Thanksgiving for the Difficult Road

Gratitude flows easily when life cooperates, but gratitude for the hard seasons like the ones that tested you, demanded more than you thought you had, those require a different kind of practice. If last year, month, or week was difficult for you, if you are still standing after everything tried to knock you down, that matters. The fact that you are here, reading this, means something survived. 

The difficult road taught you resilience. It taught you humility. Difficulty reveals how fragile stability can be, how quickly things shift, and how much of what you thought was solid was actually just favorable circumstances. But in that humility lives the strength of knowing you can’t control everything and showing up anyway.

It taught you compassion. You learned to stop treating struggle as failure, you learned that needing help isn’t weakness, that some days, just surviving is enough, and you likely became less quick to judge others’ struggles too. You understand now that everyone’s carrying something, and the best they can do looks different depending on what they are holding.

The difficulty taught you discernment. You learned quickly who shows up and who doesn’t, who offers support without needing your story to be neat, who stays when things get messy, and who makes space for your reality instead of asking you to soften it for their comfort. That knowledge helps you invest your energy more wisely now.

It forced you to slow down and trust that healing happens at its own pace. The pressure to hurry, to be fixed, or to have it all together is external noise. Internally, growth moves on its own timeline, and you learned to respect that.

You also learned to value small comforts. When life is hard, you stop taking things for granted. The difficult road taught you to notice things like a conversation that doesn’t drain you or a single day without crisis, to appreciate such moments and to build a life around them.

Most importantly, it showed you that you are stronger than you believed because you kept going and you learned that breaking isn’t the end. You can fall apart and still rebuild. You can lose almost everything and still find a way forward. Strength isn’t the absence of collapse but it is the decision to rise after.

The difficult road also clarified what you actually value. When everything gets stripped away, you discover what truly matters, and it’s rarely what you expected. For example, connection, integrity, the ability to look at yourself and know you are living honestly, and the ability to rest at night knowing you did your best.

The person you have become was forged in those hard moments. The clarity you have now, the strength you carry, and the trust you have built in yourself, all came from walking the difficult road.

You don’t have to romanticize what was hard, pretend it was good, but you can acknowledge that hardship was also a teacher, and the lessons you learned without shortcuts are the foundation you stand on now. If the past year broke you open, maybe it also revealed what you are made of.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Breaking​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ Free: A Different Path Through Unemployment

Unemployment is a term that denotes the absence of money in bank accounts. However, it also affects a person's self-confidence, self-identity, and social relations, and these changes are not visible to people who have not experienced such a situation. The hesitation with which one answers the simplest questions about work, the anxiety that one's opportunities are fading away, the building up of rejections that are becoming heavier with each passing day, this is how millions of graduates and job seekers all over the world live their lives.   For many university graduates holding degrees and having high expectations, the gap between academic achievement and the employment reality causes them a deep sense of confusion. After graduation ceremonies, the party ends, and the job search begins. The time that follows can be very long, and even years can pass: applications are sent without getting a response, rejections are received in a cold, automated language, and the feeling develops...
Read more

Alternative Routes When Traditional Job Hunting Fails

Being​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ without a job for a long period of time can break down your self-assurance and make you doubt your abilities. The time is passing by in the same way of looking at the mailbox, wishing that this time there will be a different outcome, but the truth is rejections are what we are greeted with or the fact that no one has replied to us. The sorrow weighs more and more each week, and as a result, a great many people decide to quit the quest, throwing in the towel and experiencing the feeling of being stuck and without any ‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌power. However, change is not coming from us; we are waiting for someone else to bring it to us. It is actually coming from ourselves. The very first step of looking for other means to have the first question of what to ask differently: what skills do you have that other people might need? What work have you done that you were paid for only in your formal education? Writing, tutoring, clerical work, and social media management are skill...
Read more

Beyond the Missing Paycheck: Understanding Unemployment’s Financial Weight

Losing one's job is not only the loss of money, but also the loss of that taken-for-granted confidence that rent will be paid, groceries will be bought, and the small certainties of life will stay. Every choice turns heavy; can this be afforded, should it be? Things that used to be a part of the daily routine, such as commuting, meals, and social plans, suddenly require negotiation.  Coffee is skipped, subscriptions are cancelled, walks replace rides, and meals are rationed. In areas without strong support systems, pride gradually erodes as dependence on others becomes inevitable, and the act of asking for help brings along the feeling of guilt. However, needing support does not equal failure. It simply denotes the management of a crisis with limited resources.   Experiencing unemployment changes one's life in a manner that is not limited to financial aspects only. For people who are just on the verge of a career, it is a puzzling loop: experience is needed to get a job, but w...
Read more

Unemployment​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ and Self-worth

The worst thing about not having a job is not always the lack of money, but rather the other things that come with it. The weird invitations that you have to pretend you didn't see, the lies that you start to tell to your face, and the slow, invisible weight of the sensation that you are falling while the world is just spinning.   You start to think of the price of every outing as if it were a math test. Friends talk about going to brunch, and your mind immediately goes to your bank account. You hear someone saying, “It is just coffee, “ and you think of what it must be like when coffee is not a sacrifice.   People think that you are free because you are not employed. Free to do errands, free to do favors, and free for emotional labor. It is not only the requests that upset you, but also the way they are made, the way they advise as if they were making a judgment: “Have you tried X?” “So, and, so is doing Y, maybe you should do that.”   You agree, smile, and get away with...
Read more

