I was sitting on the deck of my cabin when it hit me—not in some soft, peaceful, Instagrammable kind of way, but in the kind of way that makes you pause mid-thought and just sit there for a minute. The air was quiet, the kind of quiet you only get in the mountains, and I found myself staring out across the trees, taking it all in. And for whatever reason, I stopped seeing my cabin as just a place. In that moment, she became something else entirely.
She became a reflection of me.
A couple of years ago, a fire tore through this area. Not gently. Not selectively. It came through like life tends to do—fast, unforgiving, and without asking anyone if they were ready for it. Today, I met the neighbors whose cabin sat directly across from mine. The one that didn’t survive. They showed me a photograph that I haven’t been able to shake since. It was a cabin completely engulfed in flames, everything behind it burning, the neighboring structure already gone, and a firefighter walking straight toward the chaos. The kind of image that makes your chest tighten a little.
And what stopped me cold was realizing that the photo had to have been taken from my driveway. From the exact spot where I now sit with my morning coffee, looking out at a view that feels calm and untouched. Except it wasn’t untouched. It had been through something real.
Because while their cabin burned to the ground, and others around it were lost, mine is still standing. There are a few trees in my yard that were scorched down to nothing, quiet reminders that the fire came close—close enough to leave a mark—but the structure itself remains untouched. Still standing. Still whole.
And if that isn’t the most accurate metaphor for life, I don’t know what is.
Life has a way of coming in hot. It doesn’t ease you into the hard moments. It doesn’t give you a heads up or ask if now is a good time. It just shows up—through loss, betrayal, heartbreak, exhaustion, or those seasons where everything feels like it’s unraveling at once—and suddenly you’re in it, doing everything you can just to stay upright. Sometimes the win isn’t thriving or growing or becoming your “best self.” Sometimes the win is simply getting back up. Sometimes it’s just standing.
And that counts more than we give ourselves credit for.
What struck me even more, though, was what happens after the fire. Because the damage doesn’t always end when the flames are gone. Below my cabin, there are properties that weren’t destroyed by the fire itself, but by the floods that came after. Rain hit the burn scars, and because the ground could no longer absorb it, the water just ran—fast and destructive—taking out everything in its path. Entire spaces abandoned, not because of what initially happened, but because of what those scars made impossible afterward.
And that part hit a little too close to home.
Because if we’re being honest, a lot of us are walking around carrying our own version of burn scars. We’ve been through things that changed us, and while we may still be standing, something in us has hardened. We stop absorbing the good things—joy, love, gratitude, opportunity—not because they aren’t there, but because somewhere along the way, we learned that letting them in comes with risk. So we protect ourselves. We brace. We tell ourselves we’re being strong, when in reality we might just be shutting ourselves off from fully living.
Our scars were never meant to do that.
They were meant to prove that we survived.
There’s a difference.
Because when we let those experiences harden us to the point where we can’t feel anything good anymore, we’re not protecting ourselves—we’re limiting ourselves. We’re keeping life out in the name of safety, and in the process, missing the very things that make it worth living in the first place.
Sitting on that deck, meeting neighbors who are now rebuilding from literal ashes, and looking at a cabin that could have just as easily been gone, reminded me of something I’ve had to learn over and over again in my own life: it’s not about what happens to us. It’s about how we respond to it.
Life is going to do what life does. It will test you in ways you didn’t see coming and didn’t sign up for. But you always have a choice in what you do next. You can let it take you out, sit permanently in the mud of victimhood, or you can decide—sometimes moment by moment—that you’re going to keep standing.
Maybe not perfectly. Maybe not gracefully at first. Maybe with a little attitude and a lot of exhaustion. But standing nonetheless. And from there, you rebuild.
Not the same way you were before, but in a way that’s more aligned, more intentional, and a whole lot less tolerant of the things that never deserved your energy in the first place. That’s where grit comes in. That’s where grace comes in—giving yourself permission to not have it all figured out while you’re in the middle of it. And that’s where gratitude comes in, not for what happened, but for the fact that you’re still here to move forward.
Because more often than not, the path you rebuild ends up being better than the one you thought you lost.
So if you’re in a season right now where things feel heavy—whether you’re in the middle of the fire, dealing with the aftermath, or standing in your own version of ground that no longer feels like it can hold anything good—I want you to hear this clearly:
You don’t have to have it all figured out today. You don’t have to be thriving. You don’t even have to be okay.
But you do have to keep standing.
Because sometimes, that is the most powerful thing you can do. And if this cabin has reminded me of anything, it’s this—after the fire, after the scars, after everything that tried to take you out… you can still be standing.
And that is where everything begins again.
