Dailyprompt-2911
What’s one thing you know now that would have saved your younger self a lot of pain?
Oh, this is a difficult question.
My first thought was my ex-husband.
If I had known then what I know now, perhaps I could have saved myself years of pain, tears and heartache.
But then I stopped.
Because if I could go back and change that part of my life, what else would change?
Would I still have my three oldest children?
And there’s my answer.
I wouldn’t trade those three for anything in the world.
Not for an easier past.
Not for a different life.
Not even for the chance to erase some of my most painful memories.
💜
Life isn’t as simple as going back and removing the chapters we wish we’d never experienced.
Sometimes those chapters contain both our deepest wounds and our greatest blessings.
And that makes the question so much harder.
I’ve experienced things I wouldn’t wish upon anyone.
I’ve known what it’s like to live with fear, to question myself and to stay silent when I should have spoken.
For a long time, I thought keeping the peace was more important than standing up for myself.
I was wrong.
Keeping the peace should never mean sacrificing your own.
That’s something I wish my younger self had understood.
I wish she’d known that being kind didn’t mean accepting everything.
That loving someone didn’t mean tolerating being hurt.
That saying no wasn’t selfish.
And that walking away from something harmful wasn’t a failure.
It was sometimes the bravest thing she could do.
I wish I could sit beside that younger version of myself, take her hand and tell her:
You don’t have to prove your worth by how much pain you can endure.
You don’t have to make yourself smaller to keep someone else happy.
And you are allowed to choose yourself.
But would I change the past?
That’s where my heart hesitates.
Because my past also gave me my children.
It brought people into my life whom I love beyond words.
And eventually, it brought me to a different chapter, where I discovered that love could feel very different from what I’d known before.
I can’t separate every beautiful moment from every painful one.
Life doesn’t work that way.
So perhaps I wouldn’t go back and change the decisions.
Perhaps I’d simply give my younger self something she desperately needed.
The knowledge that she deserved respect, kindness and love without fear.
And maybe, just maybe, that knowledge would have helped her recognise sooner when something wasn’t right.
I don’t believe we have to be grateful for the pain we’ve experienced.
But I do believe we can learn from it.
We can grow.
We can find our voices.
And we can make sure the lessons we learned become something better for the next generation.
If there’s one thing I’d tell my younger self today, it would be this:
Never confuse enduring pain with proving love.
Because real love shouldn’t require you to disappear.
And despite everything…
I look at my five children today and know that there are parts of my life I would never, ever wish away.
💜
I wouldn’t erase my past, because I wouldn’t risk losing the people I love. But I wish my younger self had known that she was worthy of love that didn’t hurt.
💜
With love, coffee, poetry, and stardust,
— Maggie The Afterlove Voice 💫
DJ Maggie in the house
https://ditto.fm/arena-51-the-calima-conspiracy-original-mix
https://ditto.fm/arena-51-the-calima-conspiracy-alien-invasion-remix
https://ditto.fm/silenced-but-not-broken
My song “Silenced but not broken” Lyric video.
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