The beautiful struggle? What in the world could be beautiful about struggling? Well let me tell you – we should be embracing the shit out of the struggle. Because without it – life is simply a rut. Hear me out.

Struggle to Strength

By default – life comes with challenges. That’s a given. We have to deal with the idea of death. Loss of loved ones. Natural disasters, wars, divorces, fights, scams, health conditions, conflicts, miscarriages etc etc. Things aren’t always all that smooth, therefore accepting the hardships that come with being alive is an unavoidable part of life. There’s simply no other option unless we surrender and pack it all in… but hopefully we don’t want to do that.

While struggling is a word in our vocabulary that evokes negative connotations, I actually love the word and all that it stands for. There’s always a shinier side to the coin. You could see the struggle as painful and tiresome – your enemy. But if you look closer, you’ll realise that struggling is persevering. It’s pushing through, trying harder, working on it, and persisting. Struggling is fighting for what we want – keeping our heads above the water, kicking harder, and not letting ourselves go under.

In other words, struggling is never giving up. And that is why I call it beautiful.

Everything is Exactly as it’s Supposed to be

I know this might not be a perspective that everyone shares, and maybe it’s my privilege talking. But I believe that everything in life is just exactly as it’s supposed to be.

After going through some heavy, messy shit of my own a few years back, this was a sentence that kept popping up in my mind during conversations. ‘Everything is just exactly as it’s supposed to be’. During the roughest time of my life, everyone would keep saying things like ‘oh no, we’re so sorry things turned out like that’. Eventually, I got tired of the pity party, and I started to wonder ‘turned out like what!?’ I was still here, alive and breathing, moving forward, dealing with it and healing from it. Struggling? For sure. Surviving? Most certainly. And that was just it. I was surviving and getting through it.

This was not how life or anything else ‘turned out’. This was just an ordinary part of life. A bump in the texture. This struggle that I was dealing would later become just another part of me and my fabric…my story.

Snuggle the Struggle

We can’t control the future and we certainly can’t change the past. All we have is this moment, right here, right now. With this perspective, I prefer not to see my struggles as challenges holding me back. Rather I see them as little cheerleaders who are always by my side. Whether they’re a painful, irritating stitch when I’m sprinting, or a long and dragged out divorce which feels like a war, they all help me to learn more about myself. They encourage me to live fully through the ups and downs. They push me to be resilient, try harder, be calmer, and get stronger.

So don’t hate on the struggle. And don’t stifle it either. It’s a waste of energy. Instead, embrace it. Welcome it. Snuggle it in your arms and be grateful for it. Because at some point, you’ll realise that the very thing you were struggling with will be the thing that makes you the shiniest, strongest, and most powerful version of yourself. You’ll see.