In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope

by Rana Awdish

We never allow a failure, however small, to be the end of the story. It’s always the beginning of a better way of being.

Shame doesn’t strike like a fist. It rots its way in. Shame unravels us at our most fragile seams. It burns holes in our façade and allows light to shine on our self-doubt. It whispers to us, reminding us that we are imposters and, by the way, are not actually fooling anyone. It’s unique in its devastating ability to make us feel exposed and worthless. Compounding that, our training bludgeons out of us even our ability to have empathy for ourselves. We learn to stop feeling our feelings, just as we are trained to disengage from the feelings around us. We may try to delete the feeling, like an unflattering photo. We may dig a hole and try to force it in, like a rigored corpse. Some of us may attempt to submerge it, or rebuild the tower of ourselves on top of it. But it remains the foundation, contaminating the groundwater and corroding through every layer.

In choosing to carry forward and honor each loss in that way, I felt I was keeping a small piece of them alive. As if I could catch some fragment of the light they’d emitted even through the darkness, like fireflies in a mason jar, and use it to guide the way forward.

They were my soil, physically holding my anxiety so that the nidus of hope buried within my debris could grow in the direction of the light. I learned from them that relationships can shape us, that we grow in the shape and form of the cast they generously supply. That we can allow ourselves to be supported by an enveloping mold in the hands of others.

Our greatest gift is, in fact, our ability to be absolutely present with suffering. To allow it to transform us, and, by holding the suffering of others, transform it for them as well.

It is possible to be both broken and incredibly strong. We can be wounded and in that space find more cohesion and wholeness than we knew possible. But only if we are willing to acknowledge and confront the cracks.