You are divinely made to endure yourself

This week, I heard Racquel Garcia’s powerful story of recovery from alcohol use disorder. She said something so profound it brought me back to this space after a long hiatus. I needed to hear her words. Maybe you do, too.

Most of us on a healing journey have met our Inner Victim—the wounded part of us that’s angry, self-destructive, and scared AF. The part we try to hide, yet often controls how we live.

I’ve known Racquel for much of my adult life and witnessed her transformation firsthand. She founded HardBeauty, a powerhouse peer recovery support team. At work my team is writing a series on the science of addiction. I knew her 15-year recovery story would offer both perspective and hope.

I asked Racquel: If you could go back and talk to yourself at your lowest, what would you say?

She said, “You have everything within you to come out on the other side.”

It made sense. But the depth of her words that followed struck me. 

For much of her life, she heard, “Poor Racquel. She’s got <this>. She’s got <that>.” It resonated. I’d heard the same. “Poor me” was a refrain in my world, too.

But the more Racquel took radical accountability, the more she understood that she was made to endure herself. Not only was she made for it. She was -divinely- created to do so. 

That hit hard.

A big part of my journey has been learning to sit with my pain. The overwhelming fear, grief, and shame. To sit in that discomfort and not distract myself using the myriad ways we humans have available. A lot of these distractions show up as addictions. As my meditation teacher says, “We all have addictions, from Netflix to heroin.”

Sitting with “me” hasn’t been easy. I still seek distraction. But my life shifts every time I allow discomfort instead of running from it. To know I’m safe to feel it—because, as Racquel put it, I was divinely made to endure myself.

I’ll leave you with her words:

“To not be able to handle yourself would be counterintuitive to the creation of the world. Why would we be made to not be able to handle ourselves? To me, that seems counterintuitive to the Creator’s intelligence.”

Wherever you are right now, you were made to endure this. I hope her words help.