Trying​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ to Mend Even When You Have No Money

Breaking down emotionally can be costly. When the situation becomes so dire that the walls seem to close in on you and the weight of it all becomes too much to bear, the urge to ask for help is strong and almost overwhelming, like an emergency. However, when you look at your bank account, the numbers seem to answer back, and it is not the answer you were expecting. One therapy session costs what used to be two days of buying groceries. A gym subscription that could help you sleep is now something that only a few can afford. Even if the thing you want to do is simply meet a friend for coffee and talk over your problems, you still have to think it over, and negotiate with yourself whether you can afford that small comfort. Being without a job is not only the thing that takes away your income but also the one that dismantles the system that supports you to be together and in one piece. When you have a job, the taking care of yourself thing is something that is done in between or at the en...
Read more

Series 6: The Quiet Return: Finding Yourself Again

The Ones Who Forgot You Held Them Some endings are invisible. Some beginnings feel like remembering. This is the quiet return to yourself. A reflection on loyalty, silent sacrifice, and the quiet strength it takes to keep showing up when your presence gets rewritten out of the story. This is for the ones who spent hours on the phone, who let people into their space, and who gave without ever needing to be seen, for anyone who knows what it means to hold someone up and be forgotten in the retelling. Something cracks inside when the person you once carried starts rewriting history like you never existed. They talk louder now, move different, like struggle never touched them. You see the confidence, the curated strength, but behind all that noise, you remember the version they don’t talk about, the version that once leaned on you, borrowed your belief when theirs ran out, the one who needed help building, and you gave it without hesitation. You didn’t do it to keep score. You re...
Read more

The Real Shape of Freelance Work

There are often images of freelancing as being a life of freedom, which consists of having no obligations in the morning, being able to follow your own schedule, having coffee in your own company, and clients appearing as if by magic. This picture depicts an easy-going lifestyle where one can set their own rhythm, and this seems achievable by anyone willing to give it a try. The fact is that it is a different world: work that always follows you, deadlines that knock at your door even when you are not prepared, and silence that hits you especially when you need to have an answer.   Many people opt for freelancing after their traditional career paths have closed to them. Their applications get lost in silence; they don't receive interviews, and the waiting period stretches into months. Finally, the frustration of seeking someone's approval gives way to the decision of creating something on your own, even if the roadmap is unclear.   The job slowly becomes a round rather than...
Read more

When Work Disappears: Finding Ground Again

Rejection, for a long time, builds up in a manner that is not very apparent. Every rejected application or left without an answer email takes away a tiny bit of the confidence of the person until the hope that things will get better loses its glow. Going out and meeting people seems to get more and more ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌difficult.  Gatherings turn into minefields of potential questions, especially the one that always surfaces: "So, what do you do?" The instinct becomes deflection, redirection, anything to avoid acknowledging the gap between where you are and where you thought you'd be. The weight settles in gradually. Self-doubt finds every opening, suggesting that failure is personal rather than circumstantial, that capability was never really there.  After enough applications vanish without acknowledgment and enough silence follows outreach, reaching out stops altogether. Numbness feels safer than bracing for another polite rejection letter. But perspectives can shift. W...
Read more

The Quiet Edge of Self-Respect

This reflection is part of The Unscripted Self: Notes from the Interior, a series of honest essays about living without the script, choosing presence over performance, and staying close to what’s real. No one warns you that your own voice can be the loudest critic you’ll ever face. Respect usually gets framed in how we deal with others, what we tolerate, what we don’t, how we draw the line when something feels off. It’s about boundaries, red flags, self-worth speeches, but the way you treat yourself when no one’s watching sets the tone for everything else. Self-respect is quiet and doesn’t demand attention. It moves in almost invisible ways. It’s letting yourself rest without guilt after a long week that didn’t go as planned, choosing not to punish yourself for needing more time, more space, and more softness. It’s the tone you take with yourself when you fall short, honest, gentle, like someone you’d stay up late comforting, especially on the days you feel hardest to love. ...
Read more

How Job Loss Reshapes Connection and Identity

Losing​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ a job is a heavy blow that follows you long after the money is gone. The impact of the loss affects the funnel, starting with relationships and eventually affecting personality and social status, with these changes taking place gradually. It is, in fact, the change of others' and your own perception, which is shifted, i.e., a professional change of your circumstances.   Relationships that you considered strong may gradually become weak without you or your friends realizing the change. Nobody answers the text you send. Nobody invites you to their event. These little absences accumulate and finally, distance becomes apparent. There is now less interaction between two people who once could talk for hours. The shift in group interaction you belonged to changes as a result of others filling in the space you left, and they seem confident and stabilized, while you feel unsteady.   It becomes even more painful when the feeling of guilt takes the blame. You feel ...
Read more