The Beautiful Mess: Why Struggle Isn’t the Enemy

Julie Barris | Crisis Counselor | Therapist-in-Training
6 days ago
4 min read

Struggle is often the very thing that shapes our resilience and reveals what truly matters to us. We spend so much time avoiding discomfort, yet struggle isn’t the enemy; avoidance is.

The Beautiful Mess: Why Struggle Isn’t the Enemy

There’s a quiet pressure in our world to be okay all the time — to bounce back quickly, to stay positive, to be “fine.” Struggling is often seen as a detour from the life we’re supposed to be living. But what if the struggle is the life?

Think about it. Some of the most meaningful changes you’ve made likely came from discomfort — heartbreak that made you reevaluate your worth, burnout that taught you to set boundaries, failure that finally forced you to ask for help. We don’t grow despite struggle. We grow through it.

Like the woman who left a toxic corporate job after months of anxiety, only to rediscover her creativity and launch her own small business — something she’d never have dared to try otherwise.

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Struggle Is Not a Symptom of Weakness

Let’s be clear: struggling is not a sign that you’re doing something wrong. It’s a sign that you’re alive, adapting, becoming. In therapy, we often talk about distress tolerance — the idea that building the ability to sit with hard emotions is a skill, not a punishment. The same goes for life: facing hard things doesn’t make you broken, it makes you human.

Often, we expect that if we were doing everything “right,” we wouldn’t feel pain. But life doesn’t work that way. We can eat well, stay mindful, love deeply, and still lose someone we care about. Still get laid off. Still go through heartbreak. Still wake up anxious for no clear reason.

We can’t control what may befall us — not always. But we can decide how we meet ourselves in those moments.

The Wisdom Inside Pain

Pain slows us down — and in a world obsessed with speed, that feels unbearable. But in that slowness is clarity. We notice things. We reflect. We uncover values we didn’t know we had: resilience, compassion, courage.

So often, it’s not until we’re forced to stop — by grief, illness, rejection, or change — that we begin to ask deeper questions. Who am I, really? What matters to me when the noise is gone? For example, after a painful divorce, J.K. Rowling devoted her time to writing stories for her children — and ended up inspiring millions of children worldwide to fall in love with reading.

Pain opens the door to insight — not because it’s noble or romantic, but because it’s honest. It forces us to live in truth, even when it’s hard.

Struggles Teach Us What We’re Made Of

Ever heard someone say, “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but I wouldn’t take it back”? That’s the strange gift of struggle. It reveals the depth of your inner life. It shows you where your strength lives.

We often think we know who we are — until life throws something at us we didn’t ask for. A diagnosis. A betrayal. A layoff. That’s when our internal compass really starts to work. That’s when we learn what we’re capable of, what we can hold, and who we want to be through it all.

Struggles ask us to pay attention. They wake us up from autopilot. And while that awakening can hurt, it’s also an invitation: to grow more honest, more grounded, and more alive.

We can't always prevent the hard things — but we can decide whether they shape us or shut us down.

The Truth Is: We Don’t Have to Be “Fine”

There’s no shame in finding life hard. It is hard — and beautiful, and boring, and overwhelming, and everything in between. We live in a culture that tells us to push through and move on, but sometimes, the most courageous thing we can do is pause. Sit with the mess. Let it teach us.

We can hold two things at once: “This is painful” and “I’m still okay.” “I’m grieving” and “I’m growing.” “This isn’t what I wanted” and “I’m finding new parts of myself I never knew were there.”