Note to the Reader:
This piece is a continuation — or maybe a step backward — from yesterday’s post.
Hell Burned Hallelujah
If that one was about now, this one is about how.
The story behind the strength.
The mess beneath the grace.
You don’t need to read them in order, but together, they speak to both the survival and the staying.
I don’t know what I expected after the burning.
Maybe clarity. Maybe relief.
Maybe some kind of reset that didn’t still smell like smoke.
But what I got was something else entirely:
Life.
Uneven, unexpected, unfinished — but life.
No one talks about how long it takes.
How survival isn’t a single moment — it’s a thousand quiet choices.
Some of them made when no one’s looking.
Some of them made when no one knows.
It’s not the flip of a switch.
It’s the slow, aching drag of breath returning to a body
that doesn’t quite feel like yours yet.
Some of the hardest parts came later.
After the moment passed.
After the danger eased.
After the world kept moving like nothing cracked.
That’s the part no one prepares you for —
the surreal stretch of life-after,
when the air feels heavier than it used to,
and you start carrying a story
you’re not ready to say out loud.
For a while, that story became my entire internal identity.
Not something I could let go of —
but something I had come back from.
And even though I didn’t share it,
what changed me wasn’t confession —
it was community.
People who would’ve accepted the truth
even if I had said it out loud.
People who made space for all of me —
including the parts I hadn’t named yet.
The hell-burn didn’t just destroy.
It revealed.
What stayed was quieter.
Stripped down.
But somehow more true.
There’s a version of me I found in the aftermath.
Softer, but stronger.
Lonelier, maybe.
But less willing to pretend.
Healing doesn’t always look like growth.
Sometimes it looks like monotony.
Like brushing your teeth even when your chest is heavy.
Like replying to a message you don’t have words for.
Like showing up in pieces and still being counted whole.
I used to think survival was the bare minimum.
Now I know it’s a holy rebellion.
I used to think healing meant going back.
Now I know it means choosing to stay.
That moment — the one that almost ended me —
went from being a title
to a theme
to a chapter
to a page
to a sentence
to a word
to a tool.
It’s not my identity anymore.
But it taught me how to breathe again.
There came a day — quietly, without fanfare —
When I looked in the mirror and saw who I was
in this moment,
not who I had been in that moment.
It wasn’t a relief.
It wasn’t even healing.
It was reality.
And maybe even — a reformation.
Again.
And oh — hallelujah.
Healing isn’t linear.
It doesn’t follow a script.
It doesn’t mean everything gets easier.
Some days I still feel like I’m carrying it all — the memory, the weight, the wondering.
Some days I still hold my breath without meaning to.
Some days I still have to remind myself that I’m allowed to be here.
This didn’t magically resolve.
It took work.
It still does.
The kind of work no one applauds —
like learning how to trust again,
forgiving myself for things I didn’t know how to handle differently,
and letting go of narratives that only ever kept me small.
It took looking at the truth without flinching.
It took surrounding myself with people who didn’t just want the strong version of me —
but the real one.
It took learning how to show up without performance.
How to rest without guilt.
How to speak honestly, even when my voice shakes.
It took learning how to stay.
Not in the pain — but in the process.
Not in the identity of what broke me — but in the slow, sacred becoming of what’s next.
And I’m still in it.
Still doing the work.
Still rewriting the story, one word at a time.
And every once in a while — a hallelujah sneaks out.
Not loud. Not polished.
But honest enough to echo.
There’s something else I need to say.
This isn’t always easy to talk about.
Not because I’m ashamed —
but because it still catches in my throat sometimes.
Because there’s a kind of silence that forms around pain
when it doesn’t fit the story people expect of you.
This happened to me.
To someone persistent.
Studious.
Determined.
The kind of person who keeps going even when it’s hard —
especially when it’s hard.
And that’s part of what made it so disorienting.
Not just that it happened,
but that it happened to me.
People will tell you it doesn’t make you lesser.
That it doesn’t define you.
That you’re not broken.
And I believe them now — but I didn’t always.
Because you can’t fully understand what it does to your sense of self
until you’ve been there.
And I have.
So I can say that — and mean it.
And just like any life-altering experience,
it’s a part of me now.
Woven into my bones.
In my DNA.
And that’s okay.
Because it gave me a means of empathy.
Of connection.
Of acceptance.
Of realizing that grace isn’t for the polished —
it’s for the people still becoming.
It’s a weight, yes.
But also a responsibility.
Not to preach it.
Not to perform it.
But to offer it — when it helps.
I don’t have to share the details to share the healing.
And when I do — in quiet ways, with steady hands —
it feels like grace.
It feels like presence.
It feels like a hallelujah I didn’t know I still had in me.
You will be okay.
Not untouched.
Not unchanged.
Not back to what you were before.
But okay in the way that means you found a way to live inside your own skin again.
Okay in the way that means grace got in,
and stayed.
You will be you.
Not a performance.
Not a perfect recovery.
Just you — honest, unfinished, sacred.
You will learn to navigate this life in a way that honors both the weight you’ve carried
and the breath you still hold.
You will be okay.
Because okay isn’t a finish line.
It’s a kind of faith.
It’s presence.
It’s acceptance.
It’s you, still here —
still becoming.
And maybe even…
you’ll thrive.
Not in the airbrushed way.
Not in the “look how far I’ve come” way.
But in the real, grounded, gritty way —
where thriving means you know your limits,
you own your story,
and you build a life that doesn’t deny your scars
but makes room for all of you.
That kind of thriving is possible.
And it’s already begun.
Hallelujah.
