On Overcoming Hardships and Trauma

“Never allow legitimate excuses to get in the way of your progress.” I copied down these words and taped the paper they were written on to the back of my closet door in 2013, after hearing them in a speech that changed both my personal and professional outlook. Each day since, my morning includes a visit with these words, which never fail to inspire satisfaction for the obstacles I overcame and eager anticipation of those I have yet to attempt to address or encounter.

I thank motivational speaker Jonathan Grant Brown for the sign on my closet door. He coined what is now my mantra throughout his story of setbacks and resilience. Jonathan’s mother abandoned him in a public park when he was 5. Life then handed him one disappointment after another until he began to use them not as reasons to fail but reasons to excel.

Listening to the way his story served as a catalyst for helping others, I was moved to think about my own story. I am myself a child abuse survivor. I’ve seen first-hand the destruction that alcoholism and mental illness can inflict on a family. There were nights I slept on park benches, covered in mosquito bites and took handouts from strangers just to eat. I started wearing makeup to cover up bruises, not because I wanted to fit in with my friends. Because abuse often goes hand in hand with the unwritten rules of “don’t talk, don’t trust, and don’t feel” (adultchildren.org), I never questioned why things were the way they were and never admitted to myself that there was anything wrong with the way the people who loved me treated me. As a young adult, I found myself in a situation equally dysfunctional to the one I grew up in. I was repeating the cycle. It wasn’t until I hit rock bottom that I was able to live as Jonathan does, and begin to refuse to allow legitimate excuses to get in the way of my progress, that things began to change.

My story contains elements I felt shaky and uncomfortable even starting to examine, but each time I share it, from working on understanding in my own counseling to speaking in front of an audience, elements of shame continue to turn into pride and resilience. Through fully embracing the events that made me who I am today, hardships are turned into building blocks. There are still times that I struggle, when old patterns of thinking emerge, where I say or do something I regret based on outdated fears, and I know that this is a product of my past. The beautiful part is though, that I continue to get better at catching myself, and I continue to get better at being kinder to myself and those around me.

Another beautiful part is that people who have heard me speak often tell me that my story inspires and reminds them that they have the capacity to do the same. It was this realization, that authenticity is contagious, that drastically changed my approach to teaching and turned me from a struggling new educator, clueless about content and classroom management, to a district curriculum writer and teacher of the year. Refusing to allow legitimate excuses to get in the way of my progress meant that I faced issues head on instead of living in denial, an approach I modeled and used with my students. My classroom became a place of empowerment for students, and seeing them gain clarity and passion for tackling their own obstacles and reframing them from liabilities to assets filled me with a sense of purpose. In transitioning from education to a career in counseling, I am able to provide that place of empowerment for others in a different capacity.

By adopting the mindset that even legitimate excuses don’t have to hinder our progress, we develop a sense of resilience and a knowledge that we can go through hard things and end up okay. Whatever obstacles, whatever traumas, tragedies, hardships, or injustices you have had to endure, or whatever traumas, tragedies, hardships, or injustices you have yet to endure, you have it in you to recover and to use them as instruments of understanding, perseverance, and success.