Week 16: How to Struggle Well

Elizabeth Ford
Aug 18
4 min read

How to Struggle Well

There’s a phrase I’ve heard over and over again:

“Struggle well.”

It is the heart of a nonprofit my husband is a part of an incredible nonprofit Boulder Crest. They work with men and women who are current or former military, and with first responders, whom of those in the field who have lived through trauma most of us will never understand.

But I believe this idea of struggling well isn’t just for heroes in uniform.

It’s for all of us. Yes, it is for You Too!

Because if you’re living, if you’re breathing, you’ve struggled at some point in your life.

That’s just the truth of life.

The question is: how do we go through struggle well, instead of letting it take us out?

Let me be clear: struggling well does not mean faking it.

It is not “fake it until you make it.” I used to say that when I was a young waitress trying to may my way into the office world one day.

It’s not pretending you’re okay when you’re breaking down inside.

It is learning how to move through pain with purpose. Your Purpose!

It is learning how to let your struggle shape you, but not define you.

For me, struggling well meant turning my daily life pain into something good.

It meant taking every experience that hurt me, everything I lacked, everything I didn’t understand, and making it my fuel.

One of my biggest examples was my mother.

I watched her struggle in depression, filth, hopelessness, and silence.

I saw what it looked like to stop trying.

And I decided that even when I was a child I would live differently.

If she chewed with her mouth open, I chewed with it closed.

If she sat with her legs wide open, I sat with mine crossed.

If she screamed, I whispered.

If she shut down, I stepped up to lead for us, this happed sadly a lot so I learned quickly in life how to take charge.

And when I became a mother, I made a promise to myself:

I would do what I was never taught.

I would raise my children with intention.

I would teach them kind and good manners.

I would teach them grace and to give grace to themselves and others.

And most of all, I would teach them love.

There’s an old saying:

“Hurt people, hurt people.” But I refused to be that person.

So instead, I became a hurt person who loves people harder than my past pains.

That was my version of struggling well before I ever heard these two words "Struggle well".

When we choose to use our struggles, our pain, our past to do good, something beautiful happens.

The old memories begin to fade.

Not because they are erased, but because they are now replaced.

Replaced with new memories.

Better ones.

Ones filled with purpose meant just for you.

Now, through BetterALife, I get to feed children.

I get to help mothers.

I get to give families the love, dignity, and resources I once lacked.

And I get to fill my life with smiles, laughter, and joy that never used to be there.

You can do the same in the way your life opens for this.

Take the hurt you haven’t been able to get past yet, and this is the hard part, forgive the hurt. I used to say how can I forgive being beat by the man who was supposed to protect me, or being abandoned by the mom who was supposed to love me. But I know, it is not forgiving to go back to them, it is forgiving knowing it was thier item, not yours. Release it back to them. Because when we hold it, we only hurt us. I forgive because thier heart was not in a place of kindness. I pray their heart one day understands so they can be kind to another, and I know it was not my fault they hurt me.

Try those words. Forgive, and it will bring you a new peace to:

Love deeper.

Smile bigger.

Laugh, yes, laugh. Even if it’s just finding something ridiculous online like Cows, Cats or Chickens being silly.

Laugh anyway.

I went years without laughing. I thought it didn’t matter. But it does.

When I found my voice again, I started to laugh again.

I started to sing again as I stopped that too.

I started to live free again.

You can start again too.

Do not let the struggle stop you.

Do not let it define you.