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No one tells you that growth isn’t always graceful.

They say, “Be strong.”
They say, “Keep going.”
They say, “You’ll thank yourself later.”
But what they don’t say is how deeply uncomfortable transformation can be how gritty, how lonely, how wildly unpredictable the journey inward is.

Grace: The Kind You Learn the Hard Way

Before I understood grace, I misunderstood perfection. I thought grace meant always being calm, never making mistakes, always having the right words. But grace, I’ve learned, is more like a soft place to land when life knocks the wind out of you.

It’s in the apology you whisper to yourself after harsh self-talk.
It’s in the decision to keep showing up when you’re not sure you’re getting it “right.”
It’s learning to forgive the version of you that didn’t know better because now you do.

Grace isn’t passive. It’s the quiet rebellion of compassion in a world that demands constant performance.

Grit : The Unseen Muscle

Grit isn’t flashy. It doesn’t announce itself. It shows up in the middle of the night when you decide not to quit. It lives in the small, daily choices that no one applauds. The kind that don’t look brave until months or years later when you realize you were building a life the whole time.

Some days, grit looked like brushing my teeth through tears. Other days, it was starting over. Saying yes to healing. Saying no to what drained me. Grit was keeping the promises I made to myself even when it hurt.

And no, no one warned me that grit might look more like surviving than thriving for a while.

The Growth: They Didn’t Warn Me About

They didn’t tell me growth might mean letting go of people I love.
They didn’t tell me it would feel like loss before it felt like clarity.
They didn’t tell me I’d mourn old versions of myself like lost friends.

They didn’t tell me that growth would ask me to walk through doubt, that it would hand me mirrors instead of maps. That it would be both beautiful and brutal. A slow shedding. A becoming.

But here’s what I’ve come to believe:

Growth is not supposed to feel easy. It’s supposed to feel true.

And if you’re in it right now if your voice shakes, if your heart aches, if you’re standing in the wreckage of who you used to be this is not failure. This is the wilderness before the bloom. This is the part they didn’t warn you about, because it can’t be explained.

It must be lived.

So Let’s Redefine Strength

Let’s make space for grace.
Let’s honor the grit.
Let’s tell the truth about the growth.

Because the real story? The real strength?
It’s in how we show up anyway. How we soften without breaking.
How we grow even when it hurts

Love, Fantasia