Built From Broken

There is a particular kind of woman who has been broken — not merely bruised, but broken — and who has, in the years since, learned how to walk again. You know her when you meet her. She is not loud about it. She simply cannot be moved by trivial things.

Post-traumatic growth is not a return to the woman you were. It is the emergence of a woman who could not have existed without what happened. This is not a consolation prize. It is, for many, the truest self they have ever met.

“She is not rebuilt. She is re-made — in stronger materials, with better hinges.”

Built-from-broken is a nervous system that has learned it can survive itself. It moves through the world with a peculiar softness, because it no longer has anything left to prove.