A Little Gratitude… and a Lot of Truth…

I’ve been told I should be grateful.

And I am.

Grateful for the roof over my head, for the days I managed to laugh when there wasn’t anything funny about it.
I’m grateful for the friends who showed up, the few family members who stayed solid, and for the unexpected kindness of strangers when I needed it most.

Grateful for the lessons, even the ugly ones.
Because while I wouldn’t wish them on anyone, they made me sharp, honest, and a little less afraid of my own voice.

But gratitude doesn’t cancel out truth.
And it doesn’t mean I have to stay quiet about the people who made a hard life harder, or about the petty, small hearted games that still play out long after the ones who held this family together are gone.

If telling my story makes anyone twitchy, well, that’s not my burden to carry.
I didn’t make this mess.
I just lived through it.
And now, I write about it.
Not because I’m angry (though sometimes I am).
Not because I want revenge (I wouldn’t waste the energy).
But because these stories matter.
Because for every person who finds these words uncomfortable, there’s another person who reads them in silence, nodding, thinking, “Finally. Someone said it.”

And those are my people.
The ones still swallowing their stories because someone told them it wasn’t polite to say how they really felt.
The ones who’ve been made to feel dramatic, difficult, ungrateful, or angry for simply naming what happened to them.
The ones who carry their family’s mess in one hand and their own survival in the other.

If you’re one of them, you’re safe here.
You don’t have to pretend it didn’t hurt.
You don’t have to justify your grief, your anger, your exhaustion, or your decision to finally tell your side.
And you definitely don’t have to apologize for being the one who saw it all, stayed standing, and decided to say it out loud.

Carry on.
Tell your story.
Because silence never saved anyone.

Lesson of the Day:

Gratitude isn’t silence.
You can be thankful for what you have and still name what hurt you.
You’re allowed to honor your survival and call out the people who made it harder than it had to be.

Never let anyone convince you that peace comes from pretending.
It comes from finally telling the truth, out loud, in your own words, on your own terms.