Jo Rhodes

The strongest woman I ever met was once as broken as the rest of us, but she’d figured out how to put herself back together. So many days she’d spent in pieces on the floor. Shattered, jagged and sharp, she wouldn’t let anyone help her for fear they’d hurt themselves on the razor edges of her pain. Though she’d tried so many times, the pieces of her were too broken to be put back together the same way. Scrabbling in the dark, trying to find herself, she’d realised it would never work. The pieces would never go back and even if they did, they would break again, they were weak in the first place, why else would they have shattered?

So, she took a breath and took her time. Gingerly gathering the biggest pieces of her she could see, the ones she couldn’t ignore. She’d held them tightly to her chest and against all her instincts she convinced herself to love them, forgive them, nurture them, even celebrate them.

And when she released her grip, she found the pieces of her that she’d held in her arms had smelted together, an uneven blob of contradictions and imperfections but it was beautiful, and it was strong.

So, she cautiously returned to the floor and looked for the smaller pieces of herself. And carefully, one by one, she added them to the golden mass, building it up bigger and stronger.

Some days it was too heavy to hold, and it would slip from her grasp. But though it broke, it never shattered again. Each time it was easier to pick up and put back together again. The edges weren’t so sharp. Sometimes she’d let others help, she wasn’t afraid of hurting them now. It was easier to pick up the pieces with help but she was the only one who could hold them and love them back together, in her arms they could be mended and healed.

People would ask her how she did it, as if there was an easy trick, as if it hadn’t taken everything in her to stop hating those useless, broken pieces and love them back into something worth holding.