“I feel broken,” she whispered.

“I feel like someone needs to glue me back together.” “ I… I can’t do it myself… there are too many broken pieces now… every time I try to pick up one of the glass splinters, I cut myself again… I can’t…. I don’t know how….”

Her voice trembled. Her body folded in on itself like it had forgotten how to hold its own weight.

I nodded. Not because I agreed, but because I remembered. The collapse. The ache. The illusion that something inside has shattered beyond repair.

But it is not true. We are not broken. We break, yes.

Life bends us, cracks us, sometimes even shatters us. Regardless, brokenness is not an identity. It’s a moment.

Some of us like to think of ourselves as unbreakable. It’s cute, like superheroes, hey. But we have no cape with magic powers. We are not made of stone nor should we aim to be. We are made of breath and blood and bone. Soft matter trying to survive in a hard world. And that in itself is actually quite magical.

Maybe we break not because we’re weak, but because we were too rigid. Too fixed in who we thought we had to be. Too clenched around who we were not allowed to become. Maybe breaking is a kind of opening. Maybe it’s how life teaches us to soften.

To unlearn. To rebuild with wiser hands.

You are not broken. You are being broken in. Like leather. Like muscle. Like truth.

Realness is not bulletproof. It bleeds easily, bruises often, and still shows up. It is breakable and beautifully put-back-together-able. What makes you whole is not perfection or unbrokenness. It’s your willingness to rebuild. Again. And again.

And again.