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“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

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Sorrow is not something that is often talked about.

I’m not referring to the pain of losing a loved one, of letting go of something dear to our hearts.

I’m talking about the melancholy of life. The trauma we carry with us that we are yet to identify. The subconscious fears that our wounded inner child doesn’t want to let go of. The endless conditioning that is pushed upon us, telling us how to be a “normal” person in a “normal” world.

We rarely talk of things that happened to us—the things that hurt us on such a deep and profound level. In truth, I’m not even sure most of us are even aware of such things that harbour deep within our beings.

Unfortunately, we do not learn how to dive into the depths of our trauma and resurface with love in our hearts the same way we are taught how to get a job and make a living. Many of us are not aware of how magical our own pain truly is.

We refuse to dig deep; we remain at a surface level of consciousness of ourselves and the world that surrounds us. We fear what we may find once we begin to question the normalcy of life. We accept the challenging times for what they are and wait for them to pass, until a time where we are happy once more.

But sorrow should not be thought of as a means to the end. It is not something we go through while we wait to feel okay again. Melancholy is beautiful. It exists within all of us, and we each have the power to harness our pain and transform it into art.

There shouldn’t be shame surrounding what is difficult for us. There shouldn’t be shame encompassing the things that unleash our childhood trauma. It is only our responsibility to hold ourselves through our pain and turn it into magic.

Honestly, suffering is useless if we don’t harness its capacity to heal. There is power within sitting with ourselves—our fears, beliefs, and conditioning—and listening to what our unconscious mind is trying to say. We need to hold a safe space to understand why our unconscious is saying these things. Where is it stemming from? Why is it precipitating so much anguish?

Listening to our inner voice and revealing the root of our pain is not an effortless journey. It’s messy and complex and extremely painful to sit with ourselves while it feels as though desolation hinders our ability to be ourselves. But to be aware of the roots of our own harmful beliefs and traumas is the first stepping-stone to healing them. To be able to transform our struggles into art we must begin to heal our brokenness.

This brokenness exists within all of us, and we all deserve to acknowledge the parts of us that are hurting. We are here as human beings to let ourselves fall and break so that we can then rebuild.

The beauty of us all is in the way we piece ourselves back together.

The beauty of our sorrows is the way in which we choose to carry on in this life after we shatter. It’s in the way we choose to love even more deeply than before. The beauty of our pain comes from our strength to be soft while we crumble, despite the screams to be rugged and withdrawn.

But mostly, we turn our hurt into art by befriending the suffering and letting it guide us to a place full of so much more love, joy, and wisdom.

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