What I Have Learned From My Darkest Days
Wrapped in a blanket. Tears falling. Thoughts swirling. I have sat in these kind of dark moments more times in my life than I ever expected. No one sits as a little girl and imagines the darkest days ahead. We dream. We see brightness and we see a limitless world of possibilities but we never truly understand that there will be dark days and sometimes they may even be the darkest days your soul ever sees. That is what I think can be the most shocking. The darkest days are unexpected. If you are sitting in this space right now know that while it doesn't get better overnight, it does get better (yes, I know that is cliche). Here is a little about my darkest days but if you want to jump right to the lessons, scroll on down :)
There was a point of time at the end of high school where I was crumbling. I lost my identity and was made to feel completely worthless. I did something that negatively impacted someone and it was spreading throughout the school. This isn’t to make excuses for my actions or to plead my case. The fact is I did something not so great and while I took accountability for that and apologized to the appropriate parties, I had to deal with the guilt, shame and regret of those actions. I remember going to classes and just dreaming about getting home. I wanted to crawl in a hole. The next month was a blur. Everyday I went from school to work then went home, ate dinner and went up to my room and watched TV until 4AM then I would start the whole process over again. This event was also proof to me how not understanding and processing your emotions appropriately can make them ooze out into actions that impact others in ways we don’t mean.
While going through all of this, my family was experiencing back to back deaths of close family members. 3 in 6 months. Maybe that played a hand in it. After all, how do you grieve on such a tremendous level and focus on healing yourself AND be a teenager at the same time? I remember thinking “If there is a rock bottom, this is it” and was stunned to be experiencing something so heavy so early. Then one night I was hit with the thoughts. Some of the darkest and scariest thoughts I have ever had. I was thinking “I don’t like myself. Everyone I love is dying. Why do I need to be here? What is here for me? How would I even do it? Ya know I am not sure but all I know, I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to feel this anymore. I want it to end.” Then, I heard a ping on my phone and it was my best friend. She texted me and said “hey love. how are doing?” and call it what you want but I think of it as the universe showing up to save me. As soon as I saw this something inside of me was like “Be honest” and I was. I told her “I am not okay. I truly don’t know what to do and I just don’t want to be here anymore” I am not even kidding, within 10 minutes she was at my house, in my room, hugging me while I cried. I owe everything to this night. The next day I woke up thinking about how close I came to driving full throttle down a really slippery slope and something in my gut just told me “you have to turn this around. You have to prove to yourself you are worthy.” Long story short, that is exactly what I did. The rest of the year I took the time to fall in love with myself but that is a story for another day. All of this to say, I made it to the other side of the darkest days.
I have only ever come close to this feeling one other time in my adult life and that was while I was working a public facing job during the pandemic. My husband (fiancé at the time) was laid off. I had hated my job before he lost his and was now stuck in it as the only income we had now. I was miserable everyday for a year and some of those very same dark thoughts were swirling. I was stuck in a situation that mentally wore me down and made me truly question my life and my existence, again. Every time I tried to fix our situation something knocked me back down or it was met with roadblock after roadblock. This is when I started going to therapy regularly and through that work and the loving help of my husband, things turned around.
I know this is all a super long way of saying, I get it. I have been there. I have seen some dark days and I see you. If you are in the thick of it right now, I know it may feel like there isn’t anything that can help and no one gets it but I am here and I get it. If you are open to it, here are some things I learned from the darkest days I faced:
Connection and honesty saved me. Being brave enough to say the vulnerable, dark things out loud to someone I trusted in that time is what helped my brain feel like I could get better and life could get better. Remember, there are people that are willing to listen and help. Find that person for yourself and learn to lean on them.
Vulnerability wasn’t weakness; it was connection. It opened the door for love, support, and truth to enter. Pretending to be fine keeps us disconnected, but speaking your pain out loud brought light into the room again.
Pain is a teacher, not a punishment. When the universe feels like it is turning on you and beating you down to a pulp, it is often a strong redirection back to yourself. It is exposing the parts of you that need love, care, repair and patience. The darkest times exposed what needed tending to not what you needed to hide.
Healing isn’t liner. It comes in cycles. You don’t ever “get over things.” You return to them time and time again with more wisdom and reflection. You learn to hold old pain with new strength and emotional intelligence. Sometimes progress isn’t about not climbing the same mountain again, it’s about climbing even higher, far past the checkpoint that you stopped at last time.
Emotions are NOT the enemy. Your darkest times showed you they were something to honor and to stop silencing them. Every single emotion has a message. It is your job to get to the route with compassion and understanding.
You are not your lowest moment. Your worth doesn’t vanish because your light dimmed. You learned to separate your circumstances from your being and that is so important. You learned to see yourself as whole, even when you have some cracks.
Surrender doesn’t mean giving up. There is a difference between forcing your way through life versus trusting your way through it. Sometimes the most healing thing you can learn is that you never ever had control in the first place.
Not everyone you meet is meant to walk with you through the dark. Sometimes people disappear when the lights go out and that stings. The one who stay or the quiet moments where you learned to practice self-compassion instead were sacred. The loneliness made room for authenticity.
Rebuilding takes time and softness. You cannot realistically build overnight. Coming back to life isn’t about becoming who you were before, it is about becoming who you were always meant to be. The foundation you rebuilt yourself on this time? Love, truth, and grace.
Life can be insanely beautiful on the other side of the dark days. I look at my life now; my family, my home, the laughter that fills our days and I can’t help but think, this is what waited for me on the other side of the pain. None of it would exist if I hadn’t chosen to keep moving forward, even when I couldn’t see where the path led. The truth is, beauty doesn’t erase the darkness; it grows from it. Every moment I wanted to give up became a seed for the life I live now. And that’s the quiet miracle of surviving — you eventually get to stand in the light and realize you built it yourself.
If there’s one thing my darkest days taught me, it’s that light doesn’t just return; you learn to create it. You learn to build peace from the pieces of yourself that survived. Healing isn’t about forgetting what happened; it’s about honoring who you became because of it. The pain doesn’t disappear, but it transforms into compassion, wisdom, and a deeper appreciation for what it means to be alive.
I know what it’s like to sit in the dark and wonder if it will ever get better. I promise you, it can. The road isn’t straight, and it isn’t simple, but it leads somewhere worth walking toward. I look at my life now and see proof of that every single day. The love I have, the peace I feel, the person I’ve become — all of it exists because I chose to keep moving forward when I didn’t think I could.
So wherever you are in your story, hold on. Keep choosing to take one more breath, one more step. Because life can be breathtakingly beautiful on the other side of the darkest days. One day, you’ll be watching your daughter move through the world and you’ll look back on life just to realize you didn’t just survive the dark, you became the light.
Love always,
Alyssa
