10 Sep “irretrievably broken”
Shit. That hurts.
Have you ever felt irretrievably broken?
That was what they told me my relationship was, the attorneys: “irretrievably broken. You can’t get it back,” they said. You absolutely cannot glue it back together. Not even with the best Krazy glue you can find. (And that stuff is seriously magic.) Not even with magic. It’s broken. When I first read those words years ago, I read,
“You, Emily, are irretrievably broken. (And for fun…) You are done, kaput, over. You will never be healed, repaired, worthy, or worthwhile again. You have screwed up, failed, and so overwhelmingly sucked at life that you will never again be worthy of anyone’s time for anything.” (I have completely reasonable emotions, obviously. Don’t you?)
What do you do when the world (and you, yourself) seem to be irretrievably broken? When you’ve failed…again? When your son hangs up on you after telling you you’re the worst mother ever? When you find out that you’re pregnant…and your “boyfriend” says you need to “deal with it?” When you lose your job and have a family at home to support? When you find out your partner has cancer? What the hell then?
I want you to know: we have all felt irretrievably broken at some point. And if we’re talking to you about it that means we’ve survived. Survival isn’t glamorous. In fact, it’s ugly. It’s messy. It should not be given an Instagram or Twitter account, because survival does not have her ish together and she absolutely cannot hide it. “Sorry I posted a picture of my tear-stained face, with smeared makeup, no filter, and piles of laundry in the background, world. I was busy surviving.”
But that girl, Survival, she is the real deal. She is the toughest broad you will meet. And you always want her on your side. She will see you through no matter what.
Life has a way of making us leading us to just survival: feeling broken, and irreconcilably so. If you are taking any risks in life, if you are being courageous by any definition of the term, if you are bringing change to the world, if you are simply loving for real, with an open heart…chances are you will feel broken at some point. And–the even worse news–the more you dare to show up and be brave in your world, the more likely you are to actually be broken down by life.
My Muse, B. Brown, says it this way,
“If you’re going to show up and be seen, there is only one guarantee, and that is, you will get your ass kicked…That’s the only certainty you have. If you’re going to go in the arena and spend any time in there whatsoever, especially if you’ve committed to creating in your life, you will get your ass kicked…”
Dear broken people, You are the soldiers. You are the game changers. If you dare, you are the ones who will rise from the ashes and dance in the flames. You are down but you are not out. You are lost but not gone forever. You have fallen but you will get back up. You have been broken. And you will be put back together again. You are not the weak. No, you are the strongest of them all. Your mockers, nay-sayers, and haters will get louder as your strength grows. They must because your willingness to bare your soul and be authentic threatens everything they know. And that’s okay.
There is no such thing as “irretrievably broken” when it comes to who you are. Your emotions will tell you otherwise. And possibly, if you have the wrong people around, your people might even tell you otherwise.
But, braveheart, you will heal. You will grow. You will stand again. Your battle wounds will make you sexy. You marred cheeks will bare your beauty. Your dirty finger nails and pieced-back-together-heart will be the lighthouse that guides the other broken home.
So today is not a day for quitting. Today is not a day for believing lies. Today is a day to rise. Even if today rising is only lifting your face out of the dirt…for when you look up, there you will see the other broken who have gone before you reaching down to help lift you up.
“Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.”
{Rumi}
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