Stories Get Better as Stories Fall Apart

A long drive with music cranked loud and windows rolled down is my default “feel-better activity” when going through a hard time. I generally keep a handful of certain songs on max volume and on repeat. One such song is by the energetic duo Matt and Kim, and it’s dramatic title, “World is Ending,” perfectly described what I felt was happening five years ago. The world I had envisioned for my life had fallen apart with an abrupt discovery that ended my marriage while I was just trying to learn the ropes of motherhood for my 6-month-old. My vision for my future self and family had turned upside down—and that was hard to swallow.

However, despite the gloomy title of this favorite song, there is a single line that provided a sense of hope I clung to, and always turned loudest, and that is:

“Stories get better as stories fall apart.”

While the story I badly wanted was rapidly falling apart and not turning out like I had imagined, I hoped that a new one could be better. That one line was always stuck in the back of my mind, and I’d draw on it to buoy me through hard days. “Your story will get better,” I told myself until I actually believed it. I’d put it on repeat on the way to custody evaluations, the day I moved from my home to a new apartment, while plowing through mornings I could barley get my son to daycare and myself to work on-time, or on the way home from discouraging dating experiences (i.e. when a man told me on a first date that he seeks out single moms because he liked to “fix a hot mess”). This is surely going to get better…but how?

My first realization was that the new story is mine to write. If my story was going to get better, I needed to own it. I could get in the driver’s seat both literally and proverbially as I shifted my mental model from feeling like a victim of circumstances I couldn’t control to a situation that I could. I wanted to step up and be the author of my next, new chapters. My second realization was I needed to seek examples around me to demonstrate that it would indeed turn out better. I started to surround myself with others who both understood and proved that beautiful gifts can come alongside loss.

My experience in starting and running Beyond Words Co., has proved to be one of the most healing and humbling gifts after my own loss. On a daily basis, I witness hardships magnitudes more difficult than what my own were. Each time I write the heartfelt the messages from others to support loved ones through some of their hardest times, I’m provided the beautiful gift of perspective. On daily basis, there are painful reminders of how others have a world they may believe is ending and feels like it is falling apart. Through that pain, I’m also honored to bear witness to how their community rallies around them to ensure that their story will too, get better. Their supporters are giving them hope that while it won’t be written in the way they once thought, perhaps the loss opens new possibilities that provide a different future to [eventually] embrace.

Five years ago, I would not have believed that stories get better as stories fall apart. It’s only with the passing of time, of perspective gained through eyes wide open to others’ loss, and with the support of those around me that my story has indeed gotten better. For those going through the unthinkable right now, we’ll hold hope that yours will too.