DAMN

Damn, I’ve Been Through a Lot of Shit: But Here’s What I’ve Learned

Life teaches through fire. Here is a deep, personal reflection, sharing some of the lessons I’ve learned from decades of struggle, growth, and awakening. Hopefully, offering hope to anyone walking their own path of healing, recovery, and self-discovery.

Have you ever just sat still — like really still — and thought, “Damn, I’ve been through a lot of shit”?

Not from a place of self-pity, but from that rare quiet where the weight of everything you’ve survived finally settles into perspective. That moment when the mind stops defending, the body exhales, and the spirit says, “We made it.”

I’ve had those moments. Sometimes they come at the end of a long day, driving home through the Oregon hills with nothing but silence in the car. Other times, they show up mid-session, when I see in someone’s eyes the same pain I once carried. And every time, the realization hits: I’ve been through hell, but I’ve also learned how to turn pain into wisdom.

Lesson One: Survival Isn’t the Goal - Healing Is

For years, I thought surviving was enough. I could push through anything, addiction, heartbreak, failure, shame, reinvention. I wore endurance like armor. But surviving without healing is just another form of hiding.

Healing demands honesty. It asks you to sit in the ashes of what burned down and ask, “What truth was trying to be born through this?”

When I stopped running from my past, I realized it wasn’t a list of wounds, it was a roadmap. Every scar marked a lesson. Every mistake pointed toward transformation. I wasn’t broken; I was being shaped.

Lesson Two: Forgiveness Is a Daily Discipline

Forgiveness isn’t saying, “It’s okay.” It’s saying, “I’m done carrying this.”

For a long time, I replayed my past like a movie stuck on repeat, every person I hurt, every time I let myself down. Then one day, I asked, “If I can’t forgive the man I was, how can I love the man I am?”

That question cracked something open. Forgiveness became a practice, not an event, a daily decision to stop feeding the old pain and start nurturing present peace.

Lesson Three: The Journey Is the Teacher

Even now, I’m still figuring out how to live, and that’s the point. Life doesn’t hand you a final test where you prove you’ve got it all figured out. It just keeps teaching.

The deeper lesson? Keep showing up. Keep your heart open. Let life teach you, not define you.

There’s no finish line. Just evolution. Just remembering who you really are beneath the conditioning, the scars, and the noise.

Lesson Four: Gratitude Changes Everything

Gratitude that’s born from pain has a different texture, raw, honest, sacred.

I’m grateful for the people who loved me when I wasn’t lovable. For the second chances I didn’t deserve but got anyway. For sobriety, stillness, laughter, and the strange beauty of balance returning after chaos.

Gratitude doesn’t deny what hurts. It honors what’s been gained through it.

Lesson Five: You Are Not Your Past

For a long time, my past felt like a brand burned into my skin, every mistake visible, relentless shame, every regret heavy. But eventually I saw that the past is a teacher, not a prison.

I am not the person who did those things. I am the awareness that learned from them.

That shift — from shame to awareness — is freedom.

Lesson Six: Share Your Light

At some point, the journey stops being about what you’ve been through and starts being about who you can help.

When I sit with someone still in their struggle, whether it’s an athlete, a client, or a newcomer in recovery, I recognize that look of exhaustion and hope tangled together.

Service has become my medicine. Love has become my practice. Presence, the kind that listens more than it speaks, has become my prayer.

Closing Reflection

So yeah, I’ve been through a lot of shit.

But I’ve also been through a lot of grace.

And somewhere in between, I found inner peace, not the kind that depends on circumstances, but the kind that lives quietly inside, waiting to be remembered.

If you’re on a journey right now, six years, sixteen, or sixty, take a breath. Look how far you’ve come. You’re not who you were, and that’s the point.

Maybe today, instead of asking “Why did I go through all that?”, you can ask, “What did it teach me?”

Because that’s where real freedom lives.

And damn … it feels good to be free.