By giving meaning to hardship through words, you can structure a life around your values, your strengths, and your intentions. You get to choose how you show up. I created these affirmations to help us fully inhabit ourselves and our more difficult experiences, so we can tell a story of strength and perseverance.

Over a decade after losing my brother to suicide, I still wonder “Why him?” and grieve for what could have been. We need to be allowed those times, too. We need to say “Let me be angry.” “Let me have this pain.” “Let me find my way through it.” We must be allowed to be real and human. There is always work to be done.

This is a prayer for peace for all of us who've known the power of grief and the balm of friendship, who've been touched by the hands of despair but who still choose life. Wherever you are now -- wherever you've been and wherever you're going next -- may you open your heart to the freedom that's still available to you, whatever it is you decide that freedom means for you.

Letting yourself not just navigate this season, but seeing yourself as inherently part of that process is a radical way of looking at life. It changes almost, if not every single thing. It's a way to find your footing in the world and in this moment, a matter of forgiving yourself and the past enough to move forward.

Losing a loved one to suicide shapes your life forever. Even knowing someone who’s lost someone to suicide can change your life. Suicide loss presents a unique kind of grief, complicated by unanswered questions, stigma from those who don’t understand, and sometimes immense guilt. It’s uncomfortable to talk about, which is why we should. Today, for me, talking about suicide loss means writing a prayer for those who have survived it.

Coping with trauma, what happened in you in response to what happened to you, is a tall order. Especially when you’re coping by trying different ways to heal it rather than hide it. If you’re one of those trying, I bow to you, and I share these quotes about healing from trauma with you, because of who you've become.

There’s a reason, a time and place for everything we feel. We hurt because it mattered. We grieve because we’ve loved. Being human means being awake to every season and storm we walk through, and finding what helps us get through “the worst” without giving up or turning to stone. See if these grief affirmations help you do that.

This poem is another take on the concept of healing "from" trauma. Whether it's loss or illness or some other excruciating pain you've endured, the truth is that some kinds of pain don't ever go away. You can't go back to the life you had before. You can't go back to "normal" - but you *can* lay claim to your new life.