves to feel everything no matter how frightening those feelings are. We can slowly begin to notice when we are settling for far less than what we are worth. It empowers us to remind ourselves that it really doesn’t matter how we got here but rather where we point our feet to take our next step.

We realize our resiliency.

Being resilient means we can still believe in ourselves even when we’ve made the biggest mess of everything around us.

We try again because it’s the only thing we can do.

It’s okay to be tired; we don’t have to pretend that things are fine when they’re a mess. We can admit a broken heart and that we really want to love again, but right now, the best we can do is gather the broken pieces and gingerly place them back together, painstakingly and without time-frame.

We can’t control other people, whether they love us or hurt us. Whether they are for us or against us. We can only control ourselves—that other stuff doesn’t matter.

We have a choice to smile and pretend that we’ve got it all figured out, or we can be real and admit we’re in a place we’d rather not be. We can admit that we are afraid. Brave people are afraid. We can accept that those we love may not love us back and that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with us.

Loving doesn’t make us fools—it makes us human.

It makes us alive.

Relephant: 

How to Get Unstuck & Move Forward. 

Author: Margaret Aguirre

Assistant Editor:Aisling McAteer / Editor: Renee Picard

Image: pasotraspaso at Flickr