Gretchen, your words mean a great deal to me. I wish to tease this out and address it. I have learned long ago that those things which I harbor, which I have long feared to bring to daylight, someone else has experienced. Someone else can validate. I am not crazy, nor was it all my fault, nor was it some vengeful God who woke up that morning pissed off at me. As though I mattered that much, which I most certainly don’t.

Part of our sacred work as women, and those who choose to support us towards a healthier way of being, loving and relating, is to create space for those stories that terrify us in their brutality. There is forever going to be someone whose story is far worse than mine. While that saddens me on one hand it is always and forever a reminder that my compassion and mercy are required. That my willingness to be so caught up in my own story gets in the way of being useful. That those things that happened to me are not only terribly banal in their frequency, but not the horror they cost me, but also that they are there to make me valuable to others struggling with the same things.

This is the heart of true work. It costs to evolve. But if we are to be free of those hurts and angers that keep us tethered, we have to. Only then can we soar. Those wings are created out of the price we pay for our humanity, our understanding, our generosity of spirit, and our willingness to give up the “poor me” for “how can I help?” Angel wings are formed out of courage.