In a world that often tells us comfort is the goal, it can be jarring to face hardship. Whether it’s anxiety, grief, burnout, or loss, we’re left wondering: Why is this so hard? Why am I not handling this better? But the truth is, you are handling it. You’re here, reading this, breathing through it. And maybe—just maybe—you were made for moments like this.
You Come From Survivors
Look back far enough, and you’ll see a long line of people who got through things that felt impossible. Your ancestors lived through wars, plagues, colonization, famine, systemic oppression, migrations, and the loss of entire ways of life. They loved, fought, grieved, and carried on anyway. They weren’t unbreakable. They were human—just like you. And they adapted. They rebuilt. They found laughter in bleakness and created joy in scarcity.
The strength in your bones is not theoretical. It’s inherited.
Dostoevsky and the Unexpected
The Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, no stranger to suffering, once wrote:
“Man is not born for happiness. Man earns his happiness, and always by suffering.”
It sounds bleak, but his point wasn’t to glorify pain—it was to acknowledge the depth of our resilience. Dostoevsky believed that we are not only capable of weathering the unexpected, but that it’s in those very moments of disruption—those detours from the life we planned—that our truest selves emerge.
In his novels, characters are often thrown into chaos. They lose everything, face exile, imprisonment, humiliation. And yet they grow. They transform. Not in spite of the hardship, but because of what it reveals in them.
He writes:
“Man is a creature who can get accustomed to anything.”
This is not resignation. It’s revelation. We are adaptable. We change. We learn to breathe in new air. We make meaning out of the ruins.
You Were Built for Trouble
Not because you deserved it. Not because suffering is noble or romantic. But because somewhere deep inside you is a survival instinct shaped over centuries. You’re not weak because you’re struggling. You’re living out the truth that life is unpredictable—and still you keep showing up.
We don’t get to choose all the twists in our story. But we do get to choose how we respond. We can soften toward ourselves. We can reach for help. We can remember that being knocked down isn’t the end—getting back up is the story.
Holding Both: Strength and Tenderness
Being “built for hard things” doesn’t mean powering through without rest. It doesn’t mean dismissing your pain or comparing it to someone else’s. It means giving yourself credit for enduring, even when it’s messy and slow. It means honouring your capacity to bend without breaking.
So if life feels like it’s asking too much right now, pause. Breathe. Remember:
You come from people who survived.
You were not promised a life without difficulty, but you were given tools—courage, community, adaptability.
You don’t have to handle it alone.
And maybe, like Dostoevsky’s characters, you’ll find that even in the darkness, there is something unexpectedly beautiful taking shape: a deeper self, a stronger spirit, a new way forward.
Need support? At Juniper Counselling in Port Moody, we believe in walking with people through the hardest parts of their story. Because you were built for this—but you don’t have to do it alone.
💚 Juniper Counselling Port Moody
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