Rebirth in ruins
Loss doesn’t just take things from you—it tears you apart, unspooling the threads you thought defined you. It levels the ground beneath your feet, leaving you to stand on the bones of what once was. At first, you resist. You try to patch yourself together with fragments of the life you’ve lost, hoping that if you can just stitch hard enough, you’ll find your way back to who you were before. But loss is not a thief who can be outrun; it is an architect who demands you start anew.
I’ve stood in the rubble of my own life, whispering to the ghosts of dreams I once cradled. The weight of the darkness crushed me, and I thought, I cannot bear this world a moment longer. I believed the ruins around me marked an end, not a beginning. But in that desolation, a whisper rose—not from the world outside, but from the silent part of me I had long ignored:
Then, child, make another.
Rebuilding is an act of rebellion against despair. It begins not with grand gestures but with a single brick. You take what you’ve learned—what the pain taught you, what the breaking revealed—and you begin again. And here’s the secret no one tells you: the world you rebuild is not just a replacement. It is closer to the world you were always meant to inhabit.
Loss doesn’t strip you of yourself; it strips away everything you thought you had to be. It’s the painful shedding of illusions, the forced surrender of borrowed identities. What remains is raw, vulnerable, and real—something you can finally call your own.
When the grains of sand shifted beneath me, I saw not the end of the shore but the start of a new sea. The wings of possibility stirred the air, and the darkness around me shimmered—not as something to fear, but as the infinite unknown from which I could draw something entirely new.
And so, I rebuilt. Slowly. Messily. Brick by aching brick. And in doing so, I found not the person I thought I had lost, but the one I was always meant to become.
If you are in the ruins, remember this: the bones beneath your feet are not only the remnants of what was lost but the foundation for what you will create. The darkness is not the end. It is the space from which light will rise. Make another world.
And this time, make it your own.
