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I have been there…

Those were dark days. I often wondered, is this what hell looks like?

Grey skies, grey days. The sun is unable to break through the darkness.

Every waking hour felt like an effort to keep myself together, and somehow get through the day. I was barely surviving. One foot in front of the other. Go to work.
Smile. Talk to people. Complete the mundane tasks. Come home.
Do it all again. I had to show up. I had no choice.

I was a single mother, raising a child alone, without support.

So I gathered whatever strength I had left for him.

I didn’t feel like I mattered. But he needed me.

I couldn’t understand why life had to feel so incredibly painful.

I remember thinking: If this is what living feels like, I’m not afraid to die.

Anything had to be better than this miserable existence.

I even set a day when I would leave this hollow, dark void people call life.

Maybe life is wonderful for some people.

Maybe some people find happiness, joy and fulfilment...

Maybe I’m just not one of them. Maybe I’m the statistic.

And so the years went on.

I found different ways to numb myself, to escape reality, to not feel.

Because when you don’t feel, somehow you think you can keep going a little longer.

My child needs me. So I marched on.

I wondered:

Have I hit rock bottom yet, or is the worst still to come?

And nobody knew. That was the strange part.

The outside world saw someone who seemed fine.

Stylish clothes. Makeup. A toned body.
Funny. Friendly. Chatty.

I wore the mask well.

Nobody saw the battle underneath.

And isn’t that how so many of us live? We learn how to function. How to show up.

How to smile. How to get the job done.

We become so good at fitting into the world that we forget we’re human beings—not machines designed to simply keep going. I could have continued that way.

Slowly approaching the abyss. But something happened.

Somewhere, deep inside me, there was a spark. A tiny, almost invisible, barely glowing spark.

But it wanted to live. It wanted to glow brighter.

And somehow, I decided:

Maybe I need to try. I didn’t know how. I didn’t have a plan.

I didn’t have all the answers. But I knew I couldn’t keep living the way I was living.

So I started small. Something as simple as taking vitamin D.

Then I started looking at what I was putting into my body. At the time, I was eating mostly junk food. Pizza, chocolate, ice cream. I loved it.

After smoking marijuana, my appetite was ferocious. A carrot wasn’t exactly going to satisfy that craving. So I ate. Then I exercised for hours to try to burn off the calories.

I was running on empty, my body was depleted. My brain wasn’t getting what it needed.

My gut wasn’t healthy.

On top of that, I was carrying loneliness, stress, pain, trauma and years of survival.

It wasn’t one thing breaking me down. It was a cascade of things.

And that taught me one of the biggest lessons of my life:

Sometimes we are trying to fix the wrong problem. We think we need more discipline.

Another diet, another workout, another motivational speech.

But sometimes we need to step back and ask:

What’s really going on underneath all of this?

So I started becoming aware. Aware of my thoughts, my feelings, my habits, my environment. The way I ate. The way I treated myself.

And then I changed little things. Nothing dramatic.

Little things. One change. Then another. Then another.

And slowly...

Something started happening.

I started feeling a little better. And when I felt a little better, I wanted to change a little more.

It was like watching someone who had been too weak to walk slowly discover the world again. One step. Then another.

Suddenly, there was colour in my black-and-white existence.

As my health returned, my energy returned. As my energy returned, hope returned.

And when hope returned, something I hadn’t felt in a very long time came back too:

I wanted more from life. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to wake up. I wanted to feel alive.

I wanted to see what was possible for me.

I wanted to become the woman I knew was still somewhere inside me.

And that’s how my journey began. Not because I knew better.

Not because I had all the answers.

But because I was so tired of living in misery that I knew:

I had to find a way out.

And this is what I wish someone had told me back then:

You don’t have to change everything at once.

You don’t need to see the whole path. You just need enough light to take the next step.

Then another. Then another.

And eventually, you look back...

And realize you’re standing somewhere you once thought you’d never reach.

You became stronger.

And that’s what happens when we stop running from our pain and start facing it.

We learn. We grow. We process. We mature. We become more resilient.

We discover strength we didn’t know we had.

And perhaps most importantly...

We learn that we can survive the storms.

Because we’ve already survived one.

So when the next storm comes, we don’t face it as the same person who entered the last one.

We face it with experience, with wisdom, with scars, with strength.

With the knowledge that we have survived before.

Your pain doesn’t have to be the end of your story.

It can become the place where your transformation begins.

If you’re in that dark place right now, I want you to hear this:

Your story isn’t over. I know it may feel hopeless.

I know you may not see a way out. I know you may be asking:

Why me?

Will my life ever get better? Do I even deserve better?

I know. Because I have been there.

And I am telling you:

There is still more in you. More strength, more life, more colour, more joy.

More possibility than you can see from where you’re standing right now.

There is always a way out of the darkness.

Sometimes you just can’t see it yet.

Keep taking the next step.

Because above the clouds, the sky is always blue.

Sometimes you just have to keep climbing long enough to see it.

And when you finally do...

You may discover something extraordinary:

The person you became through the struggle is stronger, wiser, and more alive than the person you knew yourself to be.

“Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.” — Mandy Hale