Don’t let your pain become your story,
A passing storm, not life’s inventory.
What cuts today will heal tomorrow,
There’s no need to shape your life in sorrow.
Struggles are steps along the way,
Not the place where you have to stay.
If you define yourself by wounds endured,
You make the fleeting feel secured.
A moment’s hurt, a fleeting sting,
Should never define your everything.
Each thought, belief, and tale you weave
Can build the walls—or let you breathe.
If pain’s the lens through which you see,
It colors all your destiny.
But you are more than trials past,
More than shadows life has cast.
You feel, you carry, you learn, you grow,
Through raging winds and waters’ flow.
Yet storms don’t speak your truest part—
You are the flame, the shining heart.
Let feelings move like ocean tides,
Not chains that hold, but waves that glide.
They mark the path, they do not bind,
Life flows forward—leave none behind.
You are not what breaks, but what remains,
A strength that rises after pain.
You are the spirit that endures and thrives—
Not what hurt you, but what survives.
Thach Ho, LCSW 