Taylor Swift said once, "May you take notice of the things in your life that are nice and make you feel safe and maybe even find wonderment in them. May you write down your feelings and reflect on them years later, only to learn that all the trials and tribulations you thought might kill you... didn't. I hope that someday you forget that pain ever existed."

One of the most beautiful things about our lives is that we have the ability to document them. This could mean in photographs, on social media, with videos or even in journals. We typically document the highlights of our lives and the things that we think would be worth remembering one day. However, something that we do not document enough is our pain, and without that documentation we have no idea how far we may have come from it. 

The ability to reflect back on and give attention to the worst moments of our lives is very difficult to do. There is always progress and change going on within our own lives to the point that we never notice how far we’ve come. We go through pain and experience it because there is no way around it. In the moment we could feel it as the worst experience ever and look for some sign of hope that things might get better. So, we sit with the pain but we do not document it. Even if we do, it is something we do to get it off our chest in the moment. But being able to remember your lowest points is what makes your highest points even greater. Something really wonderful is being able to look back on the pain and see how far you may have come from it. Reflecting on that hardship, though painful, is powerful.

Pay attention to the pain and remember it, so you can look back one day and realize just like the quote said, that all of the things that hurt you and the things that you thought would kill you, didn’t and you’re okay. Once you do some reflecting, you can take a step back and see all of the progress you have made and realize that the pain actually helped you grow and gave you strength that you never knew you needed to move forward. 

After this, you have the ability to forget situations that brought you pain ever existed. Once you recognize it and realize how far you have come, you can be consumed with the nice things in your life that make you feel safe, where you realize that some of the pain was only temporary and now it can all be forgotten. Looking back on hardships and difficult moments in our lives can hurt but being able to look back and see progress is so incredibly powerful. Moving forward is something we all have to do at some point with everything in our lives; The good and the bad.

I forgot that certain pain ever existed, and I hope you can too.

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