This is for anyone who’s tired of being told to “stay strong” when what we really need is to be seen.

It’s not strength we lack. It’s space to fall apart without being judged for it. While craving for being seen; it’s what keeps us from vanishing under the weight of silent suffering.

What if life isn’t something to win, but something to witness?

There is a kind of violence in treating life like a competition, as if every challenge was a test of willpower or faith. Not everything is winnable. Some lose not because they didn’t try hard enough but because situations aren’t fair. Because we are swimming against a current too strong to overcome. A current of events that keeps us far from the safe shore and that might drawn us.

What if we could choose witnessing, instead of winning? What if we could embrace presence over performance? What if we could offer a compassionate listening, not a scoreboard?

I beg you to rebel against the demand to find meaning in every hardship. The pressure to extract lessons or growth from pain can be exhausting, even cruel. Not all suffering teaches. Some of it just wounds. At times saying “this hurts, and that’s all there is right now” is the only valid rebellion we can afford.

What if it isn’t about offering solutions, but solidarity?

Advice is often a reflex, because people feel helpless, or awkward, or scared of your struggle. Unsolicited advises rarely soothe. They feel dismissive, arrogant, especially when they come from those who haven’t lived what we’re living. In those moments, what heals most, isn’t someone telling you what to do, but someone saying, “I don’t have the answers. But I’m here.”

It is painful to be handed stories of heroes and winners when we’ve already done everything, tried everything, and still lost. It feels like the world is telling you the outcome is your fault. As if suffering is evidence of failure.

At times, the best we can do is make it through the day. There's courage in that too.

For those walking through the dark without answers, I offer this poem not as a light, but as a presence.

“At times, the best we can do is make it through the day.

There's courage in that too.

At times life won't give a lesson,

a bright side,

or a story that turns right.

At times life is just brutally unfair,

without sense,

empty.

At times pain just is.

At times losses don't end with a closure.

At times we don't need to cope or deal,

but to be seen,

to call out wrongs,

to feel free,

without the need to mend, fix or frame.

We cope

when we don't know what else to give

against pain.

To walk through darkness

without a map

or a promise,

not in surrender,

but in defiance.

A refusal to be consoled cheaply.

A voice that doesn’t seek to inspire and lift,

but to witness.”

You can download more poems in defiance of what rules us, to lit up our souls here. A renewal of old myths, old narratives and obsolete systems.

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