broken bottles.

If you take a wine bottle and smash it you will have tiny pieces of glass all over the floor. If you then take as many hours as it needs to gather all the pieces and glue them back together, eventually, if lucky, you will have the rough shape of a wine bottle that has never been smashed. But we all know it will not work the same.

It may have unique features that enable it to help other wine bottles, but it won’t be the same.

Some kids were smashed to pieces. It’s devastating. And it’s so sad—but that doesn’t make it less true—that they can never be like a kid that was not. They can do some amazing things, of course, but they cannot be a fully functioning wine bottle.

Some find this depressing or pessimistic or cynical. I get that, but the problem is that I’ve seen it too many times and talked to too many counselors who have seen it too many times. And I think saying the opposite can make us lazy in trying to defend all children from this ever happening to them. Maybe if we weren’t so trite and inconsequential, we would stop telling some of these adults that they are not doing it right because they aren’t a fully functioning brand-new wine bottle. It’s okay. They are beautiful wine bottles with all of their cracks and imperfections, and if you are one of them, it’s okay that you’re not like them.

It’s nothing you did wrong, and it’s nothing you’re failing to do now. Be free. Hold what you can, in your own way, but don’t compare yourself to those who have never been through what you have.

We love you no less. Be free of the burden of perfection.