When I, bleary-eyed, read the IG message early yesterday morning, tears welled up.
It was a note from a stranger in response to my latest IG reel reading my book “A Taste of Rainbow” to my children. It read:
“This book is one I will never forget… I was at your book event years ago as a patient struggling with recovery. I think i have read this book over 50 times. And it has also found a new home with someone who needs it more ever since. I eat ice cream now, just not with rainbow sprinkles 😉 This book was a huge part of my recovery. Just hope you know your work really touched lives.
I was 18 then, and almost 30 now, and married. Thank you for having been a huge part of my teenage years and also my recovery journey. God bless you and your amazing family always.”
As the memories sitting in my university dorm room, starving and wishing for death, washed over me, I realized the truth of the words I now believe in with all my heart- that our pain has a purpose.
It might not make sense now (in fact I’m almost certain it won’t). It might not make sense in ten years time even (I had people lamenting how much weight I’d put on without knowing how sick I once was). But I promise you, one day it will.
One day, maybe some eleven years down the road when you’re on some new form of social media and you’re reading what you created through your pain to your children, some stranger in the universe who’s traced the constellations to find you, will tell you that your time spent burning has been a light to her path.
So would you persist through your pain. Smile in the darkness, even if you don’t feel like it. It might crush you for a while but you will not be defeated. And through it all, it might help uncover Purpose- not only yours, but that of others too.
*this photo (a rare one of me smiling back then) was taken 11 years ago close to the turning point of the most painful valley in my life.