When we have faced trauma, such as domestic violence, sexual assault, physical assault, loss of someone close to us, etc. we are likely going to feel a sense of brokenness. Often survivors may feel like their trauma didn’t make them stronger, it made them broken. These things are not mutually exclusive though. You can be both broken and strong. It’s called resilience. I want to share with you all a metaphor for this that I have found recently. We shall call it, the tale of a broken bridge.
How the Bridge Started
The story of our bridge begins here, on a sunny and mild day. The bridge is beautiful and the perfect photo op for many taking senior pictures, prom photos, and even wedding photos. For me, this is the place I chose to capture my family’s announcement that my husband and I were going to begin the journey of being foster parents.
We took this lovely picture of our family and shared it with our friends and extended family. We were going to be sharing our life with kids who needed a temporary stay in a safe home. With the bridge highlighting our strong foundation.
A Broken Bridge
As you all know from reading my other posts, our family didn’t stay together. I left my husband and he took my dog from me. The picture we had with this bridge broken apart. My world and myself broken into pieces. Then I went back to the park that has this bridge.
And I found it broken, with only 1/2 of it remaining (kind of like my life). I thought to myself at the time that it was fitting for the bridge to no longer be there. That it no longer was the same as when my ex-husband and I stood there making a promise to our future foster children that wasn’t kept. That didn’t remain.
Broken But Not Gone
Recently I went back to the park again and saw the bridge and this time it had been restored. It wasn’t broken as it was before and it wasn’t gone. Now the bridge has been given new life.
Is the bridge back to the way it was before? No, it isn’t. But that is okay. Just like we people who have been broken, we can build ourselves back. Will we ever be the same, no we won’t. We will still have some blemishes. But we are not finished. We have so much more we can continue to be and become. So many more people to impact. To quote Kelly Clarkson, we are “broken and beautiful”.
That’s very touching ❤